I chose to work at home more than ten years ago. My home office is quiet, comfortable, and contains all of the tools I need to be productive. I use local shared workplace centers that have high tech meeting spaces and open communal areas for informal gatherings. It’s doubtful that I will ever return to a traditional office.
The traditional office was the most popular workplace when I made my decision. When the covid-19 pandemic happened, traditional offices closed and home offices increased exponentially. Prior to the pandemic, the percentage of home office workers could be counted in single percentage points. At the height of the pandemic, more than half of the US workforce was working from home.
Workers, new to home officing, found themselves working longer hours. This caused problems with their work/life balances. Home officing isolated them from their daily coworkers. They missed their office community and person to person communication. Home officing brought about managerial and procedural changes along with a greater dependency on remote meeting technology . Over eighty-five percent of this new group of home office workers were not content with their remote working conditions. They began to look for other workplace alternatives.
A menu of workplace choices has emerged that contains new ideas and expectations for new normal post-covid workplaces. The menu includes four major choices.
The first choice is a return to the centralized traditional office full time. Returning workers will find their workplace needs have changed. They will want a greater variety of workspaces that include open office environments, dedicated workstations, and enclosed multi-person team spaces. They will have a greater need for meeting and gathering spaces that may include in-office refreshments. Workspace variety will provide office returnees with flexibility and opportunities to work where and how they desire. These changes will require redesigning many traditional offices to support the new normal working expectations.
A second choice is remaining in the home office. Fifteen to eighteen percent of the workforce will continue working remotely full time.
The hybridization of the workplace is the logical third choice. This approach allows workers to share time between home and office. An average plan will call for three days in the traditional office and two days at home. A reduction in workplace size will be a positive result. There are some drawbacks with this approach. One is a lack of workplace continuity when working in two locations. This can result in reduced productivity. Another is the perceived managerial attention difference paid to part time home and full time traditional office workers that can have negative affects on promotions and salaries.
Some workers returning to the traditional office, full or part time, will miss many of the comforts, freedoms and informality they enjoyed working from full time home offices. Yet, they will not be ready to return to the isolation from co-workers or the distractions that come with working from home.
The fourth choice is officing in a “third place”, a shared workplace center, that is neither home nor traditional office. Shared workplace centers can serve the needs of the home office worker, workers involved in hybrid programs, and support a company’s plans to de-centralized their main office.
Shared workplace centers provide the community of a traditional office. They have state of the art office technology and meeting facilities that support collaboration with internal and remote communication systems. Shared workplace centers are designed to support workplace flexibility and offer choices of where and how to work. Café and lounge areas provide work separation and relaxation options. Daily commuting can be greatly reduced by choosing a shared workplace center close to home.
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