The Changing Workplace Design

Workplace redesign trends began long before the pandemic. In April, I authored an article on the rise of work pods and diverse ways of working. Recent research is showing that organizations are continuing to show an interest in workspace alternatives such as pods, co-working options, and pop-up offices as they rethink their office leases, facility needs, and budgets. Whether it’s co-working, virtual office space, open workspace, podding, or hotdesking, the workplace?is changing and becoming quite creative, and for good reason, the trends point?toward sustainability and economics. The co-working concept?is derived from freelancers and entrepreneurs working in the same space, exchanging knowledge and ideas- even collaborating. While?each entrepreneur works individually, they share the same space.

?While pandemic and endemic restrictions have played a role in the reduced request for office space, North America showed 35% profitability according to survey data in?the Co-working Space Trends Survey conducted from November 22 through December 23, 2021 (Deskmag, 2022). Organizations that are implementing alternative work models are initiating novel approaches to their workplace designs such as adding a variety of work pods for differing employee workstyles. Work pods, for some organizations, are being used as a cost-effective and flexible way of managing office space without having to commit to a multi-year lease in an era of uncertainty. The Cushman & Wakefield Real Estate report (Smith, 2023) cited inflation, tight labor market, and economic uncertainty as key factors which contributed to the 23% reduction in leasing transactions in the first quarter of 2023. Reasons for reduced real estate demand were attributed to inflation, a competitive labor market, recent bank failures, and recession fears. Subsequently, the National Office Vacancy Rate increased by 18.6% (Bove, 2023; Smith, 2023).

?The first quarter of 2023 represents the third straight quarter of reduced leasing activity. A key contributing factor from the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Emerging?Real Estate Trends Report (2023) illustrates the influence of the shift from office to working from home which is still impacting the real estate market. According to the PwC’s report, less than 50% of office workers have returned to their office at minimum one day per week in major markets. However, there is cautious optimism that this will change over time as employers try to balance office requirements with employees’ needs for flexibility. So, what does all of this mean? It means that organizations continue to experiment with alternative workspaces, staffing schedules, and employee engagement initiatives to optimize their communities of engagement and belonging while strategically managing their budgets.

?Customized Workspaces

??Workplace redesign is not a new concept. Researchers have?been studying the ways that workplace ecology impacts workplace productivity for decades. What is new is rethinking workplace design in an endemic post-COVID world, yet preparing for a future of unknown pandemics and environmental threats. For example, some organizations had already begun experimenting?with offering employees workspace options for those wishing to work in silence, teams wishing to speak softly in collaboration, and teams that wanted an atmosphere to talk and collaborate as loudly as they needed to accomplish their work. In the 2018 Americas Occupier Survey, 45% of survey respondents indicated that they would incorporate design spaces that are flexible and facilitate employee productivity. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents indicated that they would include unassigned seating as part of their spacing strategy while other respondents had an interest in continuing to explore other office solutions.

?In the, 2023 US MarketBeats Report, the top three reasons that organizations considered redesigning their workspaces included reducing costs (50%), flexible leasing contracts (52%), and satisfying short-term needs (43%). The 2023 Americas Occupier Survey predicts an increase in office vacancy rates in 2024. While office vacancies are on the rise, so are office pods and alternative work models.

?The Rise of Office Pod Use

?In 2010, the Research Consortium for the Future of Work conducted a survey on what work would look like in 2025. Global representation included human resources and corporate leaders from Absa Bank (South Africa), Tata Consulting and Infosys (India), Manpower (US), Save the Children, and World Vision (Gratton, 2011). The five key trends that emerged as influencers of work included technology, globalization, the price of oil, demographic changes, and social trends such as company migrations around urbanization and talent supply.

After identifying these five external trends, survey respondents identified internal organizational trends that would influence work tasks, how work would be completed, and the work environment such as developing the values and behaviors of leaders, considering work teams, partnerships, and matrixed relationships, redesigning performance, development, processes, and building virtual and networked teams. With all of these seismic changes, are we taking seriously the question, “Are we ready for the shift?”

According to Lynda Gratton (2011), “It’s about making hard decisions about the life you are going to lead.” A decade later, we find ourselves emerging from one of the worst global health disasters in history while still grappling with some of the same themes. The pandemic has spurned new research into workplace environments and how they could be redesigned into healthier and more productive places where employees want to be. Enter…workplace pods. In strategizing the workplace of the future, organizations are incorporating flexibility, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and the need for agility in responding to unpredictable internal and external forces that are impacting the way in which they do business.

