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UTILITY WEEK | 6TH - 12TH MAY 2016 | 19 hangars that form part of the Scottow Enterprise Park. Work on the four solar units started in January 2016 and involved the installation of more than 70,000 solar panels on land adjacent to the runways and aprons and underground connections to UK Power Networks' grid. If you have an asset or project you would like to see featured in this slot, email: paul.newton@fav-house.com Pipe up Simon Walker A common question I get asked by business leaders is why they should invest time, effort and money in understanding and adapting to the so-called future of work. My answer is that to not do so makes them and their organisation really vulnerable, and adapting now is a great competitive advantage on many fronts. They are future-proofing their organisation. So what are the advantages of understanding and adapting now? The top reasons given by clients and organisations I speak to include: Innovation – future of work thinking and practice embraces truly diverse collaboration, which is at the heart of innovation. By diverse collaboration, I mean collaboration that is across function, age, seniority, location and maybe even organisations. To innovate, first you need an innovative idea, which by its very nature will be a minority idea. Then you need to quickly implement that idea – again by drawing quickly and collabo- ratively across a wide range of skills and functions. Attracting talent – it's a disruptive world out there, with pretty much every industry being, or about to be, turned upside down by non-conven- tional competition. The talent you and many other organisations need to weave your way through this disruption are likely to be exactly the talent attracted to organisations that embrace future of work ideas. Customer closeness – one feature of the future of work is the blurring of conventional interfaces between customers and employees. Smart organisations take advantage of this to gather insight into what the cus- tomer wants and needs. Employee engagement – in a 2013 Gallop poll, only 13 per cent of employees were positively engaged, with 24 per cent actively disengaged. Yet another Gallop poll of more than 50,000 business units and 1.4 million employ- ees showed that engagement has a huge impact on productivity, profit and loss, and customer satisfaction. Agile teams – the future of work is all about being open-minded and agile, experimenting and "pivoting" in the light of data and feedback. There are many other opportunities and challenges, but the first step is to understand what is changing. The rate of change is such that organisations now need to proactively support their leaders and managers in understanding the future of work. That's the way to turn a potential vulnerability into a competitive advantage. Simon Walker, consultant, Candover Consulting "The nature of work is chang- ing, and employers need to understand and adapt to this new world now." "There is a blurring of conventional interfaces between customers and employees." Operations & Assets