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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Trading Spaces: Supporting the Mobile Workforce Beyond Company Boundaries

The nature of work today is changing as companies struggle to define the right mix of workspaces for an increasingly mobile and connected work force. Global knowledge workers on the go are increasingly choosing workspaces outside the company office.

Q4 / Fall 2013
The risk for companies is that these alternative workspaces may not fully support productivity, may not be client-ready, and may not provide for secure computing. To address this new reality, some companies are adopting a “proworking” workplace strategy approach to secure “the right space in the right place” for mobile workers.

“Proworking takes the very innovative consumer concept of ‘coworking’ and takes it to a new level to drive productivity,” says Emily Watkins, senior vice president of Innovation and Product Development at Jones Lang LaSalle. “It works for any company that is focused on productivity.”

Respondents to an informal poll by Jones Lang LaSalle at the recent CoreNet Global Summit in Las Vegas indicated companies are still tied to inefficient real estate models such as providing dedicated offices or cubes, home offices, or shared cubicles; yet zero percent offered a third place or co-working location for employees to work.


Emily Watkins, SVP, Innovation & Product Development, Jones Lang LaSalle

This legacy paradigm forces long-term commitments to fixed real estate and doesn’t meet the needs of today’s dynamic organizations, according to Mark Gilbreath, CEO and founder of LiquidSpace “CRE asset managers are no longer willing to pay for underutilized offices, and engaged employees expect the freedom to choose the places where they can do their best work, whether onsite or on the road.”

Proworking is what enables the productivity of an individual within their workspace,” concludes Watkins. “When your employees are being as efficient as possible within a location, that really drives results.”

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