Smart offices can enhance user experience helping to increase productivity, attract and retain talent, support wellbeing and promote corporate brand values, writes Tim Roberts, head of offices and residential at British Land.
When I started out in property in the late 1980s, water features, huge atriums and wall-climber lifts were the must-haves among the occupiers lucky enough to own a £3,000 early edition mobile phone.
Customers for today’s office developments have a series of much more sophisticated features on their shopping list, driven by a focus not just on efficiency but – as a priority – on people and their ability to be productive.
Our vision is to create ‘places people prefer’. That requires a detailed understanding and delivery of what today’s occupiers and their staff and customers want and expect from tomorrow’s offices, and the broader environment in which they sit. Self-adjusting heating systems, personalised comfort settings, ‘flight check-in’ security access, space utilisation tracking, employee apps and efficiency dashboards are all on the menu for today’s most advanced office buildings.
But how much do these ‘smart building’ features appeal to the people who work in offices today, and how closely aligned are employers with what their employees expect?
British Land have commissioned independent research among more than 1,000 London office workers and decision makers, to find out what the capital’s talent really wants.
The answer – unequivocally – is that workers want their employers to deliver a smart working environment quickly, and that the smart building payback comes via employee loyalty, wellbeing and productivity – as well as expected efficiency wins.
So far, a handful of developments around the world are breaking ground for the arrival of smart offices, which will see the coming together of integrated management systems and IP-enabled components proving the biggest breakthrough of all, impacting on human experience and performance through predictive and proactive systems.
But what do businesses and their employees think of this idea?
Businesses are convinced that smart offices are part of their future: 90% of the decision makers we surveyed see a business reason for occupying a smart office and 81% say it’s a priority – though cost and concerns around data privacy are potential obstacles.
The appetite for controlling the personal work environment is huge; 88% of those asked expressed a wish to be able to do this better in an environment that adapts to human behaviour – whether that is, for example, the ability to personalise heat and light settings, window shades that self-adjust according to sunlight, or lighting systems that mimic natural daylight.
For many people this still seems some way off. Asked when they would like to work in a smart office, workers said, on average, ‘within two years’ – but think it won’t actually happen for another four. Only 35% of non-decision maker employees think smart office tech is being prioritised by their employer.
At British Land we’ve been moving the ‘smart’ picture forward on a number of fronts. We collaborated closely with UBS to deliver a building at 5 Broadgate capable of supporting the smart elements of their focus on agile working. Now we’re on site around the corner at 100 Liverpool Street, where the scheme will be smart from the ground up: every component part of the new building will have its own IP address and be linked to each other through a unified building management system, enabling remote management and delivering AI-enabled insight for problem solving and automation. And we’re also running a pilot at our York House HQ to explore and measure cutting edge smart solutions for a retrofit environment.
Those atriums, water features and wall-climber lifts were the product of their own times. Our offices of the future will use technology to create people-centric, efficient environments that will deliver the strategic value that our customers are seeking across a multitude of measures, stretching across productivity, talent attraction, brand and environmental impact.
Occupiers are seeking smart offices to maximise productivity and employers must step up in adopting smart technology, according to British Land.
The company polled 1,093 working Londoners, with 88% of respondents expressing a desire to control their work environment better using smart technology.
Smart technology ranges from self-adjusting heating systems to personalised comfort settings and space utilisation tracking.
A report published by British Land and Worktech Academy stated: “Smart offices can create an enhanced user experience that helps to increase productivity, attract and retain talent, support wellbeing and promote corporate brand values”, as well as using space more flexibly and efficiently, reducing costs and lessening environmental impact.
As well as 88% saying office buildings needed to adapt to human behaviours, over half of respondents identified the ability to personalise heat and light settings as examples of smart technology that would be most appealing.
An employee app allowing workers to order lunch or access local offers was favoured by 45% along with sensors giving real time information on available desks and rooms (43%).
Other smart office features identified as appealing include an app that allows desk and meeting room booking (40%); visitor ‘flight booking’ using pre-issued bar codes (38%) and voice activated room service (39%).
Respondents said occupying a smart office would boost company performance, with those questioned saying productivity could be increased by up to 37%, loyalty by 38% and wellbeing and happiness could improve by over 40%.
Millennials aged 18 to 29 estimated general happiness at work would be increased by over 50%, while those aged 50 and over estimated an increase of 30%.
London workers expressed a desire to work in a smart office within the next two years, but felt it will be four years, on average, before the identified technologies were used.
While 75% of respondents stated they wanted their company to stay at the forefront of smart office technology, only 35% of non-decision maker employees think smart office tech is being prioritised by their employer.
According to 61% of respondents cost was the major obstacle to implementing smart elements in an office – but older and younger workers had contrasting views.
Older decision-makers felt that the building (cited by 45%) and culture of the business (36%) might hold back implementation, whereas younger workers expressed concerns around privacy (38%), and vulnerability to hacking (40%), with 36% suggesting a lack of support from management would be a factor.
British Land and Worktech’s report however saw smart buildings as inevitable.
It said: “Over the next 12 months we are likely to see smart building systems communicating with each other properly for the first time, in a widespread manner, as open protocols come on stream.
“By 2020, we can expect that the smart devices and wearables that people bring to work will no longer be in search of a smart building to interact with.
“The physical infrastracture of the building and what people themselves carry or wear will be part of one complete smart system that both generates and acts upon all kinds of data.”
