The children of the revolution

“What online video games do you play?” Believe it or not, according to Wouter Oosting, CBRE’s senior director for workplace strategies and design in the Netherlands, this is now a question posed at the job interviews of younger recruits. And indeed the expectations of this younger generation dominated much of the Workplace Strategies conference organised jointly by CBRE and Eurobuild CEE on October 25th at the InterContinental Hotel in Warsaw. Employers ask such questions because in games such as Battlefield 4 rankings are assigned to players by fellow gamers, providing a yardstick measure of a candidate’s leadership capabilities. But the so-called generation ‘Y’ is not the only driver revolutionising the workplace. CBRE is urging us to abandon our workstations. At any one time 30 pct of the desks in a traditional firm are empty, providing an opportunity for reducing office space. In the future, we will be logging into the first free computer. Meeti