How Hybrid Work Will Impact the Workplace, Our Cities, and Climate Action
How does the office fit into the new ecosystem of work? How can we build sustainable office spaces that meet new expectations? What is the wider implication of hybrid working on our cities?
Join our session at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023, where Kasia Maynard of the Gensler Research Institute reports on recent research and the ripple effect of hybrid working.
The latest research from the Gensler Research Institute explores how to best enable hybrid working, optimise the office environment, meet goals of NET zero, whilst also maximising employee experience and engagement. The research highlights innovative case studies for sustainable design, alongside cutting-edge data on 30 cities across the world, and new survey results from UK workplaces. As hybrid working develops in maturity, there is a greater opportunity to design workspaces that are sustainable, customisable, and effective.
The acceleration of hybrid working since the global pandemic has prompted a paradigm shift in the way we work. Professional workers have more autonomy and flexibility to choose where and how they conduct their work. As a result, a new scenario for work is emerging in the aftermath of the global pandemic that will change the way office buildings are used in the future.
Gensler has studied the UK workplace since 2005. We have mapped the trajectory of how employees work, the relationship they have with their office, and the effectiveness of space. Since the pandemic, we have seen a sudden shift. While the office remains a critical component, it is now part of a wider network of channels in which employees can access work. This has prompted a wide-scale re-evaluation of the role of the office to compete as a desirable place to work.
For the first time, the office has been challenged to rethink its approach to curating experiences amid a new context where employees expect more from their workplace. As hybrid working patterns become more established, employees will seek to customise their work experiences. They will choose workspaces based on their ability to facilitate the type of work they need to do.
Therefore, the office needs to be prepared for all eventualities. There is increasing pressure to create offices that cater for every need of the modern worker, whilst also being conscious about space and energy efficiency. Gensler’s research demonstrates practical case studies and applied research to indicate where the future workplace is heading based on more than 15 years of longitudinal data.
The shift to more flexible working has revealed a potential to make more sustainable decisions about the office. As an industry, we are witnessing universal momentum around addressing the urgent issue of climate change. This year will be marked by the passing of new legislation with the aim of reducing carbon emissions. This is reflected in the new position of the British Council for Office (BCO) to reduce office occupancy density and eliminate Cat A office fit outs. The momentum is propelled by new expectations of work and the office which has prompted more conscious decisions around how we use office space. The presentation will showcase case studies of Gensler’s pioneering climate action solutions that use creative, innovative design approaches in offices around the world.
This presentation will draw on data from Gensler’s latest research data including Climate Action – a catalogue of innovative sustainable case studies; City Pulse – a survey of urban residents in 30 cities around the world; and the UK 2023 Workplace Survey of 2,000 UK office workers. The research knits together the wider implications flexible working has on our workplaces, cities, and the world.
Find out all the details, the outcomes, recommendations from this research and the related case studies at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Kasia Maynard, Gensler Research Institute
Kasia Maynard is a researcher and writer with a background in the future of work and urban design. She holds an MA in Urban Design and Planning and has more than six years’ experience forecasting trends on the future of work. Kasia works across the global workplace surveys published by the Gensler Research Institute. Prior to this, she worked as an editor with the WORKTECH Academy – a global platform focusing exclusively on the future of work and workplace. She has presented research and insights on the future of work internationally, delivered workshops, and facilitated panels with prominent thought leaders across the industry.
Join our session at the Workplace Trends Research Summit where we deep dive into the key insights from the Future Forum quarterly survey of 10,000+ global knowledge workers. We’ll be discussing the latest data around hybrid working, workplace management and office design to help you prepare for the future of work.
Laptops and Wi-Fi untethered workers from the office years ago, but it took a global pandemic to spark a widespread acceptance of distributed work. Lessons learned over the last two years point to a historic opportunity to reimagine the role of the modern workplace.
