The office after the pandemic
Klaus Berberich im Interview zum New Normal der Arbeit: Wie smarte Arbeitsplatzerlebnisse durch Digitalisierung auf das Erfolgskonto von Unternehmen einzahlen.
by Ivan Escamilla
Motivated employees are an important pillar for the economic success of companies. However, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the everyday working life of office workers. Hybrid working is now firmly established in the world of work - and in the minds of employees. What does the modern office or the "new normal" of work look like after the pandemic? In an interview, Klaus Berberich, CRO and founder of Thing Technologies, looks at the increasing importance of attractive, modern workplace concepts to attract and retain committed employees. He also looks at the role that Smart Workplace Experience technologies play in this context.
Working in large office buildings has changed as a result of the pandemic. What remains of it after the pandemic and why?
The pandemic has opened up new opportunities for many office workers. It has shown them more flexibility and autonomy in the spatial, temporal and local design of their work and a better work-life integration. Even with regard to the choice of future place of residence, this opens up new perspectives, e.g. beyond the conurbations. For a variety of reasons, the majority of employees will continue to rely on home office and office days in the future, and thus on flexible workplaces. The expectations of the "new normal" of work are correspondingly high and require innovative concepts in order to successfully implement the office of the future and the associated profound transformation of the world of work.
What opportunities does this create for companies? The keyword Environmental Social Governance (ESG) comes to mind, doesn't it?
Companies that allow hybrid working can save up to 50% of the space for workplaces if they rely on flex desking, i.e. the flexibilization of workplaces. In fact, according to the M.O.O.CON study1, this is the largest single measure for ESG improvements. Even 30 percent less rental space offers companies enormously high potential to reduce costs and at the same time significantly reduce their CO2 emissions.
Does this mean that hybrid work models do not pose any challenges or even risks for companies, but only advantages?
Unfortunately not! In my view, if too many people stay in the home office too often or completely from home after the pandemic, this can have a detrimental effect on corporate culture, churn rate, certain aspects of productivity, ability to innovate and, consequently, competitiveness over time. For example, the creative potential of a team can be harder to exploit when everyone is working remotely. When people come together in person, team communication is easier and thus more effective and efficient.
Can you explain this with some concrete examples?
We're all familiar with video conferencing workshops where there's simply no momentum to develop. In face-to-face workshops, on the other hand, we still experience much more interactivity and participation. In addition, integrating new colleagues into a team remotely can be much more difficult. After all, team and corporate culture thrive on the fact that colleagues spend significant time together in the same room. They also meet in the corridor, in the coffee kitchen or arrange to meet for lunch. If this is not sufficiently the case, even the loyalty of long-term employees can decrease. This means that maintaining and further developing the corporate culture is made much more difficult.
Pure online collaboration is not a full-fledged substitute for personal conversation and direct interaction with each other in the long term. Reading or writing "LOL" is not the same as laughing together. Today, more than ever, to retain and attract employees, companies need to "redefine their attraction and retention strategies and build a value proposition that takes into account the entire life of employees," according to a March 2022 McKinsey recommendation2.
So does the goal have to be to simply order all employees back to the office a few days a week?
It doesn't quite work that way. Anyone who believes that they can take away the flexibility they have learned from their employees and relies on mandatory attendance days in the office is taking a high risk, which I would strongly advise against. We currently have an employee market here in Germany as well, and this carries the obvious danger that good employees in particular will reorient themselves. They look for employers who will continue to offer them autonomy, work-life integration and thus their trust.
In the U.S., for example, more than 4.3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs last December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is just below the record level of November 2021 and there are significantly more current job openings (10.9 million) than new hires (6.3 million). By the way, according to a survey by McKinsey, "workplace flexibility" was the main reason for accepting a new position.
So how do companies successfully master the challenge so that office space is used much more again and employees do not migrate?
From my point of view, they need to strengthen the intrinsic motivation of employees to want to work in the office again. Or to put it another way, there must be added value for them there, for which it is worthwhile from the employees' point of view to invest time and money to get to the office. The office has to support me in my work and being there has to be a positive experience for me. There's nothing worse than making your way to the office only to collaborate with others via video conference from there. So we need densification, less space, but it needs to be much better designed. Employees need to experience their workplace in a new way.
Keyword workplace experience - How can this be achieved in concrete terms?
