The future of the office!

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I have been prompted by several friends and family about what I think will be the future for the workplace. Not that I’m and expert on the subject, but we work with companies that are trying to gain efficiency in their daily operations specially around office optimization. I also. like many of you, I have been in a seat in a corporate environment and have gone through several organizations with many different policies about work from home!.

With #Covid19, pretty much the whole world has transitioned to the working from home mode. I’ve heard of businesses that had to rush to purchase laptops for their workforce so they could continue working while staying safe at home. Many things have to change to enable it, changes to systems, enable VPN, adopt tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, etc….

But what will the future look like, there are many people that are asking that question. How will my office look like when I get back, what kind of policy will be enforced. Here are my predictions:

25% – 30% of the workforce will not be back to the office on a 9-5 / 5 days a week schedule

Most companies are starting to realize that they can operate in this mode, and that certain staff/roles do not need to be in close proximity of each other or can have a rotating schedule to when they will be in the office. Why? Well, think about the girl down the aisle, that is always on calls. Why does she needs to have a desk in the office?, when she spent 95% of her time on the phone, especially when they are already working with remote staff. A friend of mine has a team where basically 80% is either in another province or in another country, she already manages them remotely so why do we need an office for that person? Those seats can either translated into savings if the business can reduce their office footprint or opportunities for additional staff.

But then comes the Social distancing factor, companies can’t go back to normal crowded space in the office, they must maintain a reduced number of people in the office, in order to reduce the risk of transmission and reduce the operational risk of a 100% sick workforce. This will require that there is extra space between desk, calling for blocked off seats, or a full redesign of the office space. Several businesses were on a transformation journey prior to the pandemic from standard cubicle space into an open concept. They spent $$$ in this Agile transformation to have to go back and put walls and cubicles once again. It probably will be mandatory to have a reduced amount of staff at any given time in the office and minimum separation requiring extra coordination and management of the office space. This leads us to the next section, the management of the office space.

More Automation in the Office space and online building management

We will see more automation, where?. Everywhere, the demand for automated faucets, sinks, hand sanitizer dispensers will go up. People will want to reduce the number of surfaces that they touch, demanding touchless everything. But automation will also affect other parts of the business, seat reservations, even though lots of roles will be working from home 100% of the time. Some of those people might at one point need to head back into the office. So new tools to manage the number of people in the office and ensure that proper social distancing is being followed will be required. You might be required to book a seat in advance of heading to the office, much like they book a meeting today and there will be systems that will manage it in the background to ensure maximum allowed capacity is not exceeded.

The benefits of those tools will come later. With the increased data points on office services and furniture, monitoring the amount of printing, office supplies, and many other variables that go around the office on a daily basis, the business might be able to make decisions that improve their operational expenses.

We have seen seat monitoring devices that will automatically notify the cleaning staff on which desk needs to be sanitized to improve efficiency and cost. Such platforms will open the door to monitor that proper social distance guidelines are being followed in the early adoption days.

An again anything and everything can pretty much be connected nowadays to provide additional data points and help ensure a safe work environment.

Data is the key here, with the additional automation and monitoring of new operational gains can be achieved. These will dictate how enterprises move forward in the future of the workspace.

Team Events and meetings might be gone or reduced to very minimal

Although a great team-building activity can work marvelous things within the organization. At this point, I think there will be a long time to get those back to pre-COVID times. Some of it will be adversity from people to gather in big groups or any group size whatsoever. But also on from the company perspective, it will be a challenge. These types of events cost money and we are heading into a recession where budgets and expenses will be watched to the cents.

I’ve heard and seen lots of companies doing wine and cheese Zoom calls, or Virtual lunch and learn. I think this will continue for a while as they continue to form good links and connections between employees. Once restaurants and venues start to open we might see some limited team lunches but there is still a long shot for those.

Meetings will be mixed between some F2F and Virtual, I think the later will prevail for a while, people have learned to have those and be effective at them. The other side is tools to support those are getting better and better, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts, and Zoom continue to improve their offering and adding features that will help improve the experience of their user base.

Faster commute from @home to @Work!!!

I foresee that the reduced need to commute for a lot of people will have an impact on traffic. Yes, there will be skepticism to use public transit as well, but I don’t think the later will be as much that will impact our traffic. For those who will still want and or need to go to an office, there will be an improvement in our daily commute.

But one of the things that you will see is governments trying to stimulate the economy with infrastructure projects, road expansions, and improvements will now receive the desired funding to be carried away, on the short side they might impact our traffic but have a long-lasting effect on better commuting.

There will be a natural increase over time but the shift to working from home with 25-30% of the workforce will last long before we see a considerable increase of commuters. A couple of things that might change also is the way we commute. Carpool and public transit will look much different. It will be long before they go back to normal crowded trains and buses. It could impact the road traffic, but I think in a society where 80% or more of the vehicles on the road have 1 person the impact of carpool will be negligible. And Public transit will still be a valuable mode of transportation for those who do not have a car or can’t afford one

New Services, new unicorns will arise!

With all the changes to the workplace and our daily lives changing from to a more local concentric society, we will for sure see new services raise (as a matter of fact they already have), two months ago Home delivery for Beer was not available in my neighborhood, now there are two to three companies doing it. Like that new food delivery, new meals systems, new subscription boxes, and who know what other new services will open up.

There is an increasing demand for office cleaning already, there will be more sanitation services and subscriptions to services like hand-sanitizer. Hopefully, these new services will allow for the re-employment of some of the people that are losing their jobs through this pandemic.

Companies like UBER and Skip the Dishes have seen incredible growth during the quarantine periods, in the near future there will be still an increasing demand for this, but many new services will open up. I can think of Pick up my Laundry! (TM) , or Driveway dog Grooming, will definitely be services that most people would want to try and use more regularly as it helps with social distancing and can in most cases be booked while you work from home, giving you back valuable time of your day.

New tools and services will be available

I know I already talked about Teams, Hangouts, and platforms for management of office space, but there will be new tools also for other types of tasks. Online whiteboards, Remote IT services, Home office auditing services (comes to mind!). I see tools like Slack and Jira and many other cloud base project management platforms raising to the challenge of remote working. As well as new features coming from existing platforms

But new tools will also pop-up, I, unfortunately, don’t have a crystal ball that can predict what they would be. But with adversity there is innovation. Some of the most valuable inventions in our history have come from challenging times. With limited mobility and increased limits on public gathering, there will be for sure new services developed to satisfy our needs. At the same time, new online tools will be created or raise from the unknown to be the highlights of the world and next tweeter, uber or WhatsApp. I could also see an increased use of the online platforms for Medical purposes, like Zoom Dr Calls, but with enhanced services, also new devices and platforms to diagnose you remotely might become popular.

At the end – it will not be the same and we all know it

Yes, I think we all can agree it will not be the same, and that we will see new things open up. We need to focus on the opportunities and the innovation that will come out of this. I think if humanity learns to appreciate the value of human contact and improves their behavior, believes toward one another we can come out of this with a lot more than what we lost.

Here are a few links to some good articles I found trying to educate myself on the topic:

Stay safe, stay home and Visit me again! (Virtually that is!)

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