VWork: Measuring The Benefits of Agility at Work

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Measuring the benefits
of agility at work
A Research Study
by Mark Dixon and Philip Ross
May 2011
CONTENTS
V1.1 Executive Summary 2
V1.2 Introduction 3
V1.3 V is for Virtual 4
V1.4 Collaboration 9
V1.5 adVantage: the business Drivers that will change the way your
organisation works 12
V1.6 Value: Monetising Agility 14
Case Studies 18
Conclusions 19
Appendix 20
VWork: Measuring the benefits of agility at work 1 © Unwired Ventures Ltd, 2011 All Rights Reserved
V1.1 Executive Summary
This report identifies the three Vs: Virtual, adVantage and Value Placing a value on agility is one of the objectives of this research.
that will define the benefits of agile working as it emerges over the With a move towards virtuality, the traditional approach of
next decade. As the concept of ‘virtuality’ gains ground, monetising measuring workplace performance in £ or $ per square foot or the
agility and creating a robust business case for changing the way ratio of desks to people becomes irrelevant. Instead, we adopt a
we work will become essential. Winning strategies at work is all people-centric approach that also mirrors the idea of internet-
about success. And this success is for both employer and employee centric computing in a ‘buy your own’ world. Providing real time,
as the concept of VWork delivers dividends in a number of areas. on demand services for work, and a cost per capita per month for
work ‘provision’, gives us a new way of understanding the costs
‘New ways of working’ are already being put in place. In our survey of doing business as well as demonstrating and monetising the
only 8.5% of respondents from large organisations reported that benefits.
no programme was in place. Of large enterprises surveyed, 62.5%
have already rolled out new ways of working. Case studies from early adopters of more virtual approaches to
work, from Yell to Boeing and Cisco all paint a picture of significant
Much has been written about virtual working over the last few cost savings and clear business benefits. We see three key stages
decades. The traditional definition of telecommuting or home to becoming virtual, starting with a convergence of the ‘real’,
working and its predicted rise has not materialised. Our survey followed by a move to an augmented reality and finally a shift to
found that only 1.6% of people who work for large employers work virtual reality.
from home – most (63.5%) still commute to an office four or five
days each week. But interestingly, only 9.7% of people in these Virtual work, VWork, will be a fact of life for most people as
organisations would like to work from home. The preference is for social networking collides with the physical workplace to blur
local work, within a 10-minute commute from home. the boundaries. As inter-company collaboration becomes more
prevalent, as work gets distributed to lower cost centres and as
As cities become increasingly immobile, we predict a rise in a our towns and cities become more and more immobile, people will
‘permeable’ city where people will work from a variety of locations. begin to look for and adopt new approaches.
Our survey found that people were ready for nomadic work, with
59% saying they now had the right technology tools to work Organisations need a plan to embrace winning strategies at
anywhere. work.
Virtual work is a response to these pressures. It challenges the

traditional fixed workplace as the container for work, and instead
paints a more eclectic picture of ‘Martini’ work: anytime, anyplace,
anywhere; a fragmentation of the rules of office and corporate
life that will be mirrored by a growth in distributed work, both
through outsourcing and collaborative work-styles.
What is clear is that there is an expectation that the younger

workers, the millennial generation and those still at school, will
embrace virtual working and reject the traditional office. Of our
respondents in large employers, 74% expected this to be the case,
and so it is no surprise that 71.9% of them predicted a decrease
in the amount of office space that will be required. They see the
office as a place for occasional use (51.2%) and would prefer a
much shorter commute to an office – under 20 minutes compared
with over 40 today.
Business benefits that can provide competitive, cost or other

adVantage show that the primary driver for change is people’s
productivity. AdVantages vary by size of company, but a clear
focus on reducing the cost of real estate for the organisation and
improving work/life balance for the employee were evident in our
survey results.
V1.2 Introduction
In our previous report, Agility @ Work (published March 2010), Agility has become mainstream as a way of working. But people
we identified the six forces that were shaping the future of work have struggled to define a value for corporate agility. This report
and presented some ideas for how companies could adopt the sets out to guide people on that journey.
‘corporate six pack’ to get fit for business.
Now we take the ideas forward in VWork: Measuring the benefits

of agility at work by presenting the idea of the 3Vs that help
establish a measure for monetising agility at work.
These ideas have not been developed in a vacuum. We have worked

with some of the world’s leading companies to understand their
issues, objectives and business drivers. We have also analysed
some of the key trends that will shape virtual work. Rather than
the previous debate about homeworking or telecommuting, our
view of virtual work looks at mobility and the changing nature of
where and when work is done.
The core business advantages of this approach to agile work are

defined, and as a result we have monetised agility and presented
the idea of an Agility Dividend that lets an organisation measure
and quantify the impact that agile work can have on the bottom
line.
1 Real Estate Review workplace strategy and introduce activity based working and mobility. Gather
data on utilisation rates and real cost of occupancy as well as churn costs. Create an
aspirational vision for new workstyles.
2 Culture Introduce change management to prepare people for new workstyles. Move from
management by supervision to a results based approach. Identify champions for innovation
and change.
3 People Understand demographics and profile the workforce to identify the needs of different
groups by age, job function and psychometric analysis. Engage with the workforce to
develop opportunities for change.
4 Technology Identify key drivers and enablers of change. Then align technology to the real estate
strategy and introduce the appropriate tools for new workstyles.
5 Transport Realisation that continued stress in transport corridors will require a new approach to
commuting and mobility, and the adoption of polycentric thinking.
6 Sustainability Reduced quantity of commercial real estate leased, together with better management
of property assets, reduced commuting and greener technology will allow targets to be
met.
V1.3 V is for Virtual
The History of Virtual Work Becoming Virtual
In 1964 when Stephanie ‘Steve’ Shirley founded F International In their book, Becoming Virtualii, Jane Klobas and Paul Jackson
(FI) she could not have predicted that it would become one of the describe a “growing diversity of organisational form as organisations
first major virtual businesses. By 1985 FI had over 1,000 workers use new technologies to reconfigure work, distributing it more
and was winning accolades and awards. Twenty-five years later in than ever across distant locations, different time zones and
1987, Francis Kinsman’s book The Telecommutersi described the even diverse organisations.” They go on to identify that: “the
growth of FI and other innovative companies such as ICI and world is said to be increasingly ‘virtual’, a condition in which
Rank Xerox. organisational solidity is only apparent: the reality is one of high
performing, dynamic networks which connect staff, enterprises,
As Kinsman said at the time: “ICI is now making dramatically processes and expertise, where the drive to produce or compete
increasing use of bleepers and cellular radio throughout its has displaced the need for permanency and structure.”
operations.” It is hard to remember, but in 1987, the UK had
only 160,000 mobile phone subscribers and was seen as a leader “That long standing symbol of the business world, the Corporate
in Europe against 13,000 users in France and 25,000 in Germany. HQ, will soon be no more. The days of an all-powerful, single
Now in the UK, 33 million people have a mobile phone. location, world headquarters are numbered,” says Anil Gupta,
professor of strategy & organisation at the Smith School of Business
So, almost 25 years on from the publication of that book, in at The University of Maryland. “The concept of a corporate HQ will
2011 how much has changed? Why has the forecast revolution change from a physical location to a virtual network.”
at work, where ‘20% of the workforce would work from home’,
not materialised? The technology enablers back then were seen So the ultimate symbol of solidity, the corporate office, is therefore
by Kinsman to be “the continuing miniaturisation of electronic under attack. The economics of the office are being redefined. As
equipment, especially fax; the encyclopedic memory of compact we have seen, the early experiments of telework have evolved into
disks…” new formats for the firm. They include virtual teams that use new
ways to connect, communicate and collaborate; mobile workers
But it is interesting that the other technology that ICI had in that no longer need a fixed desk and a growing virtual supply
those early pioneering days is about to ‘arrive’. In 1987 Ken chain of outsourced functions that are provided by specialists to
Edwards, part of ICI’s strategic IT department, commented that allow the corporation to focus on its core business.
100 sales managers and 700 of their 900 sales staff had electronic
mail facilities. “The sales managers have dumb terminals accessed As Gupta notes: “The next generation of global enterprise will
directly into the mainframe… the sales reps have videotext operate as a network of global hubs with distributed intelligence
viewdata equipment which transmits information to and from the and direct peer-to-peer collaboration. Key executives will sit close
local centre.” to where the action is, rather than in an ivory tower 10,000 miles
away.”
A possible explanation for the slow realisation of ‘telecommuting’
is that it is not about home working. While the home features in The next obvious iteration will be an increasingly virtual
people’s ‘workspheres’, it is only one of a number of places where organisation, following the trend of social networks, to weave
people want to work. A more persuasive explanation was that 25 together a ‘networked enterprise’.
years ago technology was just not ready.
In effect, ICI was using cloud-based technologies. Information

