Last March when we all packed up our stuff and went home to work, who would have thought the number of people working in offices would be so drastically reduced for the better part of a year! But now with vaccines rolling out across the country, albeit somewhat chaotically, talk of returning to the office is gaining momentum, along with a sense of real possibility it has lacked over the course of the last eleven months.
During the pandemic a lot has been pondered, discussed, and written about what the best way to return to the office might be. Early on our natural conservatism led us to believe that we’d just return to the office as it existed before – maybe a little extra distance between people here and an acrylic screen or two there to mitigate the spread of the virus. And manufacturers were quick to announce dozens of “innovative” versions of free-standing and desk attached screens.
As the disorienting effects of COVID-19 wore on and the necessity grew to provide some sense of safety for essential workers, we saw acrylic screens arrive, en masse, in grocery stores, pharmacies, take-out eateries and wherever people had to report for work.
But given our uneven adoption of masks and social distancing, acrylic screens, hand sanitizing stations ,and sanitizing wipes proved to be too little to keep the virus in check. Little did we know that at least in the USA, until we had a vaccine there would be no large scale returning to the ”normal” office.
As time wore on it began to dawn on us that with the technology we have at our disposal, we can in fact, operate as a team of distributed individuals from our homes or wherever we quarantine. We can operate that way but it certainly isn’t most people’s preferred way to operate. We missed the face-to-face sociality of our work tribes.
Somewhere along the way some forward thinkers began to ask a question that is way more unsettling to many of us: “Why should we ever return to the office as it existed before the pandemic?”
In the best article I’ve read on the subject so far (The New Yorker, January 25, 2021 – Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever? Companies are figuring out how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward remote work with the value of the physical workplace.) The author John Seabrook, asks what the office is for, when “It turns out that work, which is what the office was supposed to be for, is possible to do from somewhere else.”
Clients of HOK and some customers of Steelcase, as well as some of the best thinkers in those two companies were asking the same question. To try to work out a cogent answer ,the two companies came together to share their research and “to explore the future of work and the workplace as a result of what we’ve learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
A group of approximately 15 researchers and front-line thinkers from the two companies met for an extraordinary 3-day collaboration to discuss the findings of their separate research and to explore what might come next.
They began by acknowledging that all was not perfect before the pandemic, and perhaps the trauma and disruption it caused has presented us with a unique opportunity to address those issues.
senior principal | director of WorkPlace. Photo courtesy of Kay Sargent
Both organizations have been actively sharing the results of the deep dive on their websites, in multiple webinars, and Steelcase 360 publications. I was fortunate to catch up with Kay Sargent, Senior Principal & Director of WorkPlace at HOK to talk about the HOK-Steelcase research collaboration and the resulting ideas for the future of the office. She generously gave us permission to share some of the slides that synthesize key findings.
Among factors it would be important to try to mitigate if possible: stress, burnout, social inequity, wasted and underutilized space, and if the pandemic has taught us nothing else, cleanliness. (see slide for the full list)
Additionally, the report summarizes, “New economic pressures, the need to address climate change and social inequity are driving companies to develop more comprehensive environmental, social and governance policies.”
The group identified five big issues organizations grapple with, namely
- Health, Safety and Wellbeing
- Remote Work + Work from Home
- Purpose of place
- Business Resiliency
- Environment, Social and Governance responsibility
Thinking about things that weren’t perfect before we were forced to go home to work, the collaborators came an “Aha moment: The notion of ‘returning to the office’ is flawed. We need to acknowledge the things that weren’t working before COVID-19 and instead of returning to them, address them as we move forward.”
Accordingly, the team proposed the idea of “reimagining an ecosystem of spaces that truly addresses our needs; now and in the future”
An ecosystem can be defined as a complex network of interconnected activities influencing the outcomes of those participating in it. The ecosystem proposed by the HOK & Steelcase thought leaders takes into account things we’ve learned from our forced exile and planning models that address many of the issues facing business that without the pandemic we may not have faced as readily.
The three components of the ecosystem are the Home, the Spoke, and the Hub. The three elements address learnings from the WFH experiment we’ve been engaged in, global problems and social issues traveling to big offices in urban centers has ignored and the effectiveness of the work environments of pre-COVID times in delivering what organizations need most.
In order to avoid slavish duplication and with the blessing of Ms. Sargent, I now refer you to the slides that highlight the functions of each element of the proposed ecosystem and offer a high-level overview of planning considerations.
In addition if you would like more insight into the research of these two organizations, I refer you to “Work Better” at the Steelcase website and “Workplace” at HOK.com.
It is one of the hallmarks of our industry that makes us love it, that firms are so willing to share their proprietary research and well-earned knowledge for the benefit of us all. Our thanks to HOK and Steelcase and to Kay Sargent in particular.
