For decades, the notion of going ‘to work’ meant a person being assigned a space in one set location from nine to five. Today, the concept of the office is no longer confined to a fixed address, already evidenced by the collaborative hubs springing up across major urban centres to cater for diverse ways of working and interacting.

Boardroom tables and desks are disappearing and being replaced by flexible environments to accommodate freelancers, entrepreneurs and an increasing number of white-collar workers from large corporations, says wheretofromhere? co-founder Josie Gibson. However she explains this is all still a transition phase.

“The line between internal and external is becoming blurred,” says Gibson. “At this stage, few organisations are flexible or adaptable enough to enable genuine collaboration. It’s usually derailed by clunky systems and processes, or outdated management thinking.”

The current thinking is to create an environment that leads people to perform in certain ways, such as to ‘focus’ or ‘problem solve’. But the new generation of workplaces will see a melding of the physical and virtual spaces that create meaning for employees, rather than serving a performance purpose, says People and Organisational Development Consultant Chloe Hamman.

Behaviour-shaping technology such as feedback tools will guide employees with daily performance appraisals tracking performance instead of yearly performance appraisals, says Hamman.

“We already see this trend in health and fitness wearables where you map your movements and progress on health goals,” Hamman says.

Futurist speaker and Thinque Founder Anders Sorman-Nilsson predicts a hybrid of a high-tech digital and analogue workplaces. The common way of accessing work will be via smart glass technologies and digital touch screens, and your typical meeting spot would be via virtual reality meeting rooms like the corporate versions of gaming headset technology Oculus Rift.

Unsurprisingly, digital natives (Gen Y and Gen Z) who speak technology “without an accent” will have no trouble adapting, but digital immigrants (largely Gen X and Baby Boomers) will need to upgrade the way they work immensely, says Sorman-Nilsson.

The E Team Founder Craig Reardon explains this is a two-step process – you need the changing technology within the organisation to prepare for future development, and new technology impacting your base product or service.

Otherwise you run the risk of having vulnerable, outdated systems. Take Windows Server 2003 –countless companies run this software and aren’t even aware the software reaches the end of its life in July this year.

This means no more support and no more patches that would normally cover critical security updates, or prevent privacy threats.

As well as replacing the old, the other trend to adapt to the on-demand economy allowing businesses to have access to a global talent pool that can work remotely, says Sorman-Nilsson. This talent pool could include Artificial Intelligence (AI) like Watson, Siri or Quill’s Narrative Science.

“We may no longer care if humans are doing the work, as long as it’s quality work,” says Sorman-Nilsson.

This means a future in which we become comfortable collaborating with a worldwide talent pool of AI and robots. Not only will traditional blue-collar work such as manufacturing be completed by smarter robots, but they may start to replace white-collar tasks like writing annual reports, and even data analytics, suggests Sorman-Nilsson.

Change occurs whether we like it or not, and shedding outdated technology habits can bring people one step closer to adapting. People who resist will only be ill prepared for a world that no longer exists.

Find out more about migrating from Windows Server 2003, or talk to a HP Consultant on 1300 303 663.

Written by: Thea Christie