was delivered to users from remote data centres. It has taken 25 “Technology, and how technology
years for the complex, office based, networked personal computer can support the workforce is key to
era to come to the end of its natural life. Now, in the age of Web the successful implementation of
2.0, we are heading back to the future.
agile working.”
Patrick Foord, Standard Chartered
Virtual Work
There is no doubt that joined-up thinking between Human

Resources (HR), Information Technology (IT) and Corporate Real
Estate (CRE) functions within the organisation will drive cultural
change.
But it is not just the collision between the traditional corporate

silos to create central business services functions, but the
innovation that can come through changing the way we work
that will result in a new approach. And it is where the realms
overlap that the key for innovation lies, as companies understand
they can change infrastructure, behaviours and core business and
work processes.
Companies moving towards virtuality display certain characteristics

and have developed new skills and put in place enablers to
succeed. These are both physical and emotional.
Enablers of Virtual Work
Technology The Right Tools User-centric technology provision

Going Thin All technology needs to migrate to the cloud – no infrastructure in the office
People Vision and leadership Commitment from the top and leading by example
Behaviour Change management to introduce new capabilities and skills, as well as
performance measurement and mentoring
Process Non-linear, with tasks and responsibilities defined
Real Estate Location Work sphere identification, with ‘day in the life’ (DILO) modelling to match work
with activities and personal profiles
Culture
workstyle and
flexible working
The virtual office: from noun to verb

People
Work is no longer a place you go. It is something you do. It 9 bn demographics,
TOTAL POPULATION
has moved from being a noun to become a verb. And with this RURAL POPULATION expectations
URBAN POPULATION and behaviour
change has come a realisation that ‘Martini’ work is now a reality:
anytime, anyplace, anywhere…
The changes that are reshaping work were identified in our

previous report, Agility @ Work: adopting the corporate six pack.
This demonstrated that the combined forces of culture, people,
technology, transport, sustainability and real estate were 0
1950 2010 2030
converging to allow companies and their people to fundamentally Transport Source: United Nations
re-evaluate the proposition of work and in turn challenge the

nature of work and the workplace.
What happens when a city becomes immobile? When it takes two
hours to cross a central business district, physical meetings and
commuting to a physical workplace are no longer sustainable
modes for work.
Culture 1.8m CAR

workstyle and BUS
Real estate flexible working Number of jouney stages
METRO
buildings, cities NATIONAL RAIL
and work space OTHER
1.0m
People
demographics,
expectations
and behaviour
0
Sustainability
Hour of departure
ICT
information,
communication,
But people are increasingly able to work from anywhere. In
Transport web our survey, 59% of respondents said they no longer struggle to
work effectively outside the workplace. Technology for remote
connectivity and mobile working have at long last caught up –
people are now enabled to be nomadic workers, and so the city
will become more permeable, punctuated by a series of places to
work.
According to the United Nations, the world’s population will
increase from around 6.5 billion people today to 9 billion people And with emerging technology, this will only get better. New
by 2050. And while today 3 billion people live in urban areas, by devices from tablets to smart phones will allow enhanced
2050 a staggering 6.5 billion people are forecast to become urban computing power, and connectivity is set to improve with new ‘4G’
dwellers or two-thirds of the global population. networks that will deliver cloud-based applications and services
to people regardless of their location.
This will double the population of cities in the next 40 years.
While we demonstrated in Agility @ Work that most cities were
congested today, the growth predicted by the UN will not just
exacerbate the congestion but make many cities immobile as
transport growth cannot keep up with population growth. 59% of people now feel that they have
the right technology to be able to work
from anywhere.
Going Local The future of work points to the community and a move away
from central business districts as the place to try and commute to
Commuting is not seen to be optimal today. Out of the respondents every day. A new set of ‘workspheres’ will include a range of new
that worked for large organisations, 32.1% spent 41 minutes to destinations for work that are close to where people live.
an hour commuting every day and for 27.4% their daily commute
was over an hour. And 47% still commute to the office five days a Localism will be a growing trend globally, as people seek to
week – only 1.4% work from home. inject life into their communities and address in the impersonal
through new networks in Web 2.0 big society. Intergenerational
These figures were more pronounced for medium sized companies experiences in both work and home will change the nature of
where 67.3% of people still commute to an office five days a week, nurture.
showing that ‘presenteeism’ was still the dominant management
model for a smaller business. A portfolio career will see human capital moving from the
corporation to a focus on the individual. Atomisation will be
But the reality of life today does not match people’s ideal. When countered in the ‘free agent nation’ by new ways of connecting and
asked what the ideal commuting time would look like, 25.2% housing the ‘contingent workers’ that are forecast to comprise of
would like to have a 10-minute commute and 38.4% would like it 40% of the US workforce by 2020iii. A more fragmented, localised
to be between 11 and 20 minutes. So 63.5% of people don’t want society will require new ways to connect.
to commute for more than 20 minutes; a far cry from the average
of 40 minutes today.
Interestingly, only 12.3% of people would like to work from

