BYOD, Workshifting, and Workspace

The Bring Your Own Device trend—or BYOD for short—is one of the top corporate trends of 2012. It means using your own smartphone, tablet, laptop, or other personal device in the workplace for business (accessing email, uploading files, etc). And as the ownership and usage of personal devices continues to steadily rise, it’s inevitable that the use of personal devices in the workplace is a growing phenomenon.

The pros and cons of BYOD in the workplace policies are varied, but mainly center around employee flexibility and network and information security issues—with the biggest debate being over who fronts most of the costs involved.

The BYOD trend is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Employees are taking advantage of updated technology faster than companies can recognize and integrate it into policy and practice. Technology savvy workers are now a step ahead of their companies and their choices and behaviors are creating a shift in the workplace.

Citrix Systems—a company that provides virtual computing solutions to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide—defines the trend of “Workshifting” as a “strategy based on getting work done in the right place by the right people at the right time.” So, in other words, it’s a way of working efficiently in any given circumstance.

Citrix reveals additional dimensions of how workshifting is changing the workplace in their white paper where they show it:

  • Allows individuals to shift work outside the office
  • Helps to move individuals, business processes or departments to different locations or organization
  • Shifts work from one device to another
  • Shifts meetings, support and training online

With all this potential shifting around and access to un-plugged technology, where does that leave the physical workplace? A recent study, also conducted by Citrix, suggests that by 2020, organizations will reduce office space by 17% or only seven desks for every ten workers who will in turn access company networks and resources on around six different devices.

Thankfully, this doesn’t mean corporate office space will disappear anytime soon, it just means that the future office worker will be choosing how, when, and where they conduct their work. If anything, the interiors and furniture of the office may have to change accordingly.

Will it look something like this?

Luckily we can provide flexible office space perfect for the shifting workplace now and in the future. Check us out at EdisonOfficesNYC.com.

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