To help you prepare for what’s next, we have delivered actionable insights along with practical solutions that offer immediate and long-term support for the future.
We’ve gathered some eye-opening data and created some probing thought-starters to help you evaluate where you are on the path to the future of work—and what needs to be done get you where you need to be.
Here’s some of this quarter’s data that we’ll discuss in detail:
The percentage of employees surveyed who want flexibility in where they work
The percentage of employees surveyed who want flexibility in when they work
The productivity rates that are being reported by workers who have full schedule flexibility
What percentage of employees surveyed want to be full-time in the office (an all-time low)
The percentage of employees surveyed who want to be fully remote
Among executives, how many believe they are being “very transparent regarding post-pandemic remote working policies,” but how many of their employees agree
How organisational transparency affects employee churn.
Uncertainty is likely to increase in the future. Adopting a hybrid workplace strategy allows organisations to adapt to unforeseen circumstances because people are already working more flexibly. It’s a way for organisations to be more resilient.
But it’s not enough for organisations simply to support the choice of where people might work on a given day.
They also must ensure the quality of those choices—whether working at home, in a co-located office, or elsewhere—with resources and support to ensure equitable experiences for all of their people.
We’ll go on to provide the 3 major reasons for “What motivates people to come into the office today?”
We looked at the types of interactions that largely went under-supported while people work from home. We reimagined the modern workplace as an on-demand destination for employees who are seeking out specific experiences that are difficult to replicate at home or elsewhere.
Previously, many of the best workplaces were designed for activity-based work. That’s still a useful approach, but we’re seeing a subtle shift with increased focus on the value of relationships and experiences at work.
With that evolution in mind, we’ve developed a new typology of spaces to streamline the process of identifying desired experiences and to help visualise options for real support. The space types are grouped by the primary level of personal interaction to be supported—individual, group, or community—and by the predominant nature of interactions to be supported, whether people are seeking to produce a tangible outcome or exchanging information and reflecting upon the results of that work.
Find out all the details, the outcomes and recommendations from this research at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Bertie van Wyk, Insight Programme Manager, MillerKnoll Insight Group
I am a critical thinking Workplace Specialist with a quick grasp of emerging trends and changing business processes. Through my understanding of human-centric design and workplace strategy, I can effectively equip organisations and individuals with the knowledge and skills to become more productive, healthy and connected in work.
Is hybrid working the solution for the organisational commitment of your introverted colleagues?
The work environment has undergone significant change in recent years. Individuals and organisations have experienced the benefits of fully remote working, causing many people to shift to partly working from home as a definite. So exactly what is the relationship between hybrid working and employee engagement?
This major evolution in the way we work causes ambiguity in organisational policymaking. Unfortunately, academic literature on hybrid working about the organisational phenomenon is not readily available. Yet it is evident to say that hybrid working is here to stay and will have an enormous effect on organisations in the following years.
This study focused on analysing the perceived impact of hybrid working on affective commitment and employee engagement. This relationship was further explored by concentrating on the moderation effect of the high amount of introverted employees in the organisation.
The research was completed with a large set of respondents from the Eindhoven University of Technology, NL. The outcomes of the study were determinants for the policy on hybrid working for the university, more specifically the supporting staff and workplace conditions.
Statements from the original Meyer and Allen self-administered questionnaire were used to measure individual levels of affective commitment. To address personality traits, the original Big Five Inventory extraversion scale of John et al. (1991) was used. Hybrid working was measured by using a validated scale on flexible work and a self-developed vignette scale.
Find out the outcomes and recommendations from this project at the Workplace Trends Research Summit #WTRS23 on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Esmeé Bechtold, Policy maker, Eindhoven University of Technology
My name is Esmeé. Most people know me as always positive and creative in coming up with solutions. I get energy from challenges and function best when I am surrounded by many inspiring people and processes. Everywhere I go I try to see the bigger picture, challenging myself to find the improvements.
