The Office is dead. Long Live the Office.

As we encountered the lock down for the first time in our life time and as we started to find a way to carry on with our lives and livelihood, we realized new ways of working around things which was an absolute not possible or we knew but doesn’t work here phenomenon a few weeks before. Of the various meme’s which were floating around during the lock-down the one which captured my imagination the most for its relevance was  the one on how the pandemic was the reason for digital revolution of our workplaces and not any CXO .

 Indeed the pandemic leapfrogged our journey as organisations and as employees into the digital world. We learnt to do business digitally in all aspects of the business wherever it was possible. As we had no option but to change, we undertook the painful journey in our own small way with each one of us having a different set of problem to deal with the change .Due to the prolonged lockdown the painful change slowly started to become a forced habit and being human whatever is a habit becomes more comfortable than anything else as its familiar to us. What was a change management few months back became the new normal.

 As we got used to and became comfortable with the new normal slowly things turned back and the country and economy started opening up. Offices started opening although with caution and limited days in a week, we were supposed to go to office. The same employees who had huge challenges in working from home once started talking about higher productivity in working from home and how beneficial it is for both the employee and the organisation. There were many who still wanted to go back to office and there were many who wanted to continue to work from home. However one thing every office goer agreed and truly started believing that there is no need to be in office every day and to get the work done for employees who work out of offices it’s not necessary to be in the four walls called office contrary to what we all believed few months back. This insight was picked up by organisations across and each organisation depending on the industry started working towards leveraging on the work from home phenomenon for greater good of the organisation and employee both and started working on how they would want to evolve in the days ahead

Did a benchmarking of few organisations across industries and found out that organisations are essentially looking at four broad themes to institutionalise the work from home culture in the days ahead .

1. Define the roles that can work intermittently and roles which can work from home on continuous basis from home to ensure that business objectives are met at all times.

2 .Design and Define the Benefits and Allowances to be provided in case of Work from Home to make the employee comfortable into the new way of life.

3. Evaluate the infrastructure requirements in the changed scenario and how the organisation can reduce its fixed costs. This is to ensure that organisation derives the cost advantage.

4. Define the guidelines on Etiquettes for the New Normal with both Work from Home and Work From Office Scenario co existing in the work place. This to ensure work life balance for employees .

Based on above parameters organisations have worked on various models of WFH be it completely WFH or Hybrid options as it suits there industry. Every organisation is evaluating the options and taking a step ahead in this direction given the fluidity in the situation of the pandemic. The jury is still not out on this and will take some time to evolve .However one thing is common that Organisations are realising, it’s in the fact that social capital that gets built, the culture that gets driven when employees are working from offices may not be same if it’s completely work from home, may be its not possible, and hence an hybrid culture will be a better solution eventually for all as the pandemic hopefully settles down. Whatever be the verdict based on how things shape up in the near future as we continue to battle the pandemic and continuously evaluate the best option for the business and its employees to operate ,its for certain that the office of tomorrow is not the same as it used to be . The office of tomorrow probably will be much more different from what we all have experienced and believed all our lives. We have now realised the following in the digital world

1 .That work can happen from anywhere, four walls of office doesn’t define the boundary to work

2 Its far more productive to use the commuting time on working on an assignment for both the employee and the organisation,

3 .It’s important to connect with colleagues and intermittent meetings in person along with being connected through telephone and internet can enable great work relationships as well.

4. Flexibility in working hours creates better work life balance for the individual and enables better productivity for the organisation

5. Huge infrastructure to create offices is waste of resource for the organisation and offices can become much smaller in the days ahead.

To sum it up, as we traverse through the time and see our workplaces evolve taking the learnings of the pandemic and further evolve based on how our world shapes in the days ahead as the pandemic will continue for some time,it’s for certain that the workplace we used to spend most of our time together and called it as  office will definitely not be the same anymore . We may still call it as office but it will be much different in character, size and demographics from what it used to be. The experiences we have had of our offices will become history and we will live to tell the tale on how offices used to be in the pre pandemic era and how it changed forever in our lifeti