What changes when “the workplace of the future” really means “the workplace of one year from now”?

The workplace of the future has always felt like a concept five years or more down the road. Corporate and Commercial real estate specialists would gather and look out at what trends were shaping productivity, usually with a heavy focus on technology. This has led us down the road of WeWork and flexible, agile working over the past few years.

Now, the future of the workplace is an urgent topic with a deadline. In almost all cases, the way an office has always operated cannot continue while there is any on-going community spread of Covid-19. As a concept, social distancing is not something that can really work within an office. There are too many shared points of contact that exist:

• Elevators and reception areas tend to herd people through the same controlled security points requiring lots of close contact.
• Doorways and hallways do not allow for six foot distancing without stopping to wait for people to pass going the other way.
• Kitchens, breakrooms, coffee machines, water coolers, refrigerators are shared spots during short bursts of activity at arrival, lunch time, and before departures.
• Restrooms (urinals and sink areas in particular) are not well designed for keeping people spaced.

As long as social distancing is necessary, the office will need to be different. But the rub is that we don’t know how long social distancing needs to be a real thing. The workforce of the near-future only lasts through the period where social distancing is required. Once that milestone goes away, everything starts to look back to the way it was before Covid-19. The likelihood of another global pandemic is low but obviously not zero.

The question becomes how do companies choose to treat social distancing, as the new normal and invest in it as a long-term trend or as a temporary anomaly that is addressed when and as needed through other means (WFH). Until we know how long social distancing is required, it makes no sense planning beyond that range.