Collaboration tools are designed for people to communicate and collaborate with others that are not at the exact same location as you are. Whether this is a different floor in a building or a different continent.
This has been happening for thousands of years:
– Drums were used as a communication tool in Africa
– Chinese used smoke signals along the Great Wall of China
– Carrier pigeons with notes attached to them that flew through the sky
– A Greek messenger who run from Marathon to Athena for 28 miles to deliver a message that was just one word.

All these kinds of communication had two things in common:
– It takes forever to get the message across
– Creating the message wasn’t very easy nor convenient

However, with all the current collaboration tools out there, I find it fascinating that the majority of employees nowadays still go to the office at 8 in the morning and go home at 6 in the evening. Why is this still the common accepted standard in these times where it is possible to work from any place in the world with the help of technology.

So what factor do you think motivates people most to go into the office?
1. Because it is expected from them → 47%
2. To have face-to-face interactions → 23%

The link between virtual offices and Cisco.
Employees have meetings all the time. They have team meetings or meetings with customers. People have to be able to communicate in order to work together. However, that does not mean that people have to be in the same office building.

Working from home or any other remote area has two types of benefits.
– Employee benefits
– Employer benefits

Employee benefits:
– Improves employee satisfaction
– Employees can work from any place they want
– Increases productivity/efficiency

Employer benefits:
– Businesses are not restricted anymore to hiring employees that live locally. They can hire people spread across the world.
– Cost saving: No more offices. An office building is a huge expense for a company. This office building we are sitting in right now was sold last year by ING to an American real estate company → 88 million euros.
American Express reported annual savings of 10-15 million US dollars for offering remote working options for their employees.

So in my opinion, in the future physical offices will slowly disappear. Big companies might have some for the meetings that absolutely have to happen face-to-face but the vast majority of the new generation of employees will prefer working from any place they desire over an office building!