How Covid-19 Accelerated the Evolution of the Office +

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We explore how the pandemic has changed the world of work and the impact of these changes on the future of the workplace.

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The switch to home working was hardest for those living in environments not conducive to getting work done. According to research by JLL, professionals under 35 struggled more than any other generation to feel accomplished working at home. They missed having an environment where they could focus, an ergonomic workstation, and the ability to work in different spaces.

Soon enough, the novelty of working from home began to wear off even amongst those who at first revelled in their newfound freedom.

A report from The British Contract Furnishing Association (BCFA), ‘The Future of the Office and Office Workers’, revealed how the shift to home working negatively impacted on wellbeing and productivity during the pandemic:

Gensler’s research also found that the more time people spend in the office, the more time they spend collaborating:

UK employees working in the office full time spend 53% of their time collaborating with others, either in-person or virtually. Those working at home full time spend just 25% of their time collaborating with others.

The Steelcase Workspace Futures report revealed similar findings:

63% of workers saw a decline in time spent working with others during the pandemic.

Vaibhav Gujral, Partner at McKinsey & Company, sums up what workers have been missing about the office:

“We were missing the ‘heartbeat’ of the workplace: the energy that comes from serendipitous encounters that aren’t boxed into Zoom screens; the creativity that comes from spontaneous collaboration; the trust and relationships that are built through countless and unsaid small gestures and interactions.”

The office, it seems, is still the best place to connect, collaborate and innovate

People working from home can feel isolated and lonely, leaving them to feel disengaged and disconnected. Being in the office surrounded by colleagues reinforces a sense of belonging and purpose that improves wellbeing and fosters productivity, creativity and innovation.

Collaborating over Zoom can be difficult as body language and unspoken behaviours can easily be missed - plus it can be exhausting. The office supports collaboration by providing a space for teams to build on each other’s ideas, make revisions and bring new concepts to life.

Virtual meetings don’t support the ebb and flow of the creative process required for teams to innovate. The design of the workplace supports connections between people and promotes innovative activities like sharing content, testing prototypes and building on efforts in real-time.

The shift towards a hybrid workforce

Despite wanting to return to the office, one of the things people will be keen to hold onto is the greater autonomy they’ve experienced while working from home.

As a consequence, we’re likely to see companies adopt more flexible working strategies, where employees have greater control over where and when they work. Many anticipate a hybrid workforce, with employees splitting their time between the office and the home.

Each way of working has its own value, but neither can replace the other. Combining and leveraging the best of both worlds is likely to become the new normal.

A global study by Cushman & Wakefield supports this notion:

73% of the workforce believes their company should embrace some level of working from home

The researchers go so far to say that “the workplace will no longer be a single location but an ecosystem of a variety of locations and experiences to support convenience, functionality and wellbeing.”

They predict that 50% of the workforce will likely be working across a “Total Workplace Ecosystem” balancing office, home and third places.

According to the BCFA, a flexible working model “best facilitates balance, reduces stress and improves employee wellbeing more than solely working from either the home or the office.”

Homeworking is likely to play an important role in leading an organisation’s people strategy moving forward. Organisations will need to provide workers with greater control over where, when and how they work if they want to attract and retain the best talent.

Creating a better workplace experience

People may choose to go into the office to meet and collaborate with others and stay at home for deep thinking and more focused work.

If this is to be the new reality, there is now a greater imperative to make sure offices and homes are furnished and equipped properly to accommodate a hybrid workforce.

For work that remains anchored in the workplace, greater attention will need to be paid to how furniture can be kept clean, shared or readjusted to support a more mobile workforce to undertake tasks in a safe and efficient way.

Workplaces may need to import some of the home comforts workers have become used to at home. A global study by JLL conducted at the end of April 2020 found that people enjoyed many of the human and personal touches that are more typical of home settings:

• 1 in 3 employees enjoyed a peaceful atmosphere tailored to their needs.
  
  
• 1 in 4 appreciated being able to do more home-cooking or to go outside or into another room within their home to relax or seek inspiration.

This might mean more relaxed spaces and services that can be personalised to people’s preferences.

At the same time, home working is here to stay. And a focus will need to be placed on ensuring employees have access to a comfortable and productive workspace at home. This may involve providing them with equipment such as ergonomic chairs and second screens.

Some companies are reaching out to suppliers who are able to facilitate a rapid delivery of these products to the home addresses of their employees. Others are offering home office budgets or reimbursement schemes to help workers kit out their home office. These initiatives are likely to become the norm as home working continues to be a bigger part of our lives in a post-covid world.

A strategy-led approach

Two of the key factors you will need to take into account when making decisions about the future of your workplace are:

• Your people
• Your real estate

Your people

Your people are your biggest asset. So you must start with the question: what is going to make your people most effective?

Annemieke Garskamp works as a Senior Consultant in the Applied Research + Consulting (ARC) team at Steelcase. The team works with organisations to understand their work behaviours and preferences and create a workplace that supports those needs while allowing the organisation to meet their specific goals.

Annemieke believes we need to pay attention to the lessons we can harvest from the ‘work from home’ experiment so that we can make our work processes and our workplaces better:

Your first port of call is to find out what your employees are thinking and feeling. Do they want to come back to the office? What do they want that office to look like? What are they going to need in order to feel safe and be productive? Sending a simple survey out to your employees will give you a good idea of where they are.