My greatest strength? That’s my high sensitivity. As a result, I always have an eye for detail, I am more than motivated to learn, and empathy is ensured. 😉
Do you feel that I have inspired you? Do not hesitate to contact me!
Four Day Work Week Pilot 2022: UK Results and Learnings
Four Day Work Week Pilot 2022: UK Workplace Results and Learnings, with Kyle Lewis, Autonomy Research Limited
The world’s largest national four day work week pilot took place in the United Kingdom for six months during 2022, with over 60 companies taking part.
We’re delighted that Kyle Lewis of Autonomy, the pilot’s research coordinator, will present the results and key learnings in this session at our Workplace Trends Research Summit, with a focus on its implications for the workplace. This presentation will provide valuable insight on the impact a four-day week can have in making teams and workspaces positive places to be. The four-day week is a rising trend across many sectors, and understanding its strengths, practical requirements and risks is vital for all workplace professionals.
An overview of the trials:
Between June and December 2022, around 3000 workers based throughout the UK and representing more than thirty sectors, received 100 per cent of their pay for 80 per cent of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain at least 100 per cent productivity.
The pilot has been coordinated by 4 Day Week Global, in partnership with us – leading think tank Autonomy – the UK’s 4 Day Week Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.
This experiment has gained national and international media coverage, drawing interest from the Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Times, the BBC and many others. It led to a bill on the four-day week being tabled in parliament, and enquiries for our workplace consultancy services have risen dramatically.
The pilot has collected qualitative and quantitative data on the impact of a four-day week on the participating organisations. This has covered (though not been limited to):
• Employee wellbeing and stress
• Employee work satisfaction and experience
• Recruitment and retention
• Productivity and output
• Family and personal life
• Energy use
The UK programme has run alongside similar pilots in Ireland, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Israel, and is accompanied by many firms commencing trials or implementing a shorter working week independently. What stands out in particular about the UK programme concerns its size and scope.
This presentation will provide an exclusive in depth exploration of the data collected over the course of the programme and provide expert analysis on what the research indicates about the future of working time and its reduction within the UK and beyond.
One of the key learnings the presentation will focus on concerns the growing interest in the four-day week shown from non desk-based sectors. Switching to a four-day week is evidently a growing trend, particularly among desk-based work settings. However, the UK pilot programme demonstrated that the take up of the idea is starting to be implemented within sectors typically thought of as being ‘non-compatible’ with four-day week practices (manufacturing, logistics and hospitality). The presentation will focus on these particular case studies from the pilot in order to provide new learnings on what the data reveals about the non-typical four-day week work environments.
Find out the outcomes and recommendations from this project at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Kyle Lewis, Director and Head of Consultancy, Autonomy Research Limited
Kyle co-founded Autonomy and leads on our shorter working week consultancy and research. With Will Stronge, he is the co-author of Overtime (Verso, 2021) and managed the research branch of the UK’s four-day week pilot in 2022.
Kyle has project managed the majority of our consultancy projects, leading client interaction, drafting reports and guiding our interview, workshop and survey processes. He is currently completing a PhD in Political Theory and Sociology at the University of West London.
Translating Research to Practice: Evidence-Based Design for Workplaces and Offices of the Future.
Guest post by University of Leeds Business School and Atkins.
The world of work has recently faced numerous challenges, following the introduction of new and alternative ways of working in response to post-pandemic working patterns and pressures to address wider changes related to contemporary work cultures. In this context, the use of evidence-based approaches is becoming increasingly prevalent as designers strive to make more informed choices that support health and improve experience.
This article discusses the importance of integrating applied research into design and evaluation processes, through the ongoing collaboration between the Atkins Building Design Research and Innovation team, and the University of Leeds Business School.
What is Evidence-based Design, and what does it mean for us?
