Page 4 - DEGW Annual Review 2009/10

Foreword

Space for collaboration

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Daniel Johnson When organisations share research, experience The outcomes were a series of hypotheses

Global Director of Corporate and knowledge through collaboration, they including the demands of the collaborative

Real Estate Workplace, encourage innovation and, ultimately, deliver workplace, the increasing value of the city and

Accenture success. the need for serendipity in the virtual workplace.

These outcomes are already finding their way into

At Accenture, we harness this principle through

Accenture, but the real value of the study was the

our High Performance Business Initiative – an

connections and synergies experienced in the

extensive global research programme that explores
collaboration with DEGW and the 12 participating

what constitutes high performance and how

global organisations.

companies can get there. We ground our High

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Performance Business research in analysis of more Each the organisations featured in this annual

than 6,000 companies worldwide including 500 review are involved in optimising their workplaces

high performers across 36 industries. Our aim is and using technology to embrace collaboration

to identify the characteristics and capabilities of on every level across many locations and cultures.

high­performance businesses and use that data Their workplace support is attracting and retaining

and the combined experiences of our people to the best talent who, in turn, are delivering

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help organisations attain and maintain high innovation maintain competitive advantage.

performance.
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Accenture 18 months into its five­year

We apply this same principle to Accenture’s workplace change strategy. Our new strategy

internal business, including our real estate and emphasises promoting the workplace beyond

workplace. So it’s no surprise, then, that we joined the boundaries of the physical office and heralds

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‘Collaboration both DEGW and 12 global organisations to explore the collaborative work, face­to­face and virtual, as

the physical and virtual likely best practices of the future to understand we interact with our colleagues worldwide.

how other companies are approaching similar Our most recent proof of concept project in

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world here to stay’ workplace challenges and to help shape the Houston showing significant double digit

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evolution our strategy.

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increases across all our measurements.

This was not an ordinary benchmarking study that Collaboration both the physical and virtual

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compared superficial data on density, headcount, world here to stay.

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space standards and costs, but a study that

delved deeply into the directional and strategic

issues that are driving workplace decisions.

Accenture
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