?In the Rest Facility and Energy Pod Survey (2021), sleeping pods were introduced to healthcare workers comprised of doctors and nurses assigned to critical care units in order to?improve their well-being and productivity.?The quantitative purpose of the survey was to assess their levels of fatigue and alertness before and after their shifts. The qualitative purpose was to ascertain each worker’s individual experience in using a sleep pod. A total of 93 healthcare workers responded to a pre-pod survey and 63 workers responded to a post-pod survey. Among key survey results was an increase in worker alertness, well-being, and driving ability.

Further research shows that workplace pods have been used by NASA, Google, the University of Miami, the University of Florida, and HuffPost (Zimmerman, 2018). ?The Silen Space Research project ?(2017) investigated the use of meeting pods to manage acoustics, flexibility, privacy, and convenience. Silen Space launched its first meeting pod in 2018. Today, the Silen pods can be found at companies such as Ernst & Young, Coca-Cola, Spotify, Proctor and Gamble, and Airbus (Aasmae, 2021).

?Here Today and Gone Tomorrow: The Use of Pop-Up Offices

?I had my first encounter with a pop-up store last winter. It was a candy store that engaged its customers with games on the outside while they anticipated getting inside the store. The line to visit the store was long. I observed an employee outside of the store engaging and exciting the customers who were eager to get inside. I asked the employee how the candy game worked. One thing he said to me that stuck in my mind was that I should be sure to visit now while they are here because they are only here for a limited time and then they will fold and be moving to the next location. What a concept! I found myself thinking about the pop-up store as I authored this article which, of course, led me to research the topic of pop-up stores in a changing business environment.

?The use of pop-up offices was accelerated by the pandemic and the need for organizations to become more agile. Flexible office space was used to fill that need using a “pop-in and pop-out” concept. In fact, the April issue of Catalyst-PPD titled, “The Return-to-Office Dilemma: Tips on Strategic Planning for the Ever-Changing Pandemic and Endemic Workplace” offered examples of how organizations could rethink office space and work locations as part of their strategic plan. One of the considerations mentioned in the article was the use of work pods (Duncan, 2023). Pop-up offices have been trending for several years and causing organizations to rethink the traditional office model (Brandon, 2016; Bernstein et al., 2020).

?Virtual Work and the Paradoxes of Engagement

The virtual work concept is lauded for its efficient and cost-effective networks, platforms, apps, and new working models. It was also designed to encourage collaboration both locally and globally. However, our virtual world has disconnected us as much as it has connected us. We have become more collaborative and engaged while simultaneously lonely. We have become more knowledgeable yet oblivious to each other’s basic needs. We are indeed living in a both-and world. In all of our digital, AI use, and metaversing, ?let’s not forget to disconnect so that we can reconnect.

?References

?Aasmae, K. (2021). Back to work?

Why your next office could be a soundproof pod.

Berbegal-Mirabent J. (2021). What Do We Know about Co-Working Spaces? Trends and Challenges Ahead. Sustainability. 13(3):1416. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031416.

?Bernstein, E., Blunden, H., Brodsky, A, Sohn, W., & Waber, B. (2020). The implications of working without an office. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/07/the-implications-of-working-without-an-office.

Bove, T. (2023). Office vacancy will increase by 55% by the end of the decade as hybrid and remote work push real estate to an ‘inflection point’. Fortune. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2023/02/22/office-vacancy-rate-grow-remote-work-pushes-employees-out-of-cities/.

Dore, E., Guerero, D., Wallbridge, T., Holden, A., Anwar, M., Eastaugh, A., Desai, D., & Clare, S. (2021). Sleep is the best medicine: How rest facilities and EnergyPods can improve staff wellbeing. Future healthcare journal, 8(3), e625–e628. https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2020-026.

?Duncan, V. (2023). The return-to-office dilemma: Tips on strategic planning for the ever-changing pandemic and endemic workplace. LinkedIn Author. Retrieved from https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/return-to-office-dilemma-tips-strategic-planning-valerie-a-duncan-%3FtrackingId=7bgfmn3dF1yONoitYFfASQ%253D%253D/?trackingId=7bgfmn3dF1yONoitYFfASQ%3D%3D.

Gratton, L. (2008). The Shift. Vimeo [Video]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/22283151.

Oygür, I., G??er, ?. and Karahan, E.E. (2022), Hybrid Workplace: Activity-based Office Design in a Post-pandemic Era?. Journal of Interior Design, 47: 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/joid.12218.

PricewaterhouseCoopers 2023 Real Estate Trends Report. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Retrieved from https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/financial-services/images/pwc-emerging-trends-in-real-estate-2023.pdf.

Smith, D. (2023). Cushman & Wakefield Real Estate Report. U.S. Office MarketBeat Reports. Retrieved from https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-states/insights/us-marketbeats/us-office-marketbeat-reports.

?Zimmerman, K. (2018). It's Time To Start Taking Naps At Work. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaytiezimmerman/2018/02/01/time-start-taking-naps-work/?sh=69b9b0df78b6.