It’s the types of conversations like my chat with a Global Director at Google, a music producer and the CEO of a major food grower and distributor over dinner recently, which really help me to understand how businesses of different shapes and sizes are approaching the return to the office.
In chatting to them, it was interesting to hear their take on the office – both from a cost savings perspective, as well as how they are approaching their workplace strategy.
We debated the merits of a sea change approach versus the King Canute approach of not fighting the wave of employee sentiment against a wholescale return to the office.
Both were keen to see an adjusted week and didn’t feel they could force people to come to the office if, deep down, they didn’t always want to be there. Human behaviour and how we work has evolved over the last two years and Hybrid working demands an adjustment in management culture to suit.
I learnt that even in parts of the world where there has been a strong culture of presenteeism, this attitude is changing and managers need to look at new ways of evaluating employees based on their results, rather than how many hours they put in.
All businesses are going through an office transition phase of one sort of another. Some are carrying on with the plans conceived three or four years ago with a more standard workstation approach but are, very sensibly, making adjustments and migrating to hybrid working as they progress – in other cases these include quite significant changes in design and location.
How should the property industry and office landlords and investors react?
They will need to continue to provide flexible options which are shaped with potential occupiers’ culture in mind, as they evolve and find a new balance.
Around the dinner table there was mutual recognition of the benefit of going to the office for informal learning and to build social capital, with an appreciation that new office design needs to engaging, inspiring and smaller.
There was also an acknowledgement that there is a reduced appetite to commute into busy city centres and that a hub and spoke concept of more offices in residential areas close to staff might prove desirable – multiple bases as part of the office eco-system. This could result in more office development outside of London across the South East market.
What do we need to see more of?
Certainly, better and more modern spaces which are more exciting than home, or which balance well with home life and encourage social interaction and learning – this means less formal office environments and areas to congregate, collaborate and share learnings.