The age of the smart building is upon us and will soon become commonplace as businesses look to make their offices smarter, more efficient and more user-friendly. While the Internet of Things (IoT) is arguably taking off faster in more industrial domains (factories, farms, transportation) and has the most “pizzazz” in consumer domains (smart homes, smart cars, fitness wearables), there is new energy forming around IoT-enhanced offices. With the high cost of real estate—the average workspace costs around $8,000 per year—more companies are investigating and investing in combining more traditional real-estate management technologies with IoT applications to make better use of their space.
For newly constructed buildings, it is easy to incorporate more extravagant IoT elements, such as kiosks that enable employees to report on their feelings in the office to affect lighting and provide feedback to management. However, even retrofitted buildings can incorporate smart elevators, smart thermostats, smart lighting and dozens of other technologies through the smartphones of the building’s many inhabitants. In fact, the smart building technology market is expected to generate a global revenue of $8.5 billion in 2020, according to Navigant Research.
Transforming a building into a smart building is beneficial for the owner and the organizations working within. Smart buildings can reduce energy costs, increase the productivity of the facility staff, improve building operations, enhance decision-making across the organization, and help attract and retain talent.
Today’s workforce expects their employers to integrate the latest technologies into their working lives. If your organization wants to be at the forefront of the future workplace, integrating smart technology in your facility is a logical step.
If fact, almost 60 percent of surveyed employees believe they will work in a “smart office” with higher-tech capabilities within the next five years, according to the Dell and Intel Future Workforce Study, conducted by PSB. Eighty-two percent of respondents said technology in the workplace influences which jobs they take, and 42 percent would quit a job that didn’t have up-to-date technology.
We’ve seen how smart buildings are evolving to the next level: a connected, human-centric workspace that has an intuitive awareness of its occupancy and utilization, with an app-centric interface that makes everything easier to monitor and manage. It’s time for the business world to catch up to the consumer market and embrace these smart technologies to create a more robust and energetic workplace for a workforce that is certainly calling for it.