home.
BUS LIBRARY REGUS PLANE

OFFICE
The ideal commute to work is

under 20 minutes (63.5%) with
TRANSPORT 25.2% of people wanting less than
a 10 minute journey to work
HOME
HOME OFFICE
CAR CAFE HOTEL TRAIN
Virtual Working
“One third of our UK staff has a boss overseas,” said Tim Caiger Some of the earliest job functions to
at Oracle, “everything is online”. And this trend towards remote
move virtual are service and knowledge
management is no longer confined to the global multinationals.
Offshoring and outsourcing has led many people to change their focused roles which place people ‘close’ to
organisational models to reduce costs and improve effectiveness, customers.
from call centres in India to typing bureaus in South Africa, co-
locating all functions inside the physical office is no longer the As Vito Chiodo at Telstra said, “We have
only way to provide support services and functions. The death to understand that all departments have
of distance means that lower-cost centres of production are as different modes of operating. We need to
connected as a department two floors below, and as interaction understand customers’ needs. We view each
costs have vanished, the firm itself is being redefined.
employee as a customer.”
The recent announcement by law firm CMS Cameron McKenna that
it is outsourcing all of its support functions to Integreon, including
finance and IT, is a sign of the changes that will undoubtedly
affect all firms based in high cost central business districts. The
argument for employing and housing hundreds or thousands of
support staff in offices no longer has any economic rationale.
So the ‘Core’ and ‘Periphery’ or Shamrock organisation long

predicted by Charles Handy in The Age of Unreasoniv and his
identification of ‘portfolio workers’, are becoming reality on a
huge scale in advanced, global companies.
What is clear is that to work virtually, people need new tools to

collaborate. Sitting across the floor or popping up to HR on the
third floor has to be replaced by new ways to connect people
together.
Bricks and clicks
In our survey, 78.7% of people feel they now have the right technology to be productive in their
workplace. Increasingly they are being given the technology enablers to be able to work from any-
where. Of those working for large organisations, 50.8% are enabled with everything they need, while
42.6% have a few tools but ‘it could be better’. The barriers to agile working are now being removed.
V1.4 Collaboration
As Patrick Foord said, we want to create an environment that huge rise in the use of video for communication and collaboration.
supports “pathological collaboration”. And this is a recurrent From systems such as Skype and FaceTime to corporate tools such
theme as work becomes more distributed. Today we typically deal as WebEx, people are now getting increasingly accustomed to
with single source information that is usually asynchronous. It seeing the person they are speaking to.
is viewed and used ‘off line’, and typically it is ‘flat’ – what you
see on screen can be output to paper. Tomorrow, people will
use information in new ways; it will come from multiple sources Case study : Tesco
that are typically synchronous, real time or ‘live’, streamed or
delivered to new, always-on devices operating with multiple, Tesco, for example, now has an 80 – 90% utilisation of their
simultaneous applications. ‘Digital flow’ will change the nature Telepresence systems and have embraced WebEx collaborative
software. They have found that they are saving two hours per WebEx
of the information presented as depth though urls, embedded
user per week and travel costs have been cut by 45%.
multimedia and hover information means that what you see on
screen can no longer be output to paper.
“Beyond mobility, this issue of Cisco reports that 60% of the IP packets on their network are now
virtuality needs to be addressed..” video, and they predict that by 2012 video will account for most
traffic on the public internet. This also represents the huge rise
Ronen Journo, Cisco of video as a medium for communication. From the use of YouTube
to video casts, people are increasingly familiar with its format and
Today most collaboration takes place between people inside the power.
organisation. Cisco estimates that 80% of collaboration is intra
company. This will now change dramatically, with Cisco predicting
this figure will reverse to where 80% of collaboration is inter
company as people increasingly need to connect dispersed
teams.
It’s clear there is a range of emerging technology that is set to

change the landscape for how we work together both in the same
place and across distance. These can all be seen as transformational
technologies, because they have the potential to alter the nature
of how, why and where we work.
Video
Video conferencing peaked too early. The adopters of the first

systems complained of judder – making participants look and
sound robotic. Creating the call was fraught with challenges, and
the equipment occupied large, engineered, specialist rooms.
Now much has changed. The rise of high definition video-

conferencing from the likes of Polycom, together with the high
end fixed solutions such as Telepresence from Cisco and Halo from
HP has resulted in a new era for video as the experience and Polycom’s Roundtable video conferencing system provides people
quality of collaboration across distance becomes close to being in with effective tools to combat virtuality. The automated video image
the same room at the same time. of participants in the conference, together with their jellybeans
and collaborative workspace means that people can feel connected
across distance.
Driven by travel savings, there has been a wide-scale adoption
of video conferencing as companies realise they can connect to
customers, the supply chain and colleagues across the globe and
experience productive meetings and other sessions.
But the rise of video is not just about high-end video conferencing.
The penetration of lower quality ‘web cams’ into portable devices
such as laptops and mobile phones, as well as fixed PCs, has led to a
Mobility Virtual presence, Web 2.0, Unified Communications… and
the rise of the jelly bean
There are a number of facets to mobility. The key is the combination
of a portable device and high-speed connectivity. But the mobility The web has moved from being about ‘find and use’ to a platform
roadmap becomes more overcast as cloud computing allows a new that also allows ‘share and expand’. This extension is a natural
dimension to be realised. The delivery of software as a service migration into the world of collaboration, and so much of the so-
(SaaS) from remote data centres is ideal for portable devices that called semantic web is about shared experiences. As people realise
have limitations in processing power, storage capacity and battery the benefits and added value that comes from sharing, tagging
life. Processing that is done in the cloud leads to the concept of and revealing location information, a new era of collaboration
a thin client that can be used by anyone through a ‘virtualised experiences will emerge.
desktop environment’. Indeed the concept of ‘virtualisation’ will
apply across fixed and mobile devices, as more of the software
needed for work is hosted remotely.
With these tools, and data hosted remotely, a new paradigm will
emerge – when people come into a space or building they will
do so because they need or want to be there. They will no longer
have to ‘commute to a container for work’ because it houses the
corporate computing infrastructure.
Real time collaboration or co-authoring
will begin to become commonplace, letting
From Obese to Thin people work together across distance and
connect in real time, with their ‘jelly bean’
As on-demand resources are delivered to people wherever they visible at all times.
are and buildings no longer need to house the fixed server
infrastructure and its associated power, cooling, raised floor and Source: Microsoft
fire suppression systems, buildings will move from being highly
engineered, expensive and complex containers for technology to One of the most profound changes that people will experience will
simple, connected places to work. They will be ‘thin’, devoid of be ubiquitous presence indicators – the so-called ‘jelly bean’ that
most of the paper and equipment that they contain today. Places will start appearing in almost all applications and on all devices.
for people and no longer repositories of files and servers. Corporate presence indicators such as ‘in a meeting’ or ‘out of
the office’ appear today alongside names in address and buddy
lists. Tomorrow they will appear within all applications alongside
people’s details to allow a constant view of colleagues, clients
and others in distributed networks.
When NASA introduced the idea of ‘Clickworkers’ they extended And the intelligence will extend to a point where the jelly bean is
their workforce to a network of volunteers that help identify craters automatically fed by calendars and, in the future, location aware
on Mars. The growth of LinkedIn, Facebook and the other social sensors, accelerometers, digital compasses and GPS data from
networks extend the power of the physical into the megapower of mobile devices.
the virtual, with its limitless boundaries to connect and collaborate.
Clicks, and not bricks, will define the boundaries of commerce Contextually aware, geographically located and state driven,
tomorrow. these systems will begin to break down the barriers between
time and place and also allow in the future the ‘engineering’ of
serendipitous encounters based on people’s profile, contextual
information and real time location.
We will see huge rises in collaboration across organisations as

