By Kati Barklund
Edition 7 – April 2016 Pages 25-29
Tags: workplace design • activity based working • change management
Last October,I had the honor to present a session on workplace trends from Northern Europe at the IFMA World Workplace Conference in Denver,and in this article,I will try to summarize these trends.With Northern Europe,I primarily refer to the Nordic Countries (Sweden,Norway,Denmark and Finland),but I can partially see these trends in the UK,Holland and some other parts of Europe as well. The top 6 workplace trends from Northern Europe we might identify are:
Increased strategic C-level attention
Up until very recently,the workplace in itself has not been very high on the strategic C-level agenda – if it has been on the C-level agenda at all,but we are now really seeing increased strategic C-level attention for the workplace in Northern Europe.
To give you some background to this,we can state that our world is changing faster than ever and some of the key drivers for this change are:

Increased competition and globalization
Increased focus on sustainability
Rapid technological development, and
Increased war for talent and productivity.

All these changes lead to new challenges for the
organizations. Let us take a
simpli ed look at some of the
C-level roles and the challenges that these di erent roles face today.The HR Manager’s challenge is one of appeal,namely: “How can we attract and retain talent?” The CEO’s challenge is productivity – “How can we increase our productivity, our innovation capability, our sales and our pro tability?” The CFO’s challenge is e ciency, precisely the same challenge as the procurement, the CRE and the FM managers have– “How can we be more e cient with our nances and facilities?” The Brand Manager’s and the Sustainability Manager’s challenges are usually Sustainability – “How can we take our environmental, social and economic responsibility? And,how can we show and communicate this to the world,primarily to our customers and to the society as a whole?”
There is one common key solution area to all of these challenges,and that is “The Workplace”. If we start to use the workplace as a strategic tool,we can increase both its appeal, productivity,efficiency and sustainability.And in fact,even if we do not – the workplace will still affect these elements – but most probably instead in a negative way.
The improvement potential when it comes to the workplace is huge! Just a few examples:…