Office Focus: Office Design after Covid-19
Designers discuss how office design is changing – both short and long term – as a result of Covid-19
Social contact and the chance to collaborate with colleagues are the two key things that office workers missed most over the months of working from home, with a quiet space to concentrate being a close third. That’s according to a survey Morgan Lovell commissioned in early June.
Despite missing the office, more than 90% of the office workers Morgan Lovell polled would like to retain some element of homeworking in the future. However, the good news for the office design community is that the office remains the place they want to spend the majority of their working time, with 69% wanting to work in the office at least three to four days a week. The office is far from dead.
One prediction is that there will be a more zoned approach to the office, with different areas used for different purposes and flooring helping to define space and direct movement. Image Credit: Vincent Hartman
This survey is backed up by data from Leesman, which produces the world’s largest survey of employee workplace experience. At the start of the pandemic the organisation launched a homeworking survey to understand people’s experience of working at home compared with the office. It now has more than 50,000 responses to its homeworking survey and more than 740,000 responses to its office survey. Comparing the two datasets gives us an interesting insight into what the workplace does well – and where it falls down.
As you might expect, people seem to miss the workplace’s ergonomic offering, particularly a comfortable workstation set up, and IT infrastructure such as printing and Wi-Fi. But they benefit from a much greater ability to concentrate at home on individual focused work, reading, and creative thinking compared to the office. Private conversations, confidential discussions and telephone calls are also much better supported at home. Even collaboration scores higher at home for planned meetings.
But it’s the informal social interaction and collaboration, together with a sense of belonging, which can’t be achieved at home. Only 62% feel that informal social interaction is supported while working from home.
Angela Love, director, Active Workplace Solutions
Overall, homeworking has proved successful, with 81% of employees reporting that their home environment enables them to be productive and 84% saying they have access to all of the information needed for the work that they do when working from home.
As we return to the workplace – even if we do retain an element of homeworking – what will be different about the look and feel of the space? The Morgan Lovell survey revealed that a third (32%) of people want the office to remain virtually the same but with reduced density while 19% want it to be exactly the same. Just 12% supported the idea that it be completely repurposed as a collaborative hub.
For Angela Love, director at Active Workplace Solutions, there are short and long-term changes to workplace design. The immediate one is to ensure people feel safe and the ‘back to work’ process is as streamlined as possible. She believes that small touches such as plants, natural light and access to open, green spaces in office environments will be important. Longer term, Love predicts the office will become ‘a large collaborative, social space where the more focused tasks are done at home or remotely’.
Rachael McCarthy, studio director, Bates Smart
But Natasha Christian, managing at director of design consultancy CMI Workplace, believes there’s an opportunity for a significant shift in how we use the workplace – beyond the need to ensure social distancing. ‘We can completely rethink the amount and type of space required. We will be very happy to let go of the constant pressure to increase office density, as we don’t think the office as we knew it pre-Covid-19 will be appropriate going forward. We look forward to creating spaces that bring people together, moving away from sitting in rows of desks answering emails that could be done anywhere.’
Christian talks about progressive organisations ‘recognising the key driver for office space will be getting together to collaborate and interact with colleagues’. She also suggests that office locations will change: ‘Why stick to a box in the centre of a city when you could gain more from interacting with international teams, working partners and business heads, and having the opportunity to meet wherever suits your business?’ She says that local work hubs in hotels, former retail spaces or remodelled business parks will become attractive alternatives for many organisations.
People’s overriding desire, as they return to the office, is for in-person collaboration, agrees Adrian Norman, head of design at Morgan Lovell: ‘The innovation and creative thinking that comes from people interacting with each other is so important for businesses to continue to grow and remain competitive.’ But he believes that personality types will approach the return to work differently. ‘After nearly four months of quiet and uninterrupted homeworking, introverts might be resistant to going back to old ways of working. The design challenge will be to bring introverts back into the office. Most businesses can’t afford to lose 50% of their staff to permanent homeworking. It risks fragmenting culture, stifling innovation and creating silos.’
Office design can help to bring introverts back by creating quiet spaces like libraries or quiet pods in the workplace. Another is to introduce new working etiquettes to protect quiet working for focused tasks. ‘We’ll need to reassure introverts that they can get work done without getting interrupted all the time,’ he says.
