PLASTARC’s Melissa Marsh reflects on the Covid-19 aftermath and how it is impacting the workplace world today.
As we reach the official five-year mark since the onset of Covid-19 and its aftermath, many publications are “looking back” at these last five years to consider how our workplaces have indelibly changed. And while there’s no turning back in some respects, the wave of transformation in how, when, and where we work is still far from over. Based on our work at PLASTARC, it’s clear that organizations across the country are still recalibrating as they identify and articulate their new workplace normal.
From return-to-office policies to workspace design, there are plenty of tools that organizations can use to reach a post-Covid equilibrium, while honoring their vision and needs. Leaders are frequently updating workplace policies, technologies, and office layouts to reflect a world in which workers have been re-cast as discerning users. Tearing a page out of the UX/UI book, today’s workplace designs tend to integrate workers’ needs and preferences in the hopes of fostering greater physical health, emotional well-being, and productivity.
With this, workplaces across the country are placing greater emphasis on their employees’ overall welfare, and an ethos of flexibility – both in terms of when we work and where we work – is enabling people to take better care of themselves. Part of this sea change has been the more widespread acceptance of versatile results-based management systems, which prioritize outcomes over physical presence or hours logged.
A 10-year Estimate
There have been great strides since 2020, but in speaking and working closely with institutions across sectors, our hunch is that we’re only halfway into a longer ten-year recovery process. While we may have identified what tools will help us cultivate tomorrow’s workplace, awareness doesn’t always lead to action. The next phase in this process, which we expect will take through 2030, takes these abstract ideas and turns them into everyday realities.
PLASTARC bases this ten-year estimate on the trajectory that Manhattan’s Lower East Side took following the September 11th attacks. Just as we’re experiencing now on a global scale, the neighborhood surrounding the World Trade Center went through several cultural and economic changes as it tested new possibilities. From 2001-2011, demographic shifts, renovations to the East River waterfront, residential and commercial builds all contributed to the next stage in the neighborhood’s cultural and economic evolution. By 2011, the neighborhood was still shaped by 9/11, but it was no longer defined by the tragedy – notably, it likely would have reached this new point irrespective of what happened in 2001.
Today, after two years of disaster management and three years of gradual recovery, we’re still reaching for an identity that’s similarly removed from the events of 2020. In cities across the country – particularly major coastal hubs like New York and San Francisco – office occupancy and utilization rates remain far below their 2019 levels, despite the widespread implementation of new policies and practices. The simple truth is that workers across the world, many of whom experienced hybrid or remote work for the first time in 2020, still see little reason to come into the office when they could be just as productive from the comfort of their homes.
With over 265 million square feet in pre-2020 office leases expiring in the coming year, companies that have struggled to make use of their holdings these past five years are now gearing up to reduce their footprint and make new workplace models permanent. Others are redesigning or relocating their workspaces as they try to inspire employees to spend more time at a centralized office. The wider integration of Activity-Based Working (ABW) models, coworking spaces, and multisensory features reflect an innovative workplace paradigm in which architecture and design are leveraged to uplift workers’ well-being.
In this era of headline whiplash, it can be tempting to follow the hottest trends in workplace design, or the advice of industry leaders who make hyperbolic, sometimes unsubstantiated declarations about what makes a truly “great” workplace. The hard truth, though, is that a panacea does not – and never will – exist. Instead, the best workplace strategy is one that directly reflects the specific needs, preferences, and makeup of an organization.
Leveraging Research for Employee Wellness
We’re already in a much better place than we were before 2020, when innovative models like hybrid work, ABW, and smart buildings weren’t even considered feasible at countless workplaces. At the time, the success of workspace design was widely measured through hard metrics like cost per square foot. Since 2020, though, organizations have come to accept work environments should serve employees, and they’ve started to use workplace research to inform educated design, policy, and technology decisions.
The potential of this research – from security systems, to room booking, to staff engagement surveys – will remain limited as long as these methods are siloed in separate departments. With employee engagement information sitting in Human Resources, for instance, and utilization and occupancy data belonging exclusively to Data Security or Building Management, the two data streams lack the necessary context to inspire informed decisions. By bucking this trend and analyzing the two in conjunction with one another, organizations stand to gain a more nuanced understanding of which solutions could serve employee wellness. The “hard” data of occupancy and utilization data, which offer a clear sense on what isn’t working, are much more effective when coupled with the more personal elements of anecdotal data (surveys, etc.). Having the two in conversation leads to a clearer sense of problem and solution.
Leaders who are still trying to inspire a return to the physical office might have the most to gain from this kind of effort. Perhaps, for example, those employees who tend to avoid in-person work say they’re most productive in more isolated, concentrative space types, and feel as if the physical office lacks sufficient opportunity for solitude; or maybe other multisensory considerations, like natural light or restroom design, influence employees’ decision to stay home.
Where We’re Going
Over the coming five years, we expect to see more organizations complement their innovative workplace designs and technologies with policies and practices that foster a greater sense of psychological safety. The sense of disconnect that sometimes comes with hybrid and remote work arrangements, for example, can be mitigated through annual in-person retreats. Other solutions, like remote happy hours or meeting time specifically devoted to idle chit-chat, helps to emulate the joyful spontaneity we associate with vibrant in-person workspaces. As hybrid and remote work become more normalized, we expect these practices will become commonplace.
Individual organizations still have a lot of growth ahead of them, but much of the evolution we anticipate over the coming five years will actually take place on a larger, city-wide scale. Many developments, like e-bike implementation or the conversion of unused riverfront into parks, were already underway in 2019, but they will continue to accelerate as we more seriously value the importance of exercise, time outdoors, and public transportation.
We also expect to see the continued desegregation of spaces meant for “work” from those meant for “life.” The ongoing reduction in office real estate will make room for more residential buildings and mixed-use spaces, which are particularly conducive to flexible work lifestyles. Our cities, in turn, will be imbued with a new sense of vibrancy and culture, and by 2030, we will have given way to a cultural and economic identity that may have been inspired by the events of 2020, but is far from defined by them.