Shaping our communities

I recently conducted an office tour of Manchester, looking for a new place for Slalom to call home. Exciting as the experience was, as I walked around the city, I became conscious of how our decisions, and more importantly our behaviours, will impact those around us as the current restrictions are relaxed.

Generally there was a buzz around the city; people were out and about, enjoying their freedom and the weather. However, the offices are quiet as people continue to work remotely. Office occupancy levels are high, but footfall is low; businesses have office space but are currently using very little of it.

It struck me that as we think about returning to our offices, there’s a risk that we’re overly cautious, a risk that we focus on managing the downside risks rather than maximising the broader upside benefits.

There’s also a risk that we become introspective, focusing solely on our own customers and our employees without considering the wider implications of the decisions we make for the communities we work in.

We will soon be entering a period of experimentation as people start to return to offices, adopting “hybrid” ways of working that accommodate people working in different physical locations. During this period, we’ll test what an office means to us personally as individuals, collectively as organisations and as a wider ecosystem.

How do we make sure our experiments consider the wider implications? How do we value the impact on businesses that are directly dependent on our custom and the wider supply chains?

For local and central governments, it can't just be a matter of “wait and see”: What can be done to further reduce the risks of physically returning to offices? How can we entice people back into our cities? How can we accelerate the next transition?

The decisions we make on the back of these experiments will have far reaching consequences. The larger our business, the bigger the impact we will have.

The next phase of relaxation of restrictions will give us an opportunity to push ahead with our experiments and to reinvigorate the wider business ecosystem, allowing them to re-imagine their business models to complement our new work patterns too.

Many organisations will offer flexibility, at least in the short term, and working patterns will be a matter of personal choice. Therefore, we will all play an important role in shaping our future working environments and the communities within which they are located.