Most everyone reading one of my posts works in or around Corporate Real Estate. This self-selected group has probably spent an inordinate amount of time in their career thinking about what a workplace is, how they are designed, how employees use them, and the attributes successful workplaces have. But one big fact has been brewing that may change the fundamentals of what a workplace is.
It is increasingly rare for employees to come into the workplace for a full day of solo work. Five years ago, a large proportion of employees in an office would show up in the morning, put their headphones in, do their work, maybe have some casual conversations with others, and then go home. They were in the workplace because it was the best and most productive way for them to do their day-to-day job. Coming out of the pandemic, home offices have been greatly enhanced while a huge number of employees developed healthy, productive work patterns in that new home office space.
This means that, increasingly, activity inside the office involves multiple spaces. Everyone may still use a desk at some point, but they also use conference rooms, collaboration spaces, open spaces, and amenity areas at a higher rate. For the sake of argument, let us say that 1 out of every 3 colleagues in the office attended a conference room meeting before the pandemic and that ratio is now 1 out of every 1.5 colleagues. This means that the mobility of employees inside the office is 2x as high per person as it was before. Increased mobility creates office noise (and energy) as well as increases pressure on flexible spaces.
Mobility must be accounted for in workplace strategy and design. Some of you may be nodding your heads thinking “he is about to talk about Activity Based Working.” I hate to burst your bubble, but I have always found that approach limiting because it focuses on the activities and not the people. Activities may objectively be best done in a certain type of space, but that does not mean employees will prefer to move to or actually work from that space. An over-focus on the activities people do in the workplace will lead to a misalignment between how the workplace is meant to be used versus how the employees use it. Humans do not prioritize the vague notion of efficiency, they prioritize their personal comfort and what makes them feel effective.
So let us circle back to the question about the role of the workplace. The workplace has always been (and still is) about supporting the employees that use it. However, the things the employees use it for have changed pretty dramatically. A workplace that was perfectly supportive of employees in 2019 may undermine the effectiveness of employees in 2024. It is not simply a matter of increasing the number of conference rooms or collaboration spaces, it is about understanding what employees are doing today and why they are working the ways they are.
A revolution in how employees work requires a revolution in how workplaces are designed.
Revolutions take time, energy, frustration, and hard work to figure out and resolve. A real estate and workplace function cannot simply try to evolve from where they were to where they need to be. Evolution will always wind up short of the mark. Revolution often throws out the old.