Financial Times recently raised a poll on LinkedIn about office culture and hybrid working: “As Covid-19 restrictions have eased, do you feel that office culture has changed for the better?“.
More than 20,000 people have voted and 55% of them agreed that hybrid working had helped office culture to become better.
Table of Contents
Office looms large in the executive psyche
Offices are still taking an important part in the executive heart, as these workplaces still are treated as the best locations in buildings designed for working. Just like editor Andrew Hill mentioned, CEOs and CFOs are mostly likely to refill these costly workplaces as soon as possible after several years of working from home.
However, companies like Wall Street bank which were among the first to advocate for a return to a five-day workweek in the office, have already retreated from and provided more flexibility for people as the coronavirus persisted and changed.
For example, Credit Suisse Group AG has already planned to launch a pioneering remote work model that gives its 13,000 employees in Switzerland “maximum flexibility.” Their CEO Thomas Gottstein said recently that the bank will never return to full-time office work.
On the other hand, technology companies like Apple still have trouble getting more people back to work. The pandemic makes lots of people rearrange their working schedules and home settings for remote purposes, and these arrangements remain. What causes the main problem for decision-makers is that most of the offices do not yet allow for high-level flexibility for their employees.
Workplace major ingredients: people, place, and technology
Redesigning office design is not a new idea, and it may ossify to become what was not intended.
Investor Robert Propst created a line of furniture called The Action Office, which Herman Miller produced, marketed and first introduced in 1964. The Action Office II series introduced the concept of flexible, semi-enclosed workspaces, that allow people a degree of privacy, now better known as the hated, rigid cubicle farms.
In the book “Unworking: The Reinvention of the Modern Office“, Jeremy Myerson, the co-founder of an online knowledge platform and network on the future of work and the workplace – Worktech and the Worktech Academy identify three critical ingredients in the workplace: people, place and technology.
Collaboration among people means almost everything in the office. The latest Stanford research reveals that employees desire both autonomy and coordination. 69.9% of people prefer being able to choose which days can work from home, at the same time 75.6% of them would like their employers to set a policy that determines who works from home on which days.
Technology possibly has the greatest opportunity for improvement to the workspace. The active collaboration spaces and unexpected dead zones become apparent when people arrive, as everyone who has relocated to a new office knows, no matter how fantastic the blueprint.
Management and work practices come first
Redhill is one of the recent successful examples that implements a great, efficient new workspace to cater to both work-from-home and in-office working, i.e. hybrid working.
Their new headquarters has 5,000 sq ft space, is designed for hot desking, and provides a variety of flexible facilities to create an inclusive environment.
Their main work area is transformed into a coworking space with open-plan seating and flexible meeting areas. The intention is to promote cooperation and teamwork, and meeting spaces and silent transportation will support concentrated work and team talks.
The new office also includes flexible arrangements that offer some inviting lounges for staff to congregate and speak as well as a sizable pantry space for unwinding or taking a tea break.
All in all, obsession with office decor must not be permitted to overshadow the necessity of modernizing management and work practices. Myerson and Ross claim to be upbeat about the future of the office, but only if businesses can rethink the tasks that it formerly housed.
Learn more about hybrid working: https://ones.software/blog/2022/10/06/guide-to-hybrid-work-what-is-hybrid-work-model/
Contact us: hello@ones.software, or visit ONES Software official website for more information: https://ones.software/sg/.