Evidence-based design is described by The Centre for Health Design (2022) as the “process of basing decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes”. This approach is often associated with healthcare facility design and can be traced back to Roger Ulrich’s (1984) seminal research, and one of the most cited papers in architectural psychology, investigating the effect of window views on patient recovery. In recent years, the approach has continued to gain popularity for the design of other building types, as it provides a way to evidence design decisions through a growing body of research on the impacts of physical environments on stress, productivity, comfort, and more.
An evidence-based approach, enhanced by further collaboration with academic partners, can improve the way design options are evaluated, inform design decisions, and improve engagement with stakeholders; aspects that are central to Atkins’ approach to design.
In the context of workplace design, the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, affected the way people work, how offices are occupied, and the overall future of commercial real estate. In turn, this multifaceted shift created uncertainties and complexities around the spatial, technological, and management requirements of contemporary, post-pandemic offices. As clients face the challenge of adapting their workspaces in response to this shift towards hybrid and alternative ways of working, they reconsider the utilisation of their premises, a process that requires structured information that can highlight workforce priorities and challenges as a basis for decision-making. Adopting an evidence-based approach provides support in addressing these uncertainties, particularly around employees’ return to work, by utilising a range of evidence from both individual organisations, and original academic research on the response of the wider corporate world.
Adapting Offices for the Future of Work
An important element of an evidence-based approach is to ensure the most relevant and recent research is incorporated into the decision-making process. As a result, academic collaborations and partnerships can play an important role in this.
In 2021 the University of Leeds launched a significant research project, ‘Adapting Offices for the Future of Work’ to explore this challenge, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) rapid response to Covid-19. It is undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Leeds, with backgrounds in management and organisational psychology, workplace design, architectural engineering, and information systems. Collaborating with several public and private sector organisations, including Atkins (member of SNC-Lavalin), this research investigates how workplaces have been adapted since the emergence of Covid-19 to support hybrid or new ways of working.
Adopting a Socio-Technical Systems perspective, the research aims to explore the requirements and relationships of physical design solutions, supporting technologies, behavioural changes and management practices, required to ensure office environments support productive and employee-centred working. Multiple social science research methods were utilised in the context of this research project, including organisational stakeholder interviews, diary studies, employee surveys, Social Network Analysis and industry workshops, to develop insights for partner organisations that help inform their office and hybrid strategies, with particular focus placed on understanding the impact of different work arrangements and use of space for various groups of workers (e.g. new starters, different roles).
Understanding Hybrid Working
The research highlights the popularity of hybrid working amongst employees as a permanent work arrangement, but also the importance of the physical workplace and divergent needs across employees. The representative cross-industry UK longitudinal surveys of office workers, conducted in August and December 2021, demonstrated that 48% of employees sought a hybrid work pattern, 24% wanted to work solely from an office and 28% to work exclusively from home (down from 33% in August 2021). While much of the discussion in the press focuses on how to encourage employees back to the office, this research demonstrates that the majority of staff want to spend at least part of their time back in an office, highlighting the continued impact of designing high quality and functional office spaces. The survey findings also challenge the popular assumption that the hybrid office should be primarily geared around collaboration and interaction. 29% of workers surveyed would like to use the office for low concentration solo tasks (e.g., emails, data processing), and 32% want to undertake high concentration individual tasks in the office, the type of work typically assumed to be least suited to office working under hybrid arrangements.
Decisions made by organizations regarding their hybrid working policies have significant implications for the types and amount of office space required (e.g., mandating set days in the office, allowing free choice over when and how often employees return, operating rota systems for teams). However, most organizations have yet to formalise future work arrangements. Only 34% of employees surveyed in December 2021 were aware of a formal hybrid working policy and only 18% reported that their offices had been redesigned to support hybrid working. This raises an important question, of what is meant by hybrid working.