the barriers to secure inter company collaboration are lifted.
Collaboration will increasingly use both voice and video, alongside
intelligent surfaces and devices that allow people the tools to
manipulate data and communicate ideas.
Geopresence will allow not just the state of a person to be
displayed but their real time whereabouts as well. It will become
even more sophisticated with context aware presence – an idea
where only the people that it would be useful to see are displayed
based on a project, knowledge or communications flow or time
zone.
Today’s often disparate systems will converge and we predict

that a unified communications and collaboration (UCC) suite will Email tracking software can map a social network
become the norm. The advance of corporate presence to include inside a business, showing the ‘real time’
geopresence and context specific presence will usher in a new organisation, modelling teams and ‘go to’ people.
era of real time communities working on collective solutions –
‘collaboration without leaving the document.’ Source: Trampoline Systems
A Virtual Office?
The network map (above) may show a glimpse of the future. Here
“What is the purpose of property?” asked Ronen Journo. This people are mapped by their email flow through an email exchange
is becoming a fundamental question as digital technology and server to show who is connecting to who within a company – it
the rise of cloud computing empty office buildings of everything models the ‘real’ organisational network, people at work, and not
except people. When the servers, software and data reside in the the hypothetical, static structure of departments and divisions.
cloud, and computing is delivered as just another utility to people Perhaps this should be the model for understanding the ‘virtual
through a browser wherever they are, what is the purpose of the office’, rather than translating an organisational chart into a
workplace? ‘physical office’.
Most retort that it is about bringing people together, but here But while these thoughts point to the rise of virtual networks to
there is a dilemma. One large multinational has found that by replace the physical ones in the office, a new book by Stephen
using web discussion forums rather than email to ask questions Johnson called Where Good Ideas Come Fromv contradicts this
within a 100,000+ global workforce, half the respondents to a message. He traces innovation back for 200 years and finds
question posed came from people unknown to the person asking that most of the significant inventions of the last two centuries
the question. And of all the answers back, the most useful came have NOT come from flashes of inspiration but from communal,
from those unknown respondents. So do we have the right people multilayered endeavour. “Innovation springs out of the ‘adjacent
in the room to solve problems? Their findings would suggest not. possible’ – the most inventive places are hives of activity where
people get together and share ideas,” says Johnson. And so do
Social networks were unknown five years ago. Now they dominate people need to be together to innovate?
the net, with Facebook boasting 500 million active users, half
of which are using the social network every day. And with 700 The mix between virtual and real ‘workspace’ will be one of the
billion minutes per month spent on Facebook, what happens when defining trends over the next decade as companies explore the
virtual networks collide with the real networks that are housed in future of work. Getting people to work effectively together will
the ‘workplace’? be the key critical success factor. Productivity of people will drive
change.
V1.5 adVantage: the business Drivers that will change the way your
organisation works
A new measure for agility will come from quantifying the benefits is much more than just a spatial response to changing workstyles
that will be derived by the organisation from new workstyles and is reflected in the results from the question: what do you think
the business drivers of these were ranked in our global survey. will drive changes in the way your organisation works?
“Agile working is not just about agile workers but agile business,”
expressed a global real estate leader. The idea that agility at work
Other measures suggested by respondents included:
Profitability Business requirements. You need clever office space
Physical and information security issues Proximity to our clients
Need for physical interaction Company culture
Regulation and security Need for interaction and exchange of ideas
Non-linear, with tasks and responsibilities defined Client expectations. Customer needs
Collaboration Cost of fuel
Managing by deliverables not ‘presenteeism’ Global nature of business
Attracting and retaining the right staff Top down requirement
What people want Collaboration and creativity
One of the most important business drivers is clearly productivity “Agility will explode when the next generation
of people and this was reinforced by some of the comments at the come into the workplace and we need to be
Berne Summit. As Patrick Foord expressed, “we need to extract
maximum benefit from agility.”
ready to ensure that these new members
of the workforce can be truly creative and
But how can this be done? productive”
“We are moving away from fixed location with an emphasis on Chris Kane, BBC
measuring productivity. By this I mean managing teams with a
focus on output, with work being carried out where, when and
how people choose to work, as opposed to having staff in a fixed
location at any given time,” explained Michael Ansah, and this
focus on effectiveness is key.
The performance of people is still one of the most challenging End of the line for the traditional office?
concepts for measurement. But it is clear from surveys that most
people are disengaged at work. Gallup’s employee engagement Not surprisingly, 58.2% of people working in large organisations
surveys suggest that only 20% of the workforce is engaged in the predict a decrease in the need for office space as a result of future
job they do. workstyles, with only 7% predicting an increase in space required.
So the office will become a place for occasional use according
It is becoming evident that the expectations of the next to 51.2% of respondents in large enterprise. This compares to
generation will change the status quo more dramatically than a smaller enterprises where people still see the need to commute to
current workforce, which is dominated by the digital immigrants their workplace most days (41.6%).
who grew up in the analogue era.
Of the people we surveyed, a staggering 70.9% thought that

