Embracing the horizon

By innovating the hybrid workplace, corporate real estate is playing an integral role in preparing companies for the future of work.

When workplaces throughout the world were forced to shut down in early 2020, few organizations were prepared. Traditionally, workplaces have been designed around an employee-workplace relationship that puts work at the center—go to work, do your job, go home, repeat.

Although Microsoft had been enriching that relationship with programs that address the physical and financial wellbeing of their employees, the traditional workplace relationship model remained largely intact. Then came the pandemic.

COVID-19 highlighted the needs of today’s workforce while setting the expectations of tomorrow’s. Having spent the last four years conducting research and leveraging insights as part of the company’s ongoing inclusive workplace efforts, Microsoft was well-equipped to respond to this changing landscape.

We understand the future of work is transforming and hybrid work practices are here to stay. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of multiple teams within our corporate real estate (CRE) group, we’re beginning to realize the future now.

What does it mean to go to work?

Applying lessons learned from nearly two years of remote work, the CRE team is accommodating the heightened focus on physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing that has come to be a defining factor of the workplace as we return to our office buildings. More like turning a dial than flipping a switch, the plan features a gradual return to global workplaces and embracing the flexibility that our hybrid model offers. 

“The path we’ve taken since day one has

been to spend time understanding.”

When campuses began shutting down, our CRE teams mobilized quickly to assess current projects and existing spaces in the face of rapidly changing workplace needs. “How do we come back safer?” was the guiding question, but what “safer” looked like, and when returning was even possible, kept shifting. In other words, short-term working from home needs became long term ones, and what appeared to be stopgaps have developed into established hybrid-work practices.

“The path we’ve taken since day one has been to spend time understanding,” says Jennifer Beatty, a strategy and lease administration lead for Microsoft’s Global Workplace Services (GWS). “Whether it’s been surveys, discussions with groups, individual leadership interviews, and conversations across business groups and partners to understand their perspectives. We made decisions based on that information.”

Expanding our mindset

Taking time to understand was a two-way street. Microsoft employees adapted to a mindset of synchronous and asynchronous work supported by rapidly developing tools and technologies that are enabling collaboration and continuity of work. Our mindset expanded in other ways, too. 

“We’re combining hybrid insights from our Gen Z research to shape a new set of convictions.”

“COVID has changed the way people think about the workplace and what they expect from it,” says Matt Ayres, lead of research for GWS. This new mindset, one that Matt says aligns with the next generation workforce, is reshaping the opportunities we have to imagine building location, function, and design in relation to our most valuable asset—our people. One of the ways the pandemic has impacted Matt’s work is by speeding up the realization of such insights and providing substantial new information for what’s to come.

“The acceleration of patterns of work have given us insights to think about that long-term reshaping of work,” he explains. “We’re combining hybrid insights from our Gen Z research to shape a new set of convictions and research questions.” 

Welcoming the future

Anticipating a large-scale influx of Gen Z over the next decade—by 2030, Gen Z and Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce—Microsoft began planning for fundamental shifts in workplace design. Seeking to understand the future workforce has been critical in helping us navigate the needs of today’s workers.

“We worked closely with our capital planning team about how hybrid affects the portfolio and the supply and demand of space,” says John Scherer, a GWS workplace strategist whose team has helped adapt the hybrid strategy. “There’s a constant balance of our tactical research with business groups around what their immediate hybrid future is and weighing that against the research we’re doing.”

Microsoft is resolute in its commitment to providing an inclusive and adaptive employee workplace experience, and this work will be crucial in developing and maintaining a dynamic portfolio strategy. Because of that, even a company as large as Microsoft can be nimble in responding to global shifts and cultural differences.  

Navigating the now and shaping the future

As Microsoft has been welcoming employees back to its workplaces, we’ll be looking with interest at emerging patterns and the formation of durable work practices. Our goal is to gain a richer understanding of the ways work is evolving in order to deliver the most responsive and supportive employee experience possible.