In this context, hybrid working was generally understood as a mix of office and remote working, however, this captures a myriad of alternative ways of working. As shown in the figure above, hybrid working can be classified by the degree of control organizations provide employees over where and when they work. While we may think of hybrid as providing choice and flexibility (with no formal restrictions on where or when they work, i.e. free hybrid) it can be highly prescribed and controlled (shifts and allocated office and home schedules with no employee choice over these, i.e., fixed hybrid). While organizational policies set-out what is possible in theory, employees’ demographics, life circumstances, job types, colleagues’ workplace decisions, personalities, neurodiversity needs, and networks all influence the decisions that individuals make over where and when they work. It is therefore difficult to capture these requirements, that may vary widely from one organisation to another, and design for them in a way that accurately responds to the preferences of a dynamic and diverse workforce at a time of wider change and reconsideration of priorities and approaches.
Adapting offices to support hybrid working is a truly socio-technical challenge, one where the design of the office space cannot be separated from the design of job roles, ways of working, employee rewards and performance management, or the multitude of other factors that may require redesign to deliver a functional, inclusive and attractive hybrid workplace. Evidence from the research currently being undertaken by the University of Leeds has highlighted how different office designs and configurations, technologies and hybrid working policies all influence the social interactions between team members and across organisations. This shows how decisions over hybrid policy can support or undermine design aspirations (e.g., features to promote interaction, chance encounters etc.), and further highlights the need for an evidence-based approach, that can consider the socio-technical requirements of workplaces.
The Workplace Index
This complexity emphasises the importance for an in-depth understanding of how people work, to allow designers to better respond to the demands of contemporary working arrangements as they continue to be driven by fundamental shifts.
Atkins’ Workplace Index was developed in response to this challenge, to support designers in following an evidence-based approach that incorporates the understanding of employee characteristics and work preferences, the type and frequency of activities they undertake, and other factors adapted from a socio-technical perspective. The team identified common challenges during the briefing stages of workplace design projects, which led to the development of this framework following an action research approach (Zuber-Skerritt et al., 2002). This included workshops, high level reviews of literature and industry trends, engagement with existing clients who were interested in testing this methodology on their projects, and collaborations with university partners.
The Workplace Index includes five areas that can be used to identify project priorities and subsequent research to be acquired with the aim to support the development and evaluation of appropriate design solutions:
‘People’: Characteristics and requirements of a diverse and multi-generational workforce, the choices of which affect spatial and organisational provision requirements.
‘Activities’: Range of roles, tasks and focus areas within contemporary workplaces that outline an operational approach that best responds to the requirements of organisations.
‘Place’: Aspects of geography, and dimensions of buildings and sites, directly related to the physical workspace which highlight opportunities and challenges for design.
‘Technology’: Technological requirements and digital transformation.
‘Travel’: The future of commuting to and from work.
Within each theme are several metrics and recommendations which are mapped to different outcomes, allowing the direct and structured incorporation of findings from wider academic studies, and collaborations with academic partners into the design process. As new information is published, the Workplace Index continues to undergo iterative development as we continue to work with and alongside clients to address various challenges, ensuring that design solutions are always informed, up-to-date and in tune with current trends and contemporary requirements.
Conclusions
The Workplace Index is an ongoing project, which enables designers to address the complexities of working in a post-pandemic world and highlights the benefits of active collaboration between academia and practice. As an industry partner in this collaboration, Atkins contributed their current experience of designing in a rapidly changing sector, and had more direct and timely access to evidence from leading research from the University of Leeds to inform and evaluate subsequent design decisions. As the Workplace Index continues to develop, the impact of varied factors on different outcomes will be considered further, drawing on evidence from the University of Leeds research, on factors such as employee satisfaction and wellbeing, or social networks and social cohesion in the workplace. Moving forward, evidence-based design tools like the Atkins Workplace Index can help inform spatial configuration, technological provisions, and provide ways to better understand client requirements during early design stages. As we continue to learn more about the ways space can be adapted to suit our new ways of working, and ongoing uncertainties in the workplace sector, evidence-based design will continue to grow in relevance and importance.