younger workers, the millennial generation and the generation
Only 8.5% of large organisations have
still at school, will be more accepting of virtual working and reject not implemented a new ways of working
the traditional office. Of those working in large organisations, programme.
only 8.9% felt the next generation would carry on working in the
workplace of today.
The key reasons stated for working virtually in other studies are:
1. Travel time and cost reduction We have also found that most large organisations have now
adopted new ways of working. Only 38% still allocate one person
2. Concentrated work with fewer distractions to one desk, and 15.4% of companies represented by the survey
report that their organisation’s new ways of working programme
3. Wellbeing and stress is now adopted, advanced and part of our culture, while 25.1%
reported a companywide policy, ‘but we could be doing more’.
4. Work-Life balance and work anywhere. Only 8.5% of large organisations have no new ways of working
programme.
Other reasons that are stated include child and elderly care,
special needs and disabilities, sustainability and quality of life.
The business benefits are clear.
V1.6 Value: Monetising Agility
Putting a value on agile work is the next challenge for corporates. Measuring Agility: Company ABC
We need to find a new measure for the cost of ‘provisioning work’
that leaves behind the traditional approaches of rent and rates in Company ABC employs 1500 people and has an office in the City
a ‘per square foot’ fixed world. of London. It took out a 15 year lease on 150,000 square feet and
the total cost of the building per annum is £12m or $20m (rent,
As we move away from the historic one-person-one desk approach rates, utilities, operations) and so the total cost per square foot
to work provision, new ways of measuring effectiveness of a per annum is £80 or $133. This has been the predominant model
property portfolio need to be developed. This becomes more for measuring efficiency. Over the 15 years, the lease represents a
apparent as people need new tools, technologies and locations £180m ($300m) liability or £120,000 ($200,000) per head.
for agile work patterns.
But how is the office building used today?
“At a very simple level, a clear case around monetising agility
within the workspace can be made by taking into account the Company ABC allocates space as follows:
agility within the overall portfolio and at a site level in terms of
how agile and effective is the workplace in meeting the needs
of our employees,” said Colin King. “This will mean we have less
space and our property commitments are flexible and fully aligned
to the business objectives.”
But the reduction in space rented is only one way of monetising

the value that can be delivered by agile working. To get a broader
picture, we have identified a series of value dividends that shape
a vision of ‘provisioning work’ in a ‘buy your own’ world…
The majority of floorspace is given over to allocated or shared

“At a very simple level, a clear case around workstations, with some private offices and associated facilities.
monetising agility within the workspace can be What is striking about the current typical allocation of space is
made by taking into account the agility within the lack of meeting and project rooms today – where almost all
corporates report a dearth of this kind of resource in a world
the overall portfolio.” where collaboration is driving teams to need to work together.
Colin King, GlaxoSmithKline
But utilisation of an office today is typically only 45%; that is at
any one point in time 55% of the allocated desks and offices lie
empty. For Company ABC this would result in 825 desks sitting
empty at any point in time.
100%
EMPTY
UNOCCUPIED
75%
PAUSING
PAPERWORK
READNG
50%
WRITING
TALKING
25% TELEPHONE
COMPUTER
MEETING
0%
Time of day
Company ABC – Monetising Agility in an advanced organisation that already has adopted some space sharing
If we take a typical London office building of 150,000 square feet it would house 1,500 people today on a moderate sharing
ratio of 1.2 people per desk (1.2:1). The total cost of the building per annum is £12m or $20m (rent, rates, utilities, operations)
and so the cost per square foot per annum is £80 ($130).
The building houses 1,150 desks, and so the cost per desk per annum is £10,500 ($17,200)
At 45% utilisation the cost of unused space is £6.6m ($11m)
At 70% utilisation, the cost of unused space is £3.6m ($6m)
The number of empty desks on any one day @ 45% utilisation is 632
The number of empty desks on any one day @ 70% utilisation is 345
At a ration of 1.2:1 (people:desks) we find that space is allocated at 130 sq ft per desk (90 – 140 is the industry average) or
110 sq ft per person (70 - 120 sq ft per person is typical)
Adopting activity based working, where the building becomes a real time resource and operates either at 95% occupancy
(to accommodate growth) or in 30% less space would save Company ABC between £3m ($5m) and £6m ($10m) pa.
But ABC is an advanced company and it has already introduced hot Empty desks no longer make sense in a world where people will
desking/desk sharing at a ratio of 1.2 people per desk (1.2:1). accept mobility and agility as the most effective and sustainable
The building houses 1,150 desks, and so the cost per desk per way of working.
annum is £10,500 ($17,500). At 45% utilisation, 632 desks lie
empty and the cost of unused space is £6.6m ($10.8m) pa. Even But measurement of the benefits of agility is not just about
if utilisation can be improved to an ambitious 70%, the cost of footprint reduction and cost reduction through real estate.
unused space on any one day is £3.6m pa ($6m) with an average
of 345 empty desks or offices at any point in time.
Other measures include:
Corporate Driver Agility Benefits and Cost Savings
Carbon footprint An obvious area for monetising agility – heating or cooling, lighting and cleaning empty office space can no
longer be justified where commercial buildings are identified as one of the largest emitters of carbon.
Churn and down time The cost of churn is usually measured through the facilities cost of moves and changes but this masks the
opportunity cost of inefficiency when people can’t be located together who need to work collaboratively.
Less paper – speed (collaboration), carbon, space Manufacturing paper, distributing paper, printing, storing and recycling – the total cost of ownership is
(print/paper/toners/filing/recycling/waste), cost significant. Agile work drives out paper, by adopting ‘digital flow’.
(print/support/maintenance)
A retail bank in London prints over 1 billion sheets of paper a year. The average financial business outputs
70 pages per person per day. And storing paper files in Company ABC takes 4% of the floorspace and costs
£0.5m pa.
M&A Mergers and Acquisitions bring immense integration problems, especially with diverse property portfolios.
Agile working, with non-specific, unallocated ‘property resources’ allows much more flexibility in planning and
speed in allocation of people and place.
Onboarding One of the biggest barriers to corporate agility remains onboarding, both of new people and new partners (eg
outsourcing). Agility streamlines the process, removing ‘barriers to entry’ for new joiners and partners.
Project development time and delivery Speed will increasingly be seen as a core attribute of an agile business. ‘Fast Company’ behaviours are about
being hybrid, nimble and able to innovate. Speed of decision-making, time to market and development cycles
can all be accelerated through agile work.
Management complexity Another focus that has been raised is reducing complexity, especially in business services functions.
Evidently the ability to ‘free up space’ will still be the predominant BYOC is a very agile approach and is becoming more accepted
driver to introduce agility into organisations. Disposals or sub- as the future for corporate technology provision in an internet-
letting can generate cash receipts, remove leases from the centric, cloud driven world. As Mick Hollinson says: “The device is
balance sheet and also drive down opex. While property remains their responsibility, and not that of the company. We don’t asset
the second largest overhead for most organisations after salaries, manage it in any way.” And he states that: “It’s shown on average
this will be the most immediate focus for monetising agility. savings of 15-20% versus a traditional desktop deployment.”
A ‘buy your own’ world Could the same ‘buy your own’ approach apply to the workplace?
Do corporates need their own office space in the future? Can
In 2009, Citrix gave its staff the option to ‘buy your own computer’ people be provided with an annual budget to ‘provision work’ that
or BYOC. A budget of $2,100 (£1,260) was made available for includes technology, space and support as suits their job and
people to buy the computer of their choice. Mick Hollinson, vice- objectives?
president of marketing, says not only has it cut costs, but also
staff like the control. “Employees love having the freedom to At Company ABC, the cost per person of providing workspace on the
choose whatever they like,” he says. “The reality is that there current model is £8,000 ($13,300) per person per year. If we take
are a number of consumer devices that provide services that you the annual cost of workspace provision per person as a measure
just don’t see in a corporate laptop, and employees just enjoy of monetising agility at work, this aligns with the technology-
their computing experience more.” (Staff taking advantage of the led vision of BYOC. And so 1,875 people on current patterns of
scheme must buy a three-year service contract.) work can see the building as ‘home’ or 2,000 people with new
enablers, activity based working and third space provision, which
“Our Information Systems team is would give a cost of £6,000 ($10,000) per person per year for the
focused on providing the best work provision of ‘workspheres’ in a ‘buy your own’ self-service world
experience to all employees” –a 25% bottom line saving. For companies less advanced, with a
more traditional starting point, property-led cost savings of over
Mark Dajani, Kraft Foods 40% are achievable.
Monetising agility is about measuring the BYO cost per person.