Most workers surveyed in architects Bates Smart’s remote working survey wanted a hybrid of home and office working post Covid, with 60% wanting to work remotely between 0.5 and two days a week. Their priorities when returning to the offi ce all focus around face-to-face behaviours – collaboration with the team (72%), social interaction (60%), cross-business collaboration (45%), mentoring (35%) and training (29%) – says Rachael McCarthy, Bates Smart’s studio director: ‘As a result of this, we are looking ahead to a way of working that sees many of us prioritise collaborative and creative activities for the workplace and individual and focused tasks for home. This redefines an effective office as a place of community, collaboration and social connection – a rally point. In contrast, an eff ective home offi ce enables us the opportunity to block out disruptions and work eff ectively as individuals, ideally achieving the deep-think “flow” state that is difficult with the disruptions of the office.’
A Morgan Lovell survey revealed that a third (32%) of people want the office to remain virtually the same but with reduced density. Image Credit: Tom Fallon Photography
But how will this impact long-term on workplace design? ‘Our early thoughts gravitate towards social engineering to inform workspace design and purposefully drive greater collaboration,’ says McCarthy. ‘Re-scaling and re-zoning of expansive work areas will be key to overcome a lack of activation, energy and engagement in a partially occupied workplace. We anticipate an elevated focus on collaborative project team neighbourhoods that cluster around highly trafficked circulation routes, with fewer buffered individual working areas on the basis that this individual and concentrated work will be prioritised for at home. In larger-scaled workplaces the emerging role of community concierge may be elevated to ensure spaces are programmed and constantly recalibrated to optimise collaboration.
Display (both high-tech and low-tech) will become increasingly important to drive visibility of the content that teams are generating across the organisations, driving valuable cross-business collaboration opportunities.’ While these are generalisations, McCarthy expects that the reality will be a lot more nuanced to align to specific business and cultural drivers that make one organisation unique from another.
Perhaps one solution to this is to continue to increase the domestication of the office environment. James Scully, managing director at flooring company Quadrant, says that incorporating elements of the home and the natural world will subconsciously reassure people. ‘Hygge – which is incorporated into Danish lifestyle as part of a “survival strategy” for winter days in which they have to stay inside – has interesting parallels with the Covid-19 lockdown. So its influence in the mixing of elements from residential design with commercial office design is perhaps understandable.’ Scully also predicts a more zoned approach to the office with different areas used for different purposes and flooring helping to define space and direct movement. Activity-based working will clearly become even more popular.
The pandemic will also accelerate the introduction of new technology to the workplace. Glen Wilson, head of projects at bathroom and kitchen fittings specialist Grohe UK, predicts an increase in automation and contactless interaction, whether it be infrared taps, touch-free soap dispensers, contactless drinks machines, and automatic sanitary fittings. Even voice-activated sit-stand desks have been mentioned by some.
Overall, it seems that the pandemic is unlikely to fundamentally shift perceptions of the office – at least for the majority of organisations. Beyond the immediate changes brought by the need to socially distance we’ll see more flexible and home working, an increase in activity based working, and a move towards the office being seen as a collaborative hub. Many organisations will use the pandemic as an opportunity to reduce their real estate footprint, and there will be those standout businesses that use Covid as a springboard to either ditch their office or completely transform it. But the office will remain remarkably similar in the long-term for the majority, an important symbol of an organisation’s values and brand. And as McCarthy at Bates Smart puts it – a rallying point.
Scenario Planning
Architects Bates Smart envisages four scenarios for the post-Covid workplace, with many variations
Scenario 1
Long live the office
Conservative organisations will seek to return to pre-Covid business as usual as quickly as possible with 100% of their staff working at the office. They will do the minimum to manage the restrictions around the virus in the interim.
Scenario 2
Death of the office
At the radical end of the spectrum. Some organisations are citing a future where 100% staff continue working remotely. This is most prevalent within large tech organisations that adapted easily to remote working.
Scenario 3
Work life/home life
Flexibility to work from home and office, involving a shift in user patterns that will impact the types of spaces in the ‘workplace’. Bates Smart sees this as the most likely scenario for many organisations as it manages the variability of functional roles, changing work intensity/type, and generational preferences (the next generation will prefer virtual).
Scenario 4
Hub and spoke
Involving a central business district (CBD) and satellite offices. This might take the form of a small CBD interaction suite with larger satellite workspace/s in the suburbs or a larger CBD workplace with access to co-working spaces in suburban locations. This offers many of the conveniences of homeworking by offering a ‘local’ workplace; however, it avoids the disruption and better overcomes the challenges of separating work and home life associated with working from home.