Authors
Dr Matthew Davis (https://business.leeds.ac.uk/staff/291/dr-matthew-davis) is an Associate Professor in Organisational Psychology at Leeds University Business School. Matthew has worked on a range of applied research projects with corporate partners including Rolls-Royce, Marks and Spencer, Next, Atkins, Arup and British Gas. Matthew is currently leading a ESRC funded multi-disciplinary project examining office adaptations in response to COVID-19 and how office design and ways of working impact employee social networks, workflow and performance. You can find out more about the research and access podcasts, videos, infographics and more at: www.bitly.com/adaptingoffices
Dr Linhao Fang is a Researcher in Information Systems at Leeds University Business School. Linhao has a background in Information Systems, with academic interests around technology-enabled self-regulation, Design Science Research, Educational Technology, Educational Psychology, Learning Theories, Information Technology use in organisations, Digital Workplaces and Socio-Technical Systems. He has over 10 years of research experience through various multi-disciplinary projects.
Archontia Manolakelli is an ARB-chartered Architect and interdisciplinary Design Researcher at Atkins, with a master’s degree in Psychology. She has 5+ years of practice-based experience working as a designer and member of the Atkins Building Design Research and Innovation team. Her work takes place in the intersection between human experience, architectural design, digital technology, and environmental sustainability, where she utilises quantitative and mixed-method approaches from social science towards evidence-based design. Her research to date has explored personality and spatial selection in university workspaces, interpersonal distancing preferences and personal space in corporate offices, and neurodiversity requirements for post-pandemic workplaces.
Dr Matthew Davis
Dr Linhao Fang
Archontia Manolakelli
References
Centre for Health Design (2022) About EBD. The Center for Health Design. [Online] [Accessed on 14 January 2022] https://www.healthdesign.org/certification-outreach/edac/about-ebd.
Davis, M. (2022) Adapting Offices for the Future of Work Stage 1 Report. Sway.office.com. [Online] [Accessed on 14 January 2022] https://sway.office.com/xvmFPc0I9RoEZXs2?ref=Link.
Ulrich, R. (1984) ‘View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery’. Science, 224(4647) pp.420-421.
Zuber-Skerritt, O. et al. (2002) ‘The concept of action research’, The Learning Organization, 9(3), pp. 125–131. doi: 10.1108/09696470210428840.
Are we enjoying our 4 day week so far?
Workers across the UK and USA are largely currently enjoying a well-earned four day week after Monday’s May and Memorial Day bank holidays.
How does that feel? Our guess is most employees are fans of the concept and would love to see it rolled out permanently.
At our recent Workplace Trends Research Summit we were delighted to have Andrew Barnes, the founder of 4 Day Week Global, speaking – all the way from New Zealand.
Andrew took us through the mechanism by which he introduced a 4 Day Week to his company, and the hugely successful results thereof. Andrew outlines his 100-80-100 rule and the impact that it has on business, employees’ health and wellbeing, overall productivity, and the environment.
Generally we don’t make our event recordings too widely available but this is too good to keep a secret. Take a coffee and enjoy the 23 minutes below.
“When we talk about the 4 Day Week we mean at its heart it’s a reduced hours working week on normal weekly pay but which maintains or enhances current levels of productivity.”
“British workers are actually only productive for about three hours a day.” (Economist Magazine).
“What we found when we implemented the 4 Day Week is that productivity in the company improved about 25% and this has been sustained since we implemented the policy full time in late 2018.”
Health & Safety Law – Duties to Protect Staff & Visitors from Covid-19 in their Workplaces
At last October’s Workplace Trends Conference we were delighted to welcome Simon Joyston-Bechal of Turnstone Law to our virtual stage.
Simon has over 25 years’ experience as a solicitor. Specialising in regulatory defence, he is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading health & safety lawyers. Having previously qualified as a doctor, he is in a unique position to advise employers on liability issues and planning in relation to Covid-19. He defends health and safety criminal prosecutions; and regularly lectures and provides training on health and safety duties for executive teams.
