The Flexible University Workplace

The workplace is becoming more flexible. Freelance and contract work is on the rise – 34% of the U.S. works on a freelance or contract basis and that’s expected to soon rise to 50%. More people are shifting where and when they work – 38% work remotely at least some part of their week. More people are using flexible co-working and serviced office solutions – co-working space now makes up 37% of office space New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. So, how does this apply to the workplace for faculty and staff in higher education?

One way of thinking about how the workplace has changed is that the same set of ideas is diffusing across sectors at different rates, depending on the applicability of the forces for change and how resistant an industry is to change. More than twenty years ago, consulting organizations moved from assigned offices to a variety of unassigned spaces to account for how little time people spent at the office and how much of it ended up being about working in teams. These strategies have long since been adopted in sales organizations, financial services, and pharmaceuticals and are just now hitting law firms; for instance Minter Ellison moved to an unassigned, activity-based work environment in Australia. Higher education is next.

Next up: The Academic Workplace

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