Smart Office

For better working experiences and employee well-being

The model for smarter work was set up in response to the change in working life, with the help of Shirute, Fujitsu and seven construction and real estate players.

Client

“ We are now building smart technology to support the future ways of working. Our concept helps organisations provide a more balanced and humane work day experience to their employees in the midst of all the hectic changes. An energising work environment that supports well-being increases the motivation of employees and the effectiveness of their work. It also enables the creation of new innovations more cost-effectively. Work becomes more communal, even if it is done elsewhere than in the actual workplace - based on the principles of the sharing economy.“
Sirte Pihlaja
CEO
“ This topic has been on our minds as part of a bigger Smart City project for some time now. We set out to think about the changing working life on a new footing. When we brought together these companies, it quickly became clear that the Smart Office concept, which combines smart business premises and the needs of end users, needed collaboration across traditional boundaries. The key idea has been to dream together what kind of business premises will adapt to people's needs and which new technologies will support meaningful work - not forgetting ecological values.“
Jari Vuori
Director, Head of Specialist Sales
“ It is natural for Are to be part of the Smart Office consortium, as our business units are already taking advantage of the opportunities offered by IoT. The consortium consists of several leading players in their respective fields - utilising and combining our expertise supports the goals of the development project and contributes to the development of the entire field.“
Timo Nurisalo
Hankepäällikkö, Are
“ We want to be involved in creating a new kind of office space concept to continue to provide our customers with the facilities that best serve their business and add value to them. In addition to the concept of smart work, it is important for Elo, as a responsible property owner, to minimise the environmental impact of properties and reduce their carbon footprint. Participating in the Smart Office project supports the realisation of these goals.“
Kaisa Kallio
Portfolio Manager, Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company
“ Mobility, energy efficiency and adaptive spaces affect the electrification solutions we offer. The goal of lowering operating costs and leveraging data in solutions is becoming increasingly important to us. By participating in this project, we are able to offer users and various stakeholders better service and smarter solutions.“
Juha Stenberg
President, BU Solutions, Ensto
“ Inspecta has set as its clearest goal to create quality customer experiences with our customers. We can achieve this goal by listening to and understanding our customers’ business and what they do. We develop services together with our customers, by utilising the opportunities brought forward by digitalisation and by cooperating within the company across business unit boundaries.“
Terhi Hirvikorpi
Business Development Manager, Kiwa Inspecta
“ A smart work environment facilitates the operations of the entire organisation in a constantly changing work, by influencing e.g. workflow, agility for change, employee engagement and cost-effectiveness. Work environments are full of information that can be utilised to support organisational operations and optimise work environments. Our focus is on the optimal utilisation of the common data warehouse created from measuring the building in Martela's business - by generating customer value.“
Panu Muhonen
Offering Director, Martela
“ We want to learn to better understand the needs of our customers and the changing world around us. The aim is to become better acquainted with the work processes and pain points in the office spaces, as well as how these will change in the coming years and how they could be improved, for example by utilising and combining information from different systems and sensors. The same goes for property maintenance. By cooperating with our partners, we gain new perspectives and form a common and comprehensive vision. This helps us to offer higher quality design.“
Sampsa Kosonen
Leading Expert, ICT and Security, Ramboll
“ At YIT, we actively monitor the changes in working life and implement modern workplaces. In line with our strategy - More life in sustainable cities - we are involved in urban development, involving our partners heavily in the process. The Smart Office consortium and being part of it is perfectly aligned with our strategy. The diverse partners ensure that different perspectives, ideas and opportunities are fully utilised in building smart work and working day experiences.“
Timo Räikkönen
Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, YIT

Background

The companies part of the Smart Office consortium doing development cooperation with Shirute included Are, Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Ensto, Fujitsu, Inspecta (now Kiwa), Martela, Ramboll and YIT. These partners embarked on a joint programme of the ecosystem with the mission to gather ideas for smart work needs and opportunities. Together, the parties developed new thinking, ideas to be implemented, and concepts related to the theme.

Solution

The development project created an inspiring, ecological, healthy, efficient work environment that enables changing ways of working and helps generating innovations, with facilities and services designed for various work communities. The move from technology-centricity to thinking first about the office space’s user-centricity and workday experiences was conducted through the study of values and modelling of personas.

At the beginning of the project, a large-scale round of interviews was conducted with experts in the construction and real estate sectors. As the development project focused on the customer experience, end-user interviews and involvement of employees also played an essential role, e.g. in the form of co-creation workshops with a visual facilitator. The interviews were used to map the course and content of the participants’ workdays in different roles, different industries and organisational levels. The aim was to find out what kind of daily work tasks a so-called “Smart Office” should be able to support.

As a result of this research, it was concluded that “Smart Office” means to people their own environment wherever they perform their work tasks at different times. As multi-site or non-site-based Nomad work has become more common, solutions and practical concepts for the phenomenon were considered. One of the key outcomes of the project was to build thought leadership around how a smart office should first and foremost be designed to support the well-being of employees. This thinking was concretised with concept drafts.

  • Creating the Smart Office concept to cover and support the needs of the office user in a variety of ways
  • Putting the end user at the center by obtaining information e.g. through large-scale, visualized interviews
  • Employee and customer experience skills and understanding of different work environments and working days for consortium participants from many industries
  • Creating models that support Nomad work and future ways of working as part of the solution to the important changes in worklife identified in the horizon