Above all, there is a holistic approach. It's about making different adjustments. Many disciplines play a role here: leadership teams, HR, IT, real estate management. It's about social experiences, incentives and events for employees, as well as the provision of different spaces adapted to my job, chic furniture and great tools for collaboration and facilitating daily work organization. In such an overall concept that meets these changed requirements, digitalization can offer very effective support. After all, in the end, it all comes down to two axes: you need to make sure that the office doesn't become dysfunctional, and second, that there are plenty of positive incentives. It is important to understand that positive incentives only help if the office is functional – in the case of a dysfunctional office, fancy furniture does not help.
To what extent can an office be dysfunctional? Where do you see sticking points?
The change from fixed workplaces to flexible workplaces, which is necessary to implement the densification of space, poses major challenges for employees. Familiar mechanisms of the office are undermined. How do I know I have a job? How long will it take me to find it? Who else will be in the office and where? Where do I put my belongings? Where's the nearest printer? What collaboration spaces are currently available? Where is the help desk in the building I'm in today? Even the coffee machine, which I use very rarely or have never used before, can become a frustrating experience, just like unfamiliar conference technology. These frictions and small obstacles can quickly have such a negative impact on the office experience that employees no longer want to come. The larger the office space, the higher the risk.
How can technology help to successfully implement such concepts?
Employees who use the office space are supported in finding their way around by digital office assistants, e.g. an app that they always have with them. They will find their workplace for the morning, the right meeting room for brainstorming in the afternoon and then the individual office for the most important customer phone calls. The laptop can also be stowed away in the locker, which can be quickly booked via app, if you quickly arrange to meet your colleagues for an after-work drink – everything is adapted to your changing needs throughout the day.
In addition, the app helps to find colleagues and make appointments with them, to search for the help desk, printer or the booked meeting room for the next appointment. Without having to walk long distances, I can see which rooms, desks, phone booths, etc. are now available for me and my team members and I get quick help with orientation through the indoor navigation function. This allows me to find my way around buildings where I don't spend much time. This becomes all the more relevant the larger the office space or campus on which I move. Basically, such an app helps me in the office space in a similar variety of ways as Maps applications support me in everyday urban environments. Navigating is learned, saves time and can perhaps also reduce the number of notorious latecomers at meetings. Interactive displays in the area and in meeting rooms allow orientation even without an app.
With the help of these smart assistants, stumbling blocks and frustration factors are avoided right from the start. This enables employees to focus on the advantages of the new workplace concept and, overall, significantly increases the attractiveness of the space. The new world of work loses its terror and becomes a place of encounter. And the more people come to the office for these encounters, the livelier it becomes and the more likely the intrinsic motivation to work in the office increases. A self-reinforcing effect sets in.
If an app solution offers so many advantages for employees, what do you need to keep in mind?
Every newly introduced technology first encounters an adoption barrier. Not all employees are happy about having to learn them. If companies give their employees a different app for every support – workplace booking, catering, locker, menu, etc. – many of them will never generate enough value and the apps will simply remain unused. Instead of controlling many individual functions via different apps, we at Thing-it provide companies with an all-in-one solution. Employees only learn a new technology and can thus be supported in a wide range of everyday work.
Most of our customers want to implement desk sharing and therefore start with the workplace booking function. Over time, they provide their employees with more and more assistive functions on a modular basis without increasing complexity for employees. Entry and usability are consistent – and always in the corporate design of the company. This is the only way for the technology to make a lasting contribution to employer branding.
Corporate real estate managers and companies alike are certainly faced with major challenges in this new, dynamic world of work. How do you deal with the ever-changing demand?
At the moment, no one knows how office use will develop in the next few months. There are hypotheses, but in many places there are no relevant empirical values. Accordingly, today we cannot simply plan perfectly, but have to make optimizations and adjustments again and again. That's why a feedback loop is so important for CREM: What is well received, what is not? How many employees are working from home, how is demand changing, for example, after the pandemic? Which departments need which workplace key? Which workplace situations are more in demand than others? How does this differ between locations? The digitalization of spaces and buildings, if possible with appropriate sensor technology, helps corporate real estate managers to precisely measure the use of space and workplaces in order to be able to control accordingly intelligently.
A meaningful database allows permanent adaptation to constantly changing needs. Areas and buildings are then used more efficiently and vacant spaces – with all the negative consequences described above – are avoided. Data shows, for example, how much office space is currently in demand, which types of desks are more popular, which meeting room sizes are most frequented, or whether group spaces such as huddle corners, etc. are accepted at all. However, user preferences can also change quickly. And this is where flexibility comes into play: In addition to the fast and reliable feedback mechanism, a space concept that allows the space management strategy to be adapted without much effort is also crucial. Here, too, technologies can provide strong support by centrally managing rules, e.g. via home zones, activity areas, etc., and changes are automatically transferred to the employees' self-service systems – i.e. the app. The bottom line is that it's about recognizing how the space was actually used, as opposed to the intended use – and adjusting concepts on a regular basis. This also illustrates that the role of CREM has changed and therefore new tools are necessary.
