Realest’s View on the Future of Office Working Practice

Posted by Realest on 26th January 2021 -

Plenty has been written about this, but below Realest’s view on the future of office working practice.

We see this from two principal perspectives:

• The Employee
• The Employer

The Employee’s Perspective

There is no easy way to generalise this. Different sectors, demographics, cultural differences and different parts of the same company will impact what staff are looking for in the future of office working practice. As an example, one large firm of consulting engineers on the south coast has surveyed its staff and found:

• 25% want to work from home
• 25% want to work in the office
• 50% want some degree of flexibility

For the service sector and professional firms, we think this is not necessarily untypical. However, the data does require further analysis as we would anticipate that there will be a generational element. Young people will want to work in the office probably because their home facilities are unsatisfactory and because their career progression and indeed learning will be dependent on being in a shared office environment. Older staff who perhaps are secure in their knowledge may be happy to work from home perfectly effectively. However, for some, there will be health issues relating to working from home so a priority return to an office might be required. There will also be staff who are vulnerable themselves or have caring responsibilities who will be anxious about the risk of returning to work. This will need effective liaison between HR and FM/Estates.

Equally, travel distance/cost and work resources will be significant issues. If staff are having to travel on trains or to more remote locations, the attractions of working from home will be enhanced, not least due to travel time and cost savings. Equally, if their working environment is uninspiring or does not have good facilities, again the attractions from being at home will be a significant.

The Employer’s Perspective

This segment is split into two separate sections as follows:

• The Finance Community View
• Operational Departments View

Dealing with the former, we all know that the finance community will welcome the perceived cost savings of staff working from home. Certainly, in the short run, this will be attractive although unless there is some degree of flexibility in leases, the savings may in fact be limited to some soft FM costs as the standing costs will remain unchanged.

Operations may see things differently. In any organisation that embraces collaborative working, getting teams back together is essential. However, hackneyed it may be, it is entirely true that working together creates the best ideas and indeed it is hard to see how a company culture can be created by people working from home. As we have said, it is harder to train, mentor and develop younger employees via Teams/Zoom and recruitment and retention may also be impacted. In addition, staff loyalty, much tested by employer practices over the last 20 years, will be disbanded; after all who would worry about moving jobs if you never meet any of your colleagues.

Finally, as soon as an unsupervised person makes a mistake (the consequences of which might have been picked up either with a formal in person review or, more likely, informal guidance over the watercooler) we will certainly start to see a push back from a quality perspective. However well Teams/ Zoom meeting work, it cannot replace the informal adhoc meetings and conversations.

Overview

To some extent, we do see an overlap between what employees and employers may want and the only disappointed party is likely to be the FD. So, some of the trends for the future of office working practice we are hearing include:

• Staff will come back to offices but will want greater space allocation, and visibly improved cleaning/health and safety regimes. We think these requirements will exist longer than the pandemic.
• Staff will also want more flexibility and it is a reasonably good assumption that offices may be remarkably quiet on Fridays. People working from home or more remotely looks certain to continue at least for part of the time.
• In some cases, we will see the rise of enhanced specification serviced offices so that teams can congregate together in future even if the office allocation has been cut.
• In the short run, FM will need to set up a booking in system to ensure space is appropriately allocated and capacity not exceeded.

It is quite likely that some occupiers may need more office space in order to accommodate these requirements although the use of space will change. We anticipate more collaboration and drop in facilities and fixed desks will be less prevalent. More flexibility is now inevitable, necessitating a change in culture that can only be set and driven from the top down. (If the CEO is not on board it will not work.) This could be offset if a more regimented/formal flexible working regime is adopted although this does create problems of making it difficult for teams to get together unless there is a very strong clear desk and time working policy.

Again, anecdotally, we are hearing of a shift from big metropolitan centres to regional cities where life/work options are more available and where staff can easily get to their workplace avoiding commuting.

Getting Staff Back

It will be impossible to force staff to go back into the office in the short run and potentially very difficult even in the medium term. Given the costs of travel, time saved and risk/fear factors faced by some employees, there would seem to be a natural disincentive to returning to the office. Employers may (when safe) have to make it compulsory but also have to ensure that the environment they return to is seen as safe but also attractive. It will help that people will be keen to socialise again with their friends and colleagues and finding ways of making this happen safely will be part of the incentive. So, the creation of collaboration space might be helpful (we think this is inevitable as we change the way we use property). As a result, there will be an increased focus on staff and facilities and the role of FM folk will be enhanced to ensure that safe and attractive environments are available.

With this in mind, and knowing what we know now, our ideal style of office facility would be as follows:

• Ideally out-of-town although road capacity might be an increasing concern. However, with flexible working, timing of occupation of space may change.

Nevertheless, the best locations will have:

• Substantial car parking to allow close to 1 person per car
• Two-storeys maximum
• Upgraded ventilation and filtration and, ideally, opening windows. Air conditioning remains a concern although is beyond the scope of this paper
• Strong health and safety processes including temperature testing, hand sanitiser and a change in culture that if unwell you stay at home. This might be quite a change some organisations.
• Potentially UV treatments
• Enhanced cleaning and facilities management regimes
• Expansion of employee space. Some call centres have achieved rates of one person to 65 ft²or less in some cases. This is clearly impossible now even for call centres usually and we anticipate 1:120 ft². Professional/technical offices will potentially need a considerably higher ratio.

So, whilst part of the answer to the future of office working practice will be the physical premises, in our opinion a cultural shift from management to the costs of this and the new ways of working is probably the bigger obstacle.

For more information contact Steven Williams or David Ferriman.