Kraft Foods is another early adopter of the concept. It announced Just as the cloud will deliver communications software as a service
its innovative BYOC program in 2010, which allows employees to for say £5 ($8) per user per month, so workplace could become an
purchase and use their computer of choice at work. The program on-demand resource.
benefits both the company — lower costs — and employees
— more flexibility. ”Our Information Systems team is focused The monetisation of agility will go through a number of discrete
on providing the best work experience to all employees,” said phases for medium and larger enterprises, although smaller and
Mark Dajani, senior vice president and chief information officer. start-up business will be able to leapfrog ahead. As a first stage,
“We want employees to be productive and comfortable with the the traditional office today will be slimmed; fixed costs will
tools they use every day to get their job done. So, if they prefer be reduced through the adoption of activity-based working as
one laptop over the other, why not give them the freedom to a prelude to full agility, and so footprint reduction will reduce
customize their work experience?” property overhead by up to 30%. Operation costs reduce, through
Monetising Agility moves the measure of costs per person from fixed bricks and mortar to the individual, and their overall
work tools. It is ‘open source working’ where the user chooses.
For Company ABC, the cost per person of providing workspace on the current model is £8,000 ($13,300) per person per year.
And so the annual cost of workspace provision per person will be the measure of monetising agility at work. It aligns with
the technology-led vision of ‘buy your own computer’ or BYOC – a vision that has increasing buy-in from CIOs that are moving
towards an internet-centric vision for computing.
So 1,875 people on current patterns of work can see the building as ‘home’ or 2,000 people with new enablers, activity based
working and third space provision, which would give a cost of £6,000 ($10,000) per person per year for the provision of
‘workspheres’ in a ‘buy your own’ self-service world – a 25% bottom line saving. For companies less advanced, with a more
traditional starting point, property-led cost savings of over 40% are achievable.
Monetising agility is about measuring the BYO cost per person. Just as the cloud will deliver communications software as a
service for say £5 ($8) per user per month, so workplace could become an on-demand resource.
The Road to Virtuality : Value model
£££
Variable Costs (OpEx)
Fixed Costs (CapEx) Variable Costs (OpEx)
Fixed Costs (CapEx)
Variable Costs (OpEx / BYO)

£
TODAY TOMORROW FUTURE
Traditional Office Outsourcing Virtual Office
Activity Based Working Agile Working
Cloud Computing
less space (lower utilities/facilities costs), less churn and We also see the productivity benefits that result from reduced
outsourcing of key business services. downtime as ‘always on’ cloud technologies and portable devices
allow agile work to be adopted.
The future of agile work will see workspaces provided on demand,
and consumed on an ‘as needed’ basis. This will mirror the rise of
Efficiency dividend property (p) fixed (f) and operational (o)
the cloud that moves technology from capex to opex, delivered cost savings
as another utility to people as and when they need it. Add place
to this, and a true ‘buy your own’ model for ‘provisioning work’ Happiness dividend commuting (c) time (t) and cost (c) savings
emerges. Productivity dividend downtime (d) employee/salary costs (s)

As Colin King points out: “The real benefit… comes when we
These three elements can be weighted and given a coefficient
create environments that handle virtually everything people need
based on the importance of each factor to the company. They
both within the physical and virtual workplace. We have seen that
can create an equation for calculating the Agility Dividend as
kind of business-focused innovation reduces cost, business risk
follows:
and enables our business to drive revenue growth.”
Agility Dividend = p (f+0) + c (t+c) + d (s)
BYO work will provide an annual budget or stipend to individuals
to choose the tools, spaces and services needed to produce the
desired outcomes.
The Agility Dividend “It adds between 5 to 10% to the

As well as the efficiency dividend from less or more efficient
bottom line as a consequence of the
use of space, we have identified two other key dividends that increased productivity you achieve”
can be derived through agile work - a happiness dividend and Chris Kane, BBC
productivity dividend.
From our survey and other research, there is no doubt that people
would choose to change the way they commute. This is a factor
of both time and cost, skewed by the ‘rush hour’ commute that
correlates congestion and price to the non-agile, traditional
working day. Choice allows an individual the ability to rebalance
patterns of work and delivers a ‘happiness dividend’ that is part
of a broader move towards recognising health and wellbeing at
work.
Case studies
Early pioneers Cisco
In the 80s, there were plenty of early pioneers of virtual working. Cisco has used Media Net to create and run virtual company
As Lisa Lion Wolfe at Hewlett-Packard observed: “Managers have meetings. Not only does this create an event at between 1/3 and
to be able to define and measure performance. They really have to 1/10 of the cost of a physical event, but it extends the reach of
analyse the results, not just the tasks or processes” vi. They used the event by a factor of between 5 and 10 times. Cisco’s annual
the technology available at the time. Some of the early examples GSX sales conference was traditionally held in Las Vegas for 13,000
were: people at a cost of $4,307 per person. Last year the event was
held virtually at a cost of only $437 per head, and an additional
3,000 people were able to ‘attend’. Interestingly, participants gave
Company Solution Business Benefit
a higher rating for the content than the previous physical event.
Hewlett-Packard Salesforce mobility Increase revenue person
As an early adopter, Cisco is an interesting case study in the future
Andersen Consulting Virtual working Reduce cost of office
overhead for collaboration. For example, in Q2 2009, 100 million minutes of
WebEx conferencing were used. And with 700 Telepresence rooms
Lotus Development Virtual work Put people closer to around the world, Cisco has saved a staggering $250m in avoided
customers and improve
work-life balance
travel costs.
IBM SMART More face time with In 2009, Cisco realised over $1.1bn (£0.6bn) of cost savings,
customers and reduced real
comprising as follows:
estate costs of 40-60%
Telecommuting $299m (£180m)

