Developing Post-Covid Workspaces

How Covid-19 is shaping a digital-by-default workplace

Beyond necessity, Covid-19 has helped many companies realize the value of remote operations and it’s likely we’ll see them providing employees more choices and flexibilities in the post-pandemic world. Couple this with the digital revolution, which was already underway pre-pandemic, and we could see a paradigm shift that will fundamentally change the way we work. 

Before Covid-19 hit, studies showed that many companies believed their business models would need to evolve to keep pace with the wide-reaching effects of digitization. But as our new reality began to set in, it was clear that companies that were further along on their digital journeys were much better equipped to weather the impacts of the crisis. Meanwhile, many who have fallen behind the digitization curve are still looking for ways to navigate the negative impact. This crisis has shown that one thing is certain — being more digital makes organizations more productive, flexible and resilient. 

Led by HR, organizations need to fully embrace a digital employee experience and develop a clear vision for getting there. The design of work into the future needs to be curated across both virtual and physical spaces as collaboration will inevitably involve a mixture of both. The key to this hybrid workplace will be cloud adoption. According to Gartner, enterprise cloud spend is expected to grow by 6.3% by the end of 2020. The move towards cloud has enabled employees to work from any location, giving them access via a virtual environment to the same information that they’d have access to from the office. A cloud-enabled workplace will help lead to a permanent shift from location dependence to a flexible “work from anywhere” strategy that will boost productivity and help to attract and retain top talent.

It is more important than ever that property, IT and HR work together to ensure that technology, work design and leadership are aligned. Many companies have made a rapid and successful transition from an office-based to a remote workforce and cloud has been key to this – even if the speed of this transition has left a patchwork of hybrid solutions which will need to be smoothed out in the longer term. 

Covid-19 hasn’t just changed the rate and scale at which we’re going digital. Social distancing has significantly reduced building capacity, inevitably increasing the cost of square footage per employee and shifting how we think about and use space. Conference rooms will likely become personal quiet spaces, rather than multi-person gathering hubs. Open floor plans, which many offices were already converting from cubicles, will be leveraged for small group distanced collaboration. We are also witnessing a breakdown of the traditional “9 to 5”, as organizations look to stagger employee start times to reduce crowded transportation systems, while also helping to support employees with increased caregiving responsibilities. Covid is changing how we create and share information and spaces, and how we communicate with other individuals and teams.

Smaller, more localized co-working spaces may be a viable alternative if employees don’t have an appropriate space at home, want some company, or even to encourage innovation, which can suffer in fully remote working arrangements. This solution is also attractive as many employees may not feel confident taking public transportation, and more localized office spaces may encourage the adoption of safer, more carbon-neutral transportation, such as walking and biking. Without a need to commute long distances to office space, there may also be options for employees to move away from expensive areas. Taking a people-first, design-led approach is key to getting the roles, work design and tools mapped together correctly.

In the post-Covid workplace, connectivity is essential. Employees may welcome zero commute time, but if they are unable to access a secure and strong internet connection they can’t be productive. Other basics like a good power supply, air conditioning and ergonomic furniture need to be addressed to support productive and healthy remote working. HR leaders also need to be prepared to manage anxiety – both related to extended working in isolation as well as returning to physical spaces. HR leaders can help counter this by ensuring their Employee Assistance Program offerings are relevant and by introducing smart office technologies such as capacity planning and monitoring, workforce scheduling, proximity monitoring, and temperature checks to give employees peace of mind. 

HR leaders also need to think about whether “work from anywhere” works for their business. In addition to questions about the impact of remote working on innovation and engagement, if employees are allowed to move away from key business locations, travel costs may increase when employees are able to return to offices.  It is also important for HR to know where their employees are working from in order to properly apply payroll taxes and ensure their employees are working with the right immigration status when drifting from the place where they were hired.

Crisis does one thing very effectively; it forces us to rethink the ways that we do things. It gets us all to put our heads together to achieve things in time frames which would otherwise seem impossible. We can’t assume the pandemic will be the last crisis we will face, but we can conclude that “work from anywhere” makes strategic sense in the long term. Remote working will no longer be seen as a barrier to achieving strategic goals, but an enabler.