Time to Put The Grown-up Clothes On and Head Back to the office?

Ok - so not everyone working from home is wearing pyjama bottoms while on Zoom, but I bet you’ve suspected a few might be. And let’s be honest - pajamas or “grown-up” clothes? that’s not the biggest issue to have faced most businesses or people over the last year.

Where we work has been turned on its head, and it’s affected how we live, how happy, and how productive we are. Pundits tell us the future is remote, but remote working is an uneven playing field. Personal circumstances and different socio-economic backgrounds mean that working from home might work for some, but it’s harming others.

Almost as soon as the pandemic hit, once bustling office buildings in CBDs across the country became immediate ghost towns with many workers forced to work from home. While businesses and their employees were quick to adapt to the new environment there were several learnings that came out of the greatest remote work experiment:

• Zoom/Teams fatigue is real
• Collaboration is challenging in a remote environment
• Online happy hour is not enough to build and maintain the culture
• Monitoring burnout and employee health is vital
• Remote work is better suited for some staff more than others
• Many employees want to maintain a level of flexibility moving forward

As employers look to bring the team back to the office to overcome these shortcomings it’s important to design the office to fit the needs of the entire team.

For businesses looking at longer-term leases, designing the right space today that will still be relevant and appropriate in a year let alone five years is more challenging. Companies exploring Serviced Offices have more flexibility to re-evaluate their options and thankfully have more options available than ever before.

Offices are Here to Stay

According to a survey published in late 2020, 51% of employees feel that working from home is less enjoyable than it was at the beginning of the pandemic, and 45% would prefer to go back to the office at least part-time.

Business leaders too are eager for staff to return to the office. One North American survey showed that 68% of executives feel that employees need to be onsite to maintain company culture, and another 65% feel that productivity is higher in-person.

So, why are so many people so enthusiastic about returning?

1. Collaboration

When researchers asked why employees want to return to the office, respondents gave the following reasons:

• Collaboration is easier face to face
• ‌Opportunities to socialise with colleagues
• ‌Incidental and unplanned face-to-face time

‌The message comes through loud and clear — video-conferencing isn’t “just as good.” It’s almost always easier to work through problems and opportunities in person, whether that means popping down the hall to ask a question or coming together in front of a whiteboard.

In-office work also provides the framework for those incidental conversations where great ideas happen. If you're in your home office and make an offhand comment about a pain point, no one’s there to pick up on it and come up with a solution. (Your dog might be smart, but not that smart.)

2. Company Culture

Remember those 68% of executives who think in-person working is better for building culture? They’re not the only ones. According to the Australian HR Institute, 70% of surveyed employees believe that building culture remotely is difficult and three of ten employees said that remote working had actually harmed workplace culture.

‌When you’re in-office at least some of the time, teams have more of a chance to cultivate community, and positive work culture and remind each other of shared values. Informal social events and optional volunteering days can help people get to know each other, much better than they could during a Zoom happy hour.

‌Being together in person also lets management lead by example and demonstrate company values. Where a business culture focuses on respect and a positive working environment, there are many more opportunities to demonstrate those qualities by working side-by-side.

3. Employee Management and Support

It’s difficult to provide remote workers with the just-right level of support. True, people have developed tools and strategies for measuring performance at a distance, but the output isn’t the only metric to watch and it alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

Gen Z, women, frontline workers, and those new to their careers reported struggling the most this past year according to the Work Trend Index survey.

‌It’s harder to see these patterns when workers are remote. In the office, managers and colleagues keep an eye out for each other - perhaps why they’re called work-mates. Mateship manifests itself in different situations, be it hearing a colleague having a difficult conversation with a client and asking if they are okay afterward, to ad-hoc coaching and sharing of strategies for handling such conversations.

Mentoring and coaching are also easier in person. Managers can send all the checklists and tip sheets in the world to someone who’s working on a particular skill, but it’s hard to beat the in-person casual conversations and check-ins to see if a junior employee is ok.

Microsoft’s Work Trends report highlights the issues faced in particular by Gen Z employees. New to the workforce and barely struggling to cope, many are left feeling rudderless and unconnected. Without role models and mentors to help guide younger staff in the day-to-day office, there’s a real danger that these staff will fail to uphold company values and best practices.

How to Build a Better Workspace

So how does a business get back to building a strong culture and supporting its staff in the best way without forcing everyone back to the office?

The Society for Human Resource Management predicts the rise of the hybrid office in 2021. In this new model, a percentage of a company’s staff will be in-office at any given time.

‌As this norm develops, employers need to meet everyone’s needs. How do you provide the space for collaboration, while also making room for the 28% of employees who say they’re very productive working from home?

1. Organising Schedules

While more companies are starting to offer employees the option to work from home a certain number of days per week, new challenges are introduced. For example, how do you make sure people's in-office time coordinates, so they can take advantage of that all-important collaborative opportunity?

‌Some companies solve this problem by designating certain days of the week as optional work-from-home days. Maybe your teams can work remotely Monday and Friday, but they need to be onsite Tuesday through Thursday.

In other organisations, it may make more sense to rotate people’s in-office time by team or role. The accounting teams could work from home on Tuesdays and Fridays, while the sales teams get on Mondays and Thursdays. Then, any cross-team meetings could happen on Wednesdays.

Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that because staff work from home 40% of the time, you need 40% less floor space. Even if work-from-home is staggered across teams, people still need the same amount of space while they’re on site. They just need a different kind of space.

2. Prioritising Collaborative Space‌

Socialisation and collaboration are behind most people’s needs to return to in-person work. It’s important for companies to recognise that need and create a space that’s built for working together, while still offering enough space.

“When you lose connections, you stop innovating. It’s harder for new ideas to get in and groupthink becomes a serious possibility.” Dr. Nancy Baym Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft

Ways to improve collaboration include:

• Having bookable space that people can work from when they’re in the office
• Offering informal break-out spaces in common areas for incidental meetings
• Providing plug-and-play desktops where employees can attach their laptops to a widescreen monitor, keyboard, and mouse
• Ensuring access to event spaces for all-hands meetings
• Encouraging impromptu brainstorming by hosting team breakfasts — great strategies for bringing everyone together and starting the day on a positive note

How Serviced Offices meet the needs of businesses

For companies looking to be more agile in their workspace use, serviced offices provide optimal flexibility. That’s extremely important at a time when no one really knows what office space needs will look like six months or a year down the road.

Typically fully furnished and all-inclusive, Serviced Offices are turnkey products ready for immediate use. Available on 3-, 6- or 12-month terms, they offer greater flexibility than traditional office leases, with a sweet spot of a 1-year term where the lowest price meets the minimum commitment.

The offices themselves are private and while some can include internal meeting rooms (typically the larger suites), businesses have access to shared and centrally managed meeting rooms. These are bookable often for a small fee which keeps the usage fair and ensures