Making plans for Nigel (on returning to the office)

We’re an excitable lot in Workplace.

After the initial rabbit-in-the-headlights reaction we’re now in a desperate scramble for intellectual territory. Barely a couple of weeks into our enforced home working programme and we’ve confidently predicted the future of work and the workplace and proclaimed without a shred of doubt that it’s never going to be the same again. Amongst a host of premature obituaries has been the office and the desk. They have of course been written before, many times. More are sure to follow.

But what do we actually know?

Some people can work well from home, while some can’t (physical space and nature of the work being the main limiters). Nigel can, just about.

Some people like working from home, at this stage, while some don’t. Nigel likes it. For now.

That’s it right now. So, it’s not much on which to confidently predict the future.

What do we think may happen?

The ‘return to the office’ will be at some unknown point in the future but the nature of the return will be likely be dictated by medical advice rather than corporate instruction.

For those who have proven they can work at home, they may elect to do so more frequently when they have a choice of home or office.

The ‘slacking’ stigma often attached to home working will probably go away.

Levels of sensitivity to hygiene and health security will probably be heightened for an indeterminate period of time, and so organisations will need to respond appropriately. This will likely affect our days in the office and journey times, too.

Collaboration, negatively impacted by being denied face to face interaction, will likely become even more problematic the longer the lockdown. Innovation will probably suffer.

So ‘changed forever’ might be something of an extreme reaction.

Yet what is clear is that the needs of people and organisations are diverging and will continue to do so.

People will likely be highly risk-aware and sensitive to what the world has just been through. Many will have experienced the virus directly or have friends or family affected. They will regard an ‘all clear’ as ‘partial clear’ and a ‘partial clear’ as ‘still dangerous’. They will react to tightly packed rows of desks and an hour packed into a train followed by nine hours of heads-down keyboard bashing packed into a bench and another hour packed into a train again. They’ll want to know their desk, keyboard, mouse and dock have all been sanitised and that no-one else will be using it that day. Anyone even daring to attend the workplace with the slightest sniffle will be immediately sent home, fortunately signalling the end of presenteeism. All that means for organisations more space, more services, more staff, higher costs, less flexibility.

When in reality the fact that organisations will have had empty corporate halls burning suitcasefulls of cash KLF-style will lead them to the opposite desire -more flexibility, lower costs, better utilisation of what they are spending money on. The exact opposite of what people will be demanding.

Organisations will have to listen to the needs and concerns of their people like never before. The wellbeing agenda, dominated as it has been in recent years by comparative trivia, will become one of basic and fundamental safety.

During the last decade we have relied on the agile workplace to self-balance, for people to choose when, where and how to work, attending the workplace as they need. Already some of the more mature companies who invested heavily in physical space have seen their offices resemble ‘rotten borough’, depopulated to Friday levels on several days of the week. It’s also taken real estate a decade to understand that self-organising systems are inherently inefficient – almost every branch of technology will testify to that.

So, organisations have two broad choices.

First, unplanned: increasing sharing density to account for the rise in home working and attendance at the location for only part of the day. As in, doing more of what has already started.

Yet that will simply exacerbate personal concerns and drive more people to work from home. Continually moving settings during the day will be deemed impossible without taking your own cleaning SWAT team with you. It won’t create the opportunities for increased collaboration and will signal the slow path to irrelevance for the workplace. More of the inefficient, with added ineffectiveness.

The pandemic may have signalled the beginning of the end of the agile workplace as we have come to know it. Potentially not in terms of its physical form, but in the way it is used.

Second: planned. This may take several forms. We may close buildings one day a week, but this will mean absorbing significant cost for unoccupied space. We may look at different allocations on different days, modelling the needs of the organisation over a typical week, with some allowance for the spontaneous activity. Or we may begin to roster presence in the office, with teams designated home working days based on their activity patterns. In this way the organisation can maximise the use of its space while ensuring that teams can work together as they need. Accompanied with an appropriate tech set-up (own kit and peripherals) and cleaning regime, and the sharing of space will be possible.

The reality will likely be a combination of variable team allocations and rostered attendance. For the property team this is potentially a huge faff. They thought with the agile workplace they had seen the back of allocation, but it’s now going to be more important than ever.

It’s the sort of challenge that’s way beyond a dumb scheduling tool. Allocations are not a one-off activity to create a static environment, they will need to change with the organisation to ensure the workplace remains relevant. Nor is it a random exercise. It’s not going to be like its previous incarnation, just colouring in seats until the bus is full, but ensuring it’s done intelligently so that the right people can work together when they’re in the office.

Neither are booking applications the answer in their current form, as the solutions needed will be required at the organisational level, not the individual. Plus, in sensitive times, the last thing people need is another task to enable them to use the office. Nigel is just too damn busy.

It will now require a technology that is able to create and test multiple scenarios in seconds, and to output to digital signage or notification as needed – yet with minimal disruption. We will still need some certainty as we re-build our routines. It will need to offer choice but in a more constrained manner. Nigel wants to know where his team will be every day, not have to wait to find out when the lift doors open.

So, it is highly possible that we are heading for a planned future to meet the divergent needs of people and organisations. It is by deploying an appropriate planning technology that we can bring them back to a common objective based on the triple bottom line: to sustain each of people and communities in the work they need to do, the commercial and financial security of the organisation, and – in only using the space we need – the planet.

We will need the experience and knowledge gained in the last decade to evolve this future workplace. We’re not going back, we’re taking the next step. Right now, instead of wild, emotive predictions of the future, we need to start moving carefully and thoughtfully towards it. It’s time to stop playing with our crystal balls and get on with it.