Now we are seeing new ways of working enter the mainstream Connected Workplace $12m (£7m)
as our survey shows, but for most the approach so far has not
resulted in a move to the virtual. Now, as people are equipped for Virtual Expert $125m (£75m)
‘work anywhere’, we predict a growing implementation of ‘virtual
Remote Collaboration $601m (£360m)
work’ principles.
Sales & Marketing $15m (£9m)
Yell
Yell’s sales team of over 700 worked from 35 nationwide sales In its Bedfont Lakes workplace in the UK, it has increased capacity
offices. But with sales people on the road, the offices were expensive by 60%, through new ways of working as well as increased work
and underused. An initial reduction from 35 to 20 locations was from home. All the tools are now in place to make advanced
accompanied by enabling the sales team to be mobile with both collaboration a reality.
portable technology and also Businessworld Gold cards so that
Yell’s people could use a variety of Regus locations as part of their Boeing
distributed workplace strategy.
At Boeing, for example, over 27,000 external suppliers collaborated
Simon Taylor, head of property at Yell in the UK, said: “Our field with Boeing’s development teams on the Dreamliner project. The
sales teams’ use of and reliance upon a physical place of work has company held over 1 million collaboration sessions in 12 months
significantly changed in the last year due to developing technology with this ‘extended community’ using tools such as WebEx and, as
and we no longer require our network of sales offices.” a result, has reduced time to market.
Now, a mobile team that is equipped with laptops and remote

connectivity solutions is able to work in new locations, reducing
Yell’s property overhead by £1.5m ($2.5m) a year and at the same
time driving efficiency through reduced downtime.
A US government study showed that if 20,000
federal workers could telecommute just one day a
week, they would save over 2,000,000 commuting
miles and 81,600lbs of CO2 emissions each week.
Conclusions
Monetising Agility will become one of the most important areas Organisations must now identify their journey from our current
for companies to understand as they strive for competitive reality to an augmented state where the benefits of agility can
advantage and a reduction in the barriers that impede growth and begin to be realised and measured. Monetising agility results
agile business. in a budget per person per year for provisioning work. It treats
buildings as shared resources, is user centric and views work as a
One of the key conclusions of the Berne Summit was a need distributed activity.
to productise agility and to open a more productive dialogue
between the corporate functions of HR, IT and CRE. A Bring Your On-demand business space will be seen as a key future requirement
Own world and the dividend defined is a combination of the three – aligning property with the ebbs and flows of business cycles.
core corporate services functions, so joined-up thinking will be “Let’s go back to what the business needs,” argued Ronen Journo.
needed to achieve agility at work. “Can we avoid property?” In the end, as one head of property
suggested, do we need our own spaces? As ‘on demand’ takes off
We have no doubt that virtual working will become a reality as new and people accept the notion of ‘self-provisioning’ we will change
technology emerges and other forces drive companies to adopt the way we work and the spaces we choose for work - the office
‘VWork’ in pursuit of clear business benefits. We predict three of the future will be very different place.
stages for ‘VWork’, from ‘real’ through ‘augmented’ to ‘virtual’.
Stage 1 Convergence of business services
Central or core business services functions formed in the

organisation to bring together the previously siloed functions of
human resources, technology, real estate, facilities, finance and
procurement. KPIs and the Agility Dividend are defined.
Stage 2 Augmented work
Outsourcing of key functions and services, introduction of activity-

based working with a reduction in real estate overhead. Mobile
technology enablers.
Stage 3 Virtual reality
Migration to the cloud, with full technology enablers, changed

business processes, new ways of working and management by
output. Internet, user centric provision for work. BYO approach
and associated change programme.
Appendix
1. The UnWork.com Survey
UnWork.com surveyed over 600 senior business leaders from

around the globe to understand attitudes to and ideas about the
future of work.
The respondents can be categorised as follows:
Size of Organisation Surveyed Size of Organisation
Small companies (under 100 employees)
Medium sized companies (100 – 1,000 employees)
Large companies (over 1,000 employees)
Geography
Geography
Most of the survey respondents were responsible for regions
outside the UK with all geographies represented.
Job Function Job Function
We looked at the three core business services functions of property,

human resources and technology to see if perspectives differed.
The results of this survey are used throughout the report.
2. The Berne Summit
In October 2010, 16 heads of real estate from around the world attended the Berne Summit. The intent was to debate the future of
work, to look at the collision between the functions of property, human resources and technology as well as understand how the trends
described in our previous report, Agility @ Work, were developing and becoming more and more mainstream. The debate and discussion
at Berne has directed some of the research presented here.
Date Wednesday 20 October – Friday 22 October 2010
Venue Chateau de Berne, Lorgues, France
Attendees
Simon Ward, Managing Director, Head of Barclays Property, Barclays
Chris Kane, Head of Workplace, BBC
Ulrich Kerber, Head of Corporate Real Estate, Beiersdorf, now at Vodafone
Kathryn Bell, Global Real Estate Director, Accenture, now at Boston Consulting Group,
Steve Probert, Head of Real Estate & Facilities Management, BSKYB
Ronen Journo, Director, WPR Corporate Real Estate Europe & Emerging markets, Cisco
Tony Wong, CoreNet Global Board Director, now at JP Morgan
Michael Ansah, Director of Real Estate & Facilities EMEA Dell,
Michelle Marwood, Firmwide Director of Real Estate, Kirkland Ellis
Colin King, Global Real Estate Director at Nokia, now Vice President, Worldwide Real Estate & Workplace, GlaxoSmithKline
Tim Caiger, VP Real Estate & Facilities Oracle, now retired
David Medlock, Shire Pharmaceuticals
Patrick Foord, Group Head of Projects, Standard Chartered
Vito Chiodo, Director Telstra Property, Telstra
Christopher Staal, Global Head of Real Estate, Thomson Reuters
Simon Taylor, Head of UK Property, Yell.com
Together they represented interest in over 243,000,000 square feet of real estate
Facilitators Hosts
Philip Ross, CEO, UnWork.com Mark Dixon, Founder and CEO, Regus
Monica Parker, Associate Director, UnWork.com Andrew Brown, Regus
Barry Varcoe, ReResonance, now at Zurich Financial Ally Charles, Regus
Bob Gaudreau, Regus
Scott Hartman, Regus
Kurt Mroncz, Regus
Key findings from the Berne Summit
The ‘consumer of workspace’
From To
2 to 3 generations 4 Generations
Digital migrants + Digital natives
Portfolio careers at 50+ Portfolio careers at 20+
Work-aholic/loyalty to the firm Life-aholic/loyalty to oneself
Business need + Human need
People migration to the work Work migration to the people
Synchronous work + Asynchronous work
The corporate machine (survival through efficiency) The corporate organism(survival through adaptability)
Individuals and teams + Community(s)
The value chain
From To
Cost cutter + Value enhancer
Friction/constraint remover Work and change enablers
Spatial resource managers
Decision support based on folklore and anecdote Decision support based on toolkits and facts
Innovation rhetoric Innovation culture and delivery
Sustainability programmes Sustainability culture
Technically superior leaders Leadership superior leaders
Fragmented components that are co-ordinated Integrated ‘end-to-end’ processes and business models
Client-centric +Platform/competency centric
The future of the ‘product’
From To
Desk provision Work-life creator
Physical connections + Digital connections
1% -10% communications experience 80% -100% communications experience
Visual reality + Context (= augmented reality)
Homogenous human resources Individually understood people (work psychology)
Our place; our time Any place; any time
Corporate convenience Worker convenience
Service levels ‘Manufactured’ mass customised experiences
4th Dimension (time management) 5th Dimension (change in time management)
No menu or table d’hote A la carte
‘Office’ is where you park the body ‘Office’ is where you connect the head
3. Sources
i The Telecommuters, Francis Kinsman, John Wiley & Sons, 1987

ii Becoming Virtual, Jane Klobas and Paul Jackson, Physica-Verlag, 2008
iii Intuit 2020 Report
iv The Age of Unreason, Business Books, 1989
v Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson, Allen Lane, 2010
vi HR Magazine, March 1996
4. About the Authors
Philip Ross Mark Dixon

