The Workplace You Need Now

1The Origin and Evolution of Workplace

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana, Philosopher

Today, most C-suite leaders recognize that great workplaces and workplace strategies can help win the war for talent and provide competitive advantage. That recognition is a relatively recent development, however. With a few notable exceptions, organizations historically have viewed the workplace as a location to get work done and a necessary expense. Today, a more sophisticated view of workplace is emerging.

To understand where we’re headed, let’s understand how we got here. The first dedicated corporate office buildings began to pop up in London in the early eighteenth century, housing the likes of the Royal Navy and the East India Trading Company. With the British Empire expanding and creating trading routes across its empire and the world, the concept of a centralized and dedicated physical space in which to administer a growing enterprise – and all its paperwork – began to take shape.ⁱ

In the United States, the corporate office dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when railroads expanded economic and geographic prospects. The complexity of growing businesses demanded a new physical workplace model.

Since that time, the workplace has evolved only incrementally through economic and business cycles, social and military crises, and industrial and technological revolutions.ⁱⁱ In the early to mid-twentieth century, offices were ...