As the pandemic shuttered office buildings and workspaces, many workers found themselves having no choice but to take their work home with them. Now, it looks like work might just stay at home.
According to Microsoft’s Work Trend survey, 77 per cent of Malaysian respondents said that they want flexible work options to remain even after the pandemic. As work is moved out of the office building— built expressly for the purposes of having people work in them — it has left many business leaders and office planners grappling with a fundamental question: What is the office for?
There may be a knee-jerk reaction to declare that offices are obsolete. After all, for most knowledge workers, it seems like work can happen wherever their computer is, even if that’s a couch in their living room.
However, this assessment may be premature: As the Work Trend survey shows, 75 per cent of respondents in Malaysia still want in-person collaboration.
There is still a desire for face-to-face meetings at work — and still room for spaces built to accommodate these meetings. But, as with many things, office spaces are not going to remain as they were before the pandemic.
Change from the (literal) ground up
There is a precedent for change. From the factory lines of Taylorist offices; to office cubicles; to the Silicon Valley-inspired open concept offices — the office space has transformed according to the whims and demands of business leaders and the workforce throughout history.
And, now, as COVID-19 poses what might be the biggest change in how we work in modern history, the office space is set for another transformation.
The new work arrangements forced into place by COVID-19 have given rise to new work expectations: Workers want control over when and where they work, together with a return to face-to-face collaboration.
It’s not just an empty daydream for the workforce. Companies need to meet these expectations, or risk bleeding manpower: In the US, 39 per cent of workers would rather quit their jobs than return to the office, with the number rising to 49 per cent among Gen-Z and millennial workers.
Yet, on the flip side, not all workers have access to conducive spaces at home, and not all tasks may be optimised for remote work.
Also Read: Coworking office spaces are better investment for startups and entrepreneurs
Juggling this wide swathe of seemingly opposing needs requires operational intentionality. Especially for businesses looking at implementing hybrid work arrangements, business leaders must think beyond the status quo, reconsider their practices, and prepare to change from the ground up — rebuilding workplace policies to ensure equal treatment of onsite and offsite workers, and rehauling the built space of the office itself to facilitate flexibility, as well as meet the new demand for collaboration.
Making spaces for work
This shift in perspective is reflected in the Work Trend survey, where 62 per cent of Malaysian business leaders responded that they are considering redesigning their office space for hybrid work. But, what shape will the new office take?
At WORQ, we believe that the workplace should be treated as a flexible and agile service, and while working with Malaysian companies handling the transition to flexible work practices throughout the pandemic, we’ve noticed a number of trends:
The rise of hub-and-spoke offices
No longer bound to their office and congested urban hubs, 47 per cent of Malaysians surveyed in the Work Trend Index are planning to move to a new location this year.
Part of this may be issues surrounding commute, especially for urbanites living in congested cities like Kuala Lumpur.
In the US, cutting out commute was the top reason cited for preferring remote work — and it’s no surprise that many workers, free to leave their desks in cramped urban offices, are fleeing to greener pastures.
With workers scattered across urban and suburban parts of the country, businesses looking at providing hybrid work arrangements are considering downsizing their HQs, and transitioning to a hub-and-spoke model.
In this model, a central urban “hub” is supported by satellite “spoke” offices in suburban areas, where employees can come for meetings while also enjoying a shorter and smoother commute.
Office space that grows and shrinks with the team
With a hybrid work arrangement, a traditional office finds itself with a lot of unused space. A team split into onsite and work-from-home staff will see empty seats — and those teams implementing a mix of work-from-home days and all-hands-on-deck will have days where the office is unused.
One option (more effective for the first case than the second) is to downsize, which allows businesses to retain their own private office space, but puts a hard cap on the number of people who can return to work at once.
Also Read: The hybrid work model will outlast the pandemic. But will one model fit all?
The other option seeing a surge in popularity amidst the pandemic, are flexi-office solutions, where businesses are given the option to pay for only the space they need.
We’ve seen the growing taste for this solution ourselves: Coworking spaces are no longer just the trendy option for tech startups and freelancers; even large corporations are turning to flexible options.
Spaces built for community
The rooms within these offices are also changing. More people are considering what work can be done at home, and what’s better handled at the office — and targeting in-office time to complete those tasks.
In-person collaboration is one thing that workers are missing during remote work — and to help workers make the most of office time, workspaces in the future should be built to facilitate collaboration and community.
Rather than desks taking up most of the office space, we could see more offices place an emphasis on meeting rooms, as sites of collaboration, creativity and serendipity. Of course, this will vary based on a business needs — there isn’t going to be a cookie-cutter solution that fits all, and it’s for that reason why flexibility is so important.
At the end of the day, what is the office for?
Straightforwardly: Work. But, work isn’t just putting your head down and keying numbers into a spreadsheet.
The office where work happens is going to stay — but the work that happens there is going to be more targeted, deliberate and intentional. We believe that work is also about serendipity and collaboration: about connecting and engaging with your coworkers.
There are meetings where the real magic happens, and that’s not the kind of work that is easily taken home.
Ideally, the offices of the future are going to be built around flexibility: Giving workers the room to choose when and where they work, but also giving them the space to build the serendipity and connection they need to perform at their best.
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