Philip is CEO of the Cordless Group and UnWork.com, a management Chief executive and founder, Mark Dixon is one of Europe’s best-
consultancy that looks at the future of work and develops the known entrepreneurs. Since founding Regus in Brussels, Belgium
business case for agile working. He specialises in the impact in 1989, he has achieved a formidable reputation for leader-
of emerging technology on people, performance and the work ship and innovation. Prior to Regus he established businesses
process and develops strategies for new ways of working and in the retail and wholesale food industry. Recipient of several
workplace innovation. awards for enterprise, Dixon has revolutionised the way business
approaches its property needs with his vision of the future of
He has worked with organisations such as Ernst & Young, Allen work.
& Overy, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco, McKinsey & Co, Nottingham City
Council, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Royal Bank of Scotland, Jones
Lang LaSalle and Ericsson on future concepts based on emerging
technologies.
Philip has spoken at conferences around the world including the

Wall Street Journal Europe CEO Forum on Converging Technologies,
alt.office in the USA and Corenet’s Global Summits in Beijing,
Auckland, Orlando, San Diego and Melbourne. In 1994 he wrote
and published The Cordless Office Report and founded Cordless
Group.
He has written three books on the future of cities, work and

workplace: The Creative Office, The 21st Century Office and Space
to Work (all co-authored with Jeremy Myerson). He has also
contributed to a number of other books including the Corporate
Fool and the Responsible Workplace.
For further information please contact:

philip@unwork.com
About Unwired About Regus
work • workplace • technology • innovation Regus is the world’s largest provider of flexible workspaces,
with products and services ranging from fully equipped offices
Unwired is a specialist in the future of work. Through research, to professional meeting rooms, business lounges and the world’s
forecasting, publishing and events it predicts the way that our a largest network of video communication studios. Regus enables
patterns of work will change as a result of political, socioeconomic people to work their way, whether it’s from home, on the road
and technological trends. or from an office. Customers such as Google, GlaxoSmithKline,
and Nokia join hundreds of thousands of growing small and
Unwired was founded in 1996, and has published over 50 research medium businesses that benefit from outsourcing their office and
reports, including Creative Places for the BBC, the New Millennials workplace needs to Regus, allowing them to focus on their core
for Nokia and Rio Tinto and Workplace Sustainability. activities.
Its events include the WorkTech conferences held in London, New Over 800,000 customers a day benefit from Regus facilities
York, Shanghai and Amsterdam. spread across a global footprint of 1,100 locations in 500 cities
and 88 countries, which allow individuals and companies to work
For further information visit: wherever, however and whenever they want to. Regus was founded
www.unwired.eu.com in Brussels, Belgium in 1989, is headquartered in Luxembourg
and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
For more information please visit:

www.regus.co.uk

Published by
Unwired Ventures Ltd Unwired Ventures Ltd, its employees, the advisory board and
The Innovation Centre the sponsors of Unwired are not to be held responsible for any
7 St John’s Mews losses, expenses or any claims arising out of any reliance on the
St John’s Road information contained in this publication. Since most of the
Hampton Wick information in this publication has been provided by third parties
Kingston upon Thames it requires further verification. In every instance an application
KT1 4AN UK is made it must be independently verified and applied to those
individual circumstances by a suitably qualified individual.
Telephone +44 (0) 20 8977 8920
Facsimile +44 (0) 20 8977 8970 The very nature of the information contained in this publication
Email info@unwired.eu.com ensures that at the time of publication it may be outdated or
Web www.unwired.eu.com superseded. No copyright or intellectual property is transferred or
should be assumed and all images, photographs and trademarks
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e

V1.1 Executive Summary 2

V1.3 V is for Virtual 4

V1.6 Value: Monetising Agility 14

Virtual work is a response to these pressures. It challenges the

What is clear is that there is an expectation that the younger

Business benefits that can provide competitive, cost or other

Now we take the ideas forward in VWork: Measuring the benefits

These ideas have not been developed in a vacuum. We have worked

The core business advantages of this approach to agile work are

In effect, ICI was using cloud-based technologies. Information

There is no doubt that joined-up thinking between Human

But it is not just the collision between the traditional corporate

Companies moving towards virtuality display certain characteristics

Enablers of Virtual Work

Technology The Right Tools User-centric technology provision

The virtual office: from noun to verb

The changes that are reshaping work were identified in our

re-evaluate the proposition of work and in turn challenge the

Culture 1.8m CAR

Interestingly, only 12.3% of people would like to work from

BUS LIBRARY REGUS PLANE

The ideal commute to work is

CAR CAFE HOTEL TRAIN

So the ‘Core’ and ‘Periphery’ or Shamrock organisation long

What is clear is that to work virtually, people need new tools to

Bricks and clicks

It’s clear there is a range of emerging technology that is set to

Video conferencing peaked too early. The adopters of the first

Now much has changed. The rise of high definition video-

We will see huge rises in collaboration across organisations as

Today’s often disparate systems will converge and we predict

Other measures suggested by respondents included:

Profitability Business requirements. You need clever office space

Physical and information security issues Proximity to our clients

Need for physical interaction Company culture

Regulation and security Need for interaction and exchange of ideas

Collaboration Cost of fuel

Managing by deliverables not ‘presenteeism’ Global nature of business

Attracting and retaining the right staff Top down requirement

What people want Collaboration and creativity

Of the people we surveyed, a staggering 70.9% thought that

But the reduction in space rented is only one way of monetising

The majority of floorspace is given over to allocated or shared

Other measures include:

Corporate Driver Agility Benefits and Cost Savings

Monetising agility is about measuring the BYO cost per person.

Variable Costs (OpEx)

Fixed Costs (CapEx) Variable Costs (OpEx)

Fixed Costs (CapEx)

Variable Costs (OpEx / BYO)

The Agility Dividend “It adds between 5 to 10% to the

Telecommuting $299m (£180m)

Now, a mobile team that is equipped with laptops and remote

Stage 1 Convergence of business services

Central or core business services functions formed in the

Stage 2 Augmented work

Outsourcing of key functions and services, introduction of activity-

Stage 3 Virtual reality

Migration to the cloud, with full technology enablers, changed

UnWork.com surveyed over 600 senior business leaders from

The respondents can be categorised as follows:

Size of Organisation Surveyed Size of Organisation