Post Covid, there’ll be home, office & a ‘third place’ ’ or a “satellite office” to work from
Post Covid, there’ll be home, office & a ‘third place’ ’ or a “satellite office” to work from
The pandemic has changed the nature of work, accelerating the adoption of digital technologies by at least a decade and ushering in a hybrid model where work extends beyond offices and engages more women and workplaces will benefit from allowing staff greater leeway with the help of technology.
While the office remains a critical hub & staff will gradually return, the world won’t return to its pre-Covid norm.
In India’s case, it could also see improved workplace diversity, another positive outcome of a hybrid model as only 23% of women who could be potentially working are in the workforce because issues like commuting, lack of social infrastructure like child care etc.
Third Spaces & Localised Working
https://www.unwork.com/blog/2021-trend-4-third-spaces-and-localised-working/
The term Third Space was reportedly conceived by renowned sociologist, Ray Oldenburg in his seminal work: The Great Good Place. Here he envisioned a space people used to complement their first place (home) and second place (work). This year, the distinction between our first and second spaces has become blurred, with the former playing double duty as both.
One of the key trend accelerated because of the challenges of COVID has been a (mostly) universal mandate for Hybrid working. This will see employees work part of their week at home, and the remainder in the office – activities split by the agility of the task, with most collaborative conducted in office with peers and low collaborative tasks such as emails and processing completed from home.
The move towards hybrid working will increase the demand for third spaces and localised working. In the first instance, third spaces provide an attractive opportunity for employers to decrease the density of large buildings, pushing potential footfall out to alternative spaces thereby ensuring more adequate social distancing.
Third spaces are by no means a new phenomenon; Its most ubiquitous iteration has been coffee shop culture. It has been underpinned by the growth of mobile technology which allows employees to effectively work from anywhere, but it has been more pointed in its focus – it has provided a place for much needed informal collaboration and conversations that traditional workspaces lack. It has become another way for employees to carve out spaces that they require for creativity, flexibility, and productivity. In response, prior to COVID-19, many workplaces had begun to incorporate lounge style spaces in workplaces to reimagine the ‘Starbucks’ effect in situ. In another iteration, it was the move towards corporate co-work memberships which allowed employees a more dynamic and collaborative approach to working.
In collaboration with the spatial typology or purpose driven approach of hybrid working will enable employees to work in the space they require to accomplish their objectives. Home working will be blended with time in office and at third space with employees having the autonomy to select which place suits their need; The true realisation Activity Placed Working. That these spaces are intentionally designed to be platform for networking and collaboration and they will grow in significance and the provision of these spaces will soon become necessary as opposed to desirable. It is by no means the end of the traditional workplace, but rather an enhancement which caters for the diversity of workplaces; where headquarters or traditional offices remain corporate showrooms, third spaces become edgier, exciting realms presenting another more playful, technology-enabled aspect of a corporate brand.
Localised working is creating strategically placed satellite offices which can be utilised by employees in the geographical area. This helps mitigate a lengthy, and potentially dangerous, commute into urban centres with employees able to travel by bike, bus, car or walk to a local workspace. Some companies have already moved into this space re-envisioning retail branches as new hub locations. Satellite working is underpinned by the social anthropological theory of “Dunbar’s number” which was “derived from studies of Neolithic villages and tribes” which suggests “that humans can maintain stable social relationships with no more than a hundred and fifty people at any one time”. Accordingly, this has led real estate strategists to consider that rather than a central hub for 2,000 people, smaller satellite spaces accommodating smaller number of people may be a better idea – both creating more meaningful workplace communities as well as potentially reducing real estate footprints.
The realisation of this in practical terms is through a more robust location strategy which takes employee location data into consideration when deciding where satellite offices may be best placed.
The emergence of live/play/work communities has accelerated this trend as both third and local spaces are growing in number and significance in urban centres.
CA Harshad Shah, Mumbai, [email protected]