We thought his presentation was just too valuable not to share more widely, so here’s the recording of that session where Simon covers many very relevant issues, including:
What are an employer’s health & safety criminal law obligations for Covid-19?
Working from home – how far do your duties extend?
What needs to be considered in return to work plans?
Thoughts on Covid-19: Things Have Changed
Guest post by Ian Baker, Head of Workplace Consulting, EMCOR UK
“People are crazy and times are strange, I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range, I used to care, but things have changed.”
(Bob Dylan – Things Have Changed, 2000)
Just before this current situation got ‘very real’ I read that when we look back on major events, either in our personal lives or in the wider world (like a global pandemic) that we identify life as ‘before’ and ‘after’ with our views being different on either side. It gave me something positive to hold on to, knowing that change will be coming and that when we’re free to leave our homes and return to the workplace many people’s views of those workplaces and what they mean to us will have shifted.
I think the extent and direction of this shifted view will depend on the amount of time social distancing lasts (6 weeks and counting!), the generation that we belong to and our working patterns ‘before’ this situation arose.
Six weeks in and some form of change is now even more likely. How and where it takes place though is still very debatable. The workplace profession is always quick to respond with ideas, solutions and the occasional statement of fact, but one thing is certain – one size never fits all and there will be as many different ‘new normals’ as there were ‘normals’ beforehand.
I’ve always believed that ‘People’ are at the heart of any workplace, but at the time of writing I want to be more specific – I think we should be focussing our attention on ‘relationships’. When we eventually find ourselves in the ‘after’ post Covid-19, the organisations that seek to create better relationships with their employees will reap the rewards that great partnerships inevitably bring; providing spaces for increasing collaboration, encouraging flexibility, focussing on wellbeing and mental health.
Workplaces which demonstrate the value and importance of relationships outside of work will likely gain more ground. When we emerge from our homes, rubbing our eyes in the sunlight, we’ll look to see how our organisations will merge our new ‘working from home lives’ (where we have discovered new ways of working and re-discovered things that really matter to us) with a return to whatever our ‘new normals’ will eventually be.
This future should not be written by headlines, it should be written by the individuals whose views will have been altered by this seismic event, organisations should grasp this opportunity to evaluate what all this means to them, gather information for analysis and then make evidence-based decisions for change.
We have the chance to make lives better by organising work and workplaces differently. We should be taking stock now to ensure we don’t rush back to do the same things we did before, the things we didn’t like about work. It’s our responsibility to make the “after” a better one and perhaps if we grasp the opportunity, we’ll come out of this with a happy ending.
With thanks for this guest post to:
Ian Baker, Head of Workplace Consulting for leading facilities management company EMCOR UK.
Workplace Design Challenges Post COVID-19
Guest post by Francisco Vazquez, 3g Smart Group and Workplace Trends Iberia
COVID-19 has not only put our healthcare system in tension, but has also come to question the traditional model of face-to-face work that exists in most companies. The pandemic we are experiencing has made telework the new normal for millions of people and it is foreseeable that it will gain relevance in the future.
The growing adoption of telework by many organizations in recent days has shown howtechnology can promote another way of working more committed to reconciliation and the environment, and more adequate to respond to crises like the one we are facing.
Before the current health crisis, flexible work, which includes teleworking as one of its tools, was a reality in many organizations and was being implemented in others, which has allowed them to be fully operational remotely. Other companies are now facing and understanding the possibilities of remote working. It is clear to me that this crisis will accelerate the implementation of the flexible working models (including telework) and will become the new normal…. but it won’t be exactly the same!!! We will have to take into consideration additional aspects related to what we have learnt from this situation, such as social distancing, personal hygiene, disinfection, and ventilation, ….
