Why the Traditional Office Will Survive

If you believe what some tech prognosticators say, you'd think that we'd all be either working at home or at a local coffee shop within, say, three to five years. Why not? It would save workers a lot of time, given that the average daily round-trip commute is estimated at about an hour. It would significantly reduce our dependence on fuel, since a single round-trip commute covers about 32 miles. And with our mobile devices and endless access to the latest, greatest business apps, we can essentially do everything we need to do from anywhere. But guess what? The traditional office isn't going anywhere. While a majority of workers prefer a virtual workplace, there's still strong support for the traditional office. And all these sentiments aren't coming exclusively from managers and executives, according to a recent survey from Ricoh Americas. They are coming from employees. Surprisingly, younger workers are more likely than more mature employees to favor a typical office environment. More than 2,500 Americans took part in the research, which was conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Ricoh Americas, a business information solutions provider.