The Future of Workspace

The television series “Mad Men” is the exemplar of the workplace of the 1950s and 1960s: sumptuous executive offices with gleaming bar carts, Herman Miller-designed midcentury modern furniture, and spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline.

Today is a different story, with employees clamoring for flexible jobs that balance work at home and work in a physical space elsewhere. Where people work is one evolutionary change in our ways of working; the other is how people accomplish tasks, which entails the use of digital technology and collaborative teamwork. Mad Men’s classic delegatory hierarchy is increasingly being replaced by flatter organizations with self-directed multidisciplinary teams held accountable for decisions.

These cultural shifts are colliding with the viability of older office buildings, whose owners are struggling with a precipitous decline in business tenants and shrinking workspace needs. “We’re at a very critical inflection point relative to obsolete building stock, requiring investments in redevelopment projects that creatively transform obsolete buildings for the future workforce,” says Peter Miscovich, global future of work transformation leader at JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle), a commercial real estate services company with offices in 80 countries.

Asked for an example of such a modern workplace, Miscovich pointed to Accenture’s New York Innovation Hub, located on the top nine floors of the 67-story One Manhattan West tower in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. Designed by architectural and engineering firm HOK, the workplace is LEED Gold-certified and makes use of “extensive daylight, circadian lighting, active furnishings, restorative spaces, nontoxic materials and biophilic elements like indoor greenery to prioritize health and well-being,” HOK states.

Throughout the workspace, there are no assigned desks. Rather, employees choose either a private or a communal setting that best fits their specific tasks. Each open-plan space has its own unique identity, HOK’s website states. Most are designed to encourage interactive face-to-face encounters and engagement.

If employees need to take the edge off the day, a client briefing room doubles as a yoga studio. Private space also is available for exercise and meditation.

Miscovich says JLL’s Fortune 50 clients seek to create similar “open, flexible, agile, and hybrid” workspaces. Location, location, location also plays a role in their decision-making. “In New York, there are districts like Hudson Yards and Park Avenue with these newer, higher-quality, environmentally sustainable, and tech-enabled buildings that are attracting topflight clients and other tenants,” he says. “Needless to say, their vacancy rates, are very, very low.”