What challenges do corporate real estate managers face after the pandemic?
In the past, corporate real estate managers or the workplace team determined space requirements mainly on the basis of forecasts of employee growth and relatively stable share ratios. Shifts in these conditions took place slowly and the adaptation to the changes could take place over several months. That was the situation before the pandemic. During the pandemic, the maximum occupancy often changed within a few days. This may continue to be necessary from time to time, as we cannot rule out waves and the associated requirements in the future.
Even in an endemic situation, however, workplace managers have to deal with the planning uncertainties described above. With so many unknowns, they need to find a software and hardware solution that will help them gain accurate, reliable, and detailed data on office usage to optimize workplace strategy "on the go." That is, they need to be able to quickly adapt the workplace model when office users behave differently than expected. If, for example, there is significantly more presence in sales than expected, but there is hardly any demand for jobs in IT, then a good space concept with good tooling allows workplaces to be reclassified centrally once and nothing changes at all for the individual employees. They can still find their workstations via the app or screens, even if the pool may have become smaller or larger. Good tooling simplifies the central control of the CREM and still gives employees a high degree of autonomy in the sense of self-service.
How easy is it to get the data you need?
It is crucial to understand which data is needed and in what quality. There are a variety of sensors on the market and you might come to the conclusion that data collection is easy. However, which sensors are suitable for providing good raw data can vary from country to country and from office to office. From wireless standards to power supply and maintenance aspects, global companies in particular have a lot to solve. That's why we've designed Thing-it to be hardware-agnostic, so that the professionals at our integration partners can select and deploy the best technologies for our customers. Flexibility and the ability to adapt to the many requirements of large companies is essential at the level of the evaluating platform.
As soon as good sensor data is available, we are faced with the problem that sensor data in its raw form is hardly suitable for the analysis of office occupancy, for example. To do this, the raw data must be prepared in a meaningful way. Again, flexibility and adaptability are crucial. In recent years, we have invested in this flexibility as well as in robust algorithms in order to extract decision-supporting information from raw data – because that's what matters. Unfortunately, there are still too many supposedly simple solutions on the market at the moment, the data of which should not be used to make reliable decisions.
The goal of companies, facility managers, HR, IT, upper management is to make well-founded decisions that subsequently help employees to perform their tasks in the most efficient way. At the end of the day, what's important is a positive employee experience to succeed as a company, retain talent, and attract new ones. If you choose the wrong tooling and make decisions based on bad data, you can cause a lot of damage. But if you invest in the right information, you can optimize in a targeted manner.
What would you recommend as a good start for hybrid workplace and space management strategies post-pandemic?
In my opinion, companies and real estate managers should pay attention to five important aspects. First, don't be too sure which workplace model is best post-pandemic. Plan for the possibility of being wrong and the need to constantly make changes. Second, use mandatory requirements as little as possible. Let office users decide where and when they work. Focus on strengthening the intrinsic motivation that drives people to come to the office. Thirdly, if the goal is to get team members back together and into the offices, I recommend selecting and applying concepts and techniques that will help keep office occupancy high and not provide too much office space when in doubt. After all, high office occupancy has many positive effects. Fourth, they should prioritize employee self-organization over centralized mandates by putting appropriate technologies in the hands of employees. Fifth, use detailed data as a basis that provides you with versatile platforms for building digitization. In this way, the actual demand can be constantly assessed and analyzed, and subsequently optimized.
In summary, what advice would you give to companies?
I strongly advocate recognising the current situation as a great opportunity and devoting a lot of attention to it. If we make the effort to grasp and address the problem in its entirety, we can give our employees more flexibility that tangibly enriches their lives. In addition, we can cope with much less space, which we can design much better. This has a positive impact on employees, CO2 emissions and the wallet. It should be clear that this is not simply about introducing a workplace booking app. Only a holistic approach, which of course must also be based on comprehensive and flexible technology, allows companies to generate a real competitive advantage from the opportunity.
https://www.moo-con.com/unser-wissen/blog/mein-unternehmen-das-klima-und-ich-wer-wandelt-sich-schneller/
Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger "Gone for now, or gone for good? How to play the new talent game and win back workers", McKinsey Quarterly March 2022).*
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