The adoption of flexible working models must necessarily be reflected, in turn, in an evolution of space design towards what we know as flexible offices. Flexible offices have given the design solutions to this new ways of working, where, up until this crisis, the focus was set on having spaces to collaborate, social interactions and learning areas. But also to ensure meeting the company’s strategy in terms of sustainability, well-being, talent retention, flexibility, inclusion and, of course, the productivity and efficiency of the organization. New aspects like social distancing will have a big impact on how the offices will be designed, specially for meeting rooms or the traditional benches, that aimed at maximizing the number of positions.
Space ratios, that were coming down 20-30% when we implemented flexible office space, will probably increase back after this crisis.
In addition, sanitary aspects related to future pandemic will have an impact in how common areas of the buildings are designed, like access, lifts lobbies and the lift in itself. Also, the mechanical installation of buildings will be redesigned to meet new standards, for example ventilation and facility management services will change accordingly, mainly in all issues related to disinfectants and cleaning.
Flexible working models will extend rapidly in all the organisations.
Workplace design will need to give response to new challenges like keeping the recommended social distance. Workplace space ratios may rise back up.
Buildings must adapt to pandemic prevention requirements.
With thanks for this guest post to:
Francisco Vazquez, 3g Smart Group and Workplace Trends Iberia.
The role of workplace in organisational recovery
Guest post by Tim Oldman, Leesman
In late February I was swapping messages with a friend in Switzerland. I had a new client project brewing in the city where she lives so I’d have a good excuse to be there in the next few weeks. That meant she and I had an excuse for dinner and wine. I even said in the message, that Covid wouldn’t get in the way. I was wrong.
Covid-19 has caught us all out. And what scares anyone who cares to think about it is that we still don’t understand it. So as much as anxieties might be lessened by the idea we’ll be out the other side in another few months, we truly don’t know. We guessed Covid-19 wrong and I’m guessing most will guess the post-Covid future of workplace wrong. Why? Just a few examples:
Governments will not remove social distancing; they will have to progressively relax social distancing. So, some of us may be working from home through Spring, Summer, Autumn and well into Winter.
But governments cannot indefinitely fund worker retention schemes, so business leaders will equally be pressurised to get business back to normal and for huge numbers, that means workers working back in offices.
The same business leaders are coming around to the idea of larger numbers than they previously thought being able to work from home.
But they are making those judgements sat in their nice studies or garden offices with little or no real knowledge of what many of their employees are coping with in a home work setting.
And what is safe for those workers returning to offices? Not just in terms of workplace density but also commuter transport density or lunch time sandwich bar density? Can cities work as worker destinations with hazard tape separating us all by 6-feet?
For every client who says they will need to capitulate to financial pressure and reduce their real estate footprint, as many have told me they may have to add space in order to return to 1:1 desk allocation as employer and employee awareness of surface cleanliness maxes out.
I used to retreat home once or twice a week for concentrative work. But now we’re all using Zoom or Teams to buzz each other all the **** time and I feel bound to engage in order to keep social and organisational connectivity up, the enforced home isolation is killing my focus and concentration.
So, before we second guess the future of workplace let’s take proper stock of what role workplace will need to play in organisational recovery. Let’s do so properly cognisant of the likely economic uncertainty, the likely long tail of social distancing and the certain heightened public awareness of cleanliness.
And lets also get a deep understanding of how home working is actually working for all layers of employee across all functions. Then at least when the longstanding advocates of dispersed working start suggesting they’d been right all along and the office is facing certain extinction, we can test their claims with battle front evidence of our home working fight back against Covid.
With thanks for this guest post to Tim Oldman, Leesman. As the Founder of Leesman, Tim sought to offer the property market the first truly independent, unified and standardized pre and post occupancy evaluation tool. The Leesman Index is now the largest independent workplace effectiveness database containing over a quarter of a million employee responses. Read more from Leesman with the first of their Memos from the Future.
