As business leaders weigh up the pros and cons (and costs) of bringing workers back to the office, an interesting change is happening.
At one end of the spectrum, organizations are keen to get their people back and return to some sort of normal as quickly as possible. They are investing in measures to make their workplaces safer, such as partitions and ‘sneeze screens’, temperature checks on entry, and one-way systems around the building.
At the other end, companies are taking a long hard look at this investment and considering whether, in the long run, it’s worth it. If their teams are happy and productive working from home, and if they can continue to work remotely with occasional time at an office or meeting venue, then perhaps there’s no need for an immediate return to the workplace.
This dilemma raises several questions:
What is the future of the office if only a small amount of people go back to work?
Does the office become an expense some organizations no longer need?
What is the office for, anyway?
In a fascinating presentation for the Smart Workspace Design Summit (June 2020), speaker Mike Walley, Senior Director of Global Real Estate & Workplace Strategy at Criteo, concluded that we no longer need the office in the same way as before.
The office won’t die, but it will change, and the future of the workplace for those who are willing to accept this change will be extraordinarily different.
Here are the highlights of Walley’s talk, which illustrate how he came to this conclusion and what this perspective could mean for the future workplace.
What is the Office For?
Extracts from Mike Walley’s presentation ‘Exit Strategies: The Cost of Getting Back to Work’
We decided, let’s get on with thinking about the actual nuts and bolts of getting people back into the office. How can we open up our spaces while maintaining physical distancing? How can we keep people safe? What are the protocols?
The first thing we realized was, it’s very hard.
We have 39 offices across the globe. We realized that we could only accommodate 20%, possibly 25%, of people in the office safely. So we started working with manufacturers to develop the things we needed. Screens to go between desks; hand sanitizer stations; and desk guardians — a giant post-it note the size of A0 paper, that people can peel off and lay on the desk so they’re always in contact with a clean surface.
Then we thought about what we would do if someone in our team fell ill with COVID-19. We realized we would have to shut the entire office and deep clean it. To minimize disruption, we planned to open one floor at a time, so that if it becomes contaminated, we could close it and move everyone to the next floor.