Is the traditional office dead?

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When you can work from anywhere, what happens to the traditional office?

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Last year we began heading back to the office, albeit with a few stop starts, we managed to finally dust off our desks. We reintroduced ourselves to the 3D versions of colleagues some of us hadn't seen for 18 months, we chatted over coffee about the "new", old normal. But what has "heading back" meant for the future of office design?

In 2020 it was widely assumed that the office as a concept was dead but, two years on, perhaps it’s not dead, it just needs to be adapted.

The majority of employees expect to return to the office for at least four days a week post-pandemic, according to research from workplace leader Steelcase. At the same time, 72 percent of company leaders have adopted Hybrid working, a flexible half-way point, for working from home and the office.  

So, whilst the future sounds bright for the office, the requirements of the space have changed dramatically. The 23 percent of business leaders that expect workers to return to the office exclusively, need to address the need for safety and flexibility, as well as enticing employees into returning to office life. On top of which, the Department of Business have released a consultation document that outlines a proposal to give all employees the right to request flexible working, including working from home.

So, should we aim towards a more flexible working routine?  

In organisations which have studied productivity of staff over the course of the pandemic, they observe that productivity has increased by 13 percent. This opens a discourse on how to maintain that performance, whilst people are drained of energy, on their ‘new’ old commute.

Loosing that commuting time during the pandemic meant more time for activities like rejuvenating after work walks, often away from the fumes of the city, which many grew into their daily routine. These types of changes had a profound impact on mental and physical health, ensuring a notable reduction in stress and fatigue.

Mental health and wellbeing can also be addressed by the flexibility of the working culture. For example, some companies in Germany effectively make use of commute times as part of the working day, introducing things like Conferences on the way to work. While others added facilities to offices that allow employees to enjoy the building before or after working hours, creating things like gyms and compelling café spaces. They effectively nurtured a sense of community, and a home from home, within the office space.

Understanding how a balance, of how, and where to work differs between different organisations and individual employees, is key in considering the workplace design strategy and how its changed.  

Introducing more lounge areas to allow for different types of communication, rather than stale concepts of hard surfaces and uniformity within the office space, thereby creating a more fluid dynamic. This aligns more with the values and trends that are fuelled by human centred design, with people now used to the flexibility of their homes, they can now replicate certain elements of their routines within the office. Perhaps meetings don’t need to be done exclusively in small stuffy office spaces, instead a chat with a coffee at a breakfast bar, could yield better results?

Looking forward, will we see a decline in working full time from offices? Or will the office change into a more relaxed, domestic style space?

Long term flexible working has been adopted by 87% of company leaders, with satellite Office adoption on the rise as well as co-working facilities, like our London Headquarters at Uncommon- Fulham.

Other interesting examples include -

Sources:

Christ & Gantenbein designs Roche office to be highly flexible (dezeen.com)

Tala Fustok designs Ninja Theory office to entice employees into workplace (dezeen.com)

ConForm Architects creates "homely" office in brutalist Smithson Tower (dezeen.com)

Live talk with Steelcase and J Mayer H about post-pandemic office design (dezeen.com)  

Home working to be replaced by hybrid model finds Steelcase Global Report (dezeen.com)

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