The leadership perspective will also be important. What impact has home working had on your ability to manage and get the best out of people? And what impact has that had on your culture?

From here, you can start to think about what the impact on the office will be and how the office can be used to accommodate new demands.

If you decide to bring people back to the office, you may choose to do so in waves. The extra space you have can be used to pilot new furniture configurations or prototypes.

Your real estate

Across the world, radical office remodelling efforts are underway. Organisations with leases coming up for renewal are thinking carefully about whether to re-sign. According to the BCFA, approximately 2m sq. ft. of office space deals have been put on hold or cancelled since March 2020.

Some organisations are choosing to downsize or relocate from larger metropolitan HQs to smaller, regional satellite offices. The business benefits by saving on costs and workers benefit because they no longer have to spend two hours on a train getting into the city each day.

Others are redesigning their office space to support a ‘virtual first’ or more flexible working strategy. This is likely to be the norm as it combines the best of both worlds. Workers get to come into the office to connect and collaborate with others, while balancing that with one or two days a week at home where they have more freedom to balance their working day with their personal lives.

Then there are a small minority of companies, typically smaller businesses, who are giving up their office space altogether.

If you haven’t yet decided what to do with your office space, the key is to think about what space will be required to foster your desired outcomes in terms of productivity, collaboration, culture, and the work experience.

Putting safety first

Workers will not come back to the office if they are asked to work in ways that are not or don’t feel safe.

To encourage people back to the office, at least in the short term, you will need to focus on retrofitting what you already have to adhere to governmental health guidelines.

Design considerations

Steelcase point out that to make workplaces covid secure, we need to think about the three dimensions of safety:

Density - How can your existing assets be remodelled and modified to create a safe distance between occupants? - e.g. do you need to remove 50% of seating in meeting rooms and do benches and desks need to be lengthened or subdivided to allow people to sit 2m+ apart?

Division - Can existing screens be reused to create divisions, or will new barriers and shields need to be added to allow people to work safely at their desks?

Geometry - How can the layout of the office be changed to enable better and safer flow through the building? Can you re-orient workstations away from a standard linear approach and reconfigure desks so people aren’t sitting face-to-face without a barrier?

An office furniture audit can help you work out where your current asset stock can be deployed to answer these needs and where you may need new equipment, such as screens.

Health and safety protocols

Beyond the layout and design of the office, new health and safety measures will need to be put in place:

• Temperature checks on arrival 
• Hand sanitisation stations 
• Floor markings and signage to control the flow of people in high traffic areas 
• More frequent and intense cleaning regimes 
• ‘Clean in, clean out’ policy on shared workstations

Air purification

Some organisations are introducing air purifiers to mitigate the risk of airborne virus transmission in the workplace.

Air purifiers are typically made of a filter (or multiple filters) and a fan designed to suck in and circulate air. As air moves through the filter, pollutants and particles are captured while clean air is pushed back out into the surrounding space. They can range from small and portable domestic units, to wheeled and wall-mounted, high capacity commercial products.

Models with HEPA filters, also known as ‘High-Efficiency Particulate Air Filter’ are considered to be most effective. For example, the Aeramax Professional range is certified to be effective in reaching 99.9% airborne virus reduction within the first 35 minutes of operation.

Even before covid, worker sickness and sick building syndrome impacted levels of absenteeism and productivity in modern offices. The way that cold and flu sweeps through teams in a normal business year is evidence that breathing unpurified and recirculated air in poorly ventilated buildings can spread illness.

Air purifiers are a simple and cost-effective method for maintaining clean and healthy air. They can have a profoundly positive effect on the welfare of your people and help create a healthy office environment.

Looking beyond safety

Creating a post-covid workplace requires more than just getting the safety elements right.

We look at three models of what the workplace could look like and the design strategies that will bring them to life:

Do you need an office furniture audit?

Whether you choose to bring all workers back to the office or support a more flexible working arrangement, you’re going to need to audit your assets and begin to assess how they can be best deployed to help transform your business.

In a workspace more geared towards collaboration, rows of desks may be replaced with furniture that supports people to work together in teams. This may leave many organisations with furniture they no longer need.

There may be more life and potential in your existing assets than you thought, or there could be alternative options for recycling or disposal that you haven’t yet considered and can drive real value for your company

Physical wellbeing

Source homeworking furniture and equipment

Organisations can no longer rely on employees’ improvised homeworking adaptations or on high street products that are not built to withstand the duration and requirements of commercial office furniture. You have a responsibility to source homeworking furniture and equipment such as ergonomic chairs and second screens to help avoid discomfort, fatigue and the potential for more serious musculoskeletal issues long term.

Encourage movement

One study found that, on average, people working from home are sitting roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes longer per day than people that work in the office. It’s imperative that workers don’t feel chained to their desks at home to ‘prove’ their productivity. So encourage them to keep moving my scheduling time to get up and go for a walk, grab a coffee or take a break.

Mental wellbeing

Limit virtual meetings

Too much Zoom can lead to overstimulation and visual migraines. Limit the number of virtual meetings people participate in a day and make sure route calls have repeatable and understood agendas so they don’t last longer than they need to.

Encourage routine

Encourage workers to stick to a routine and their normal working hours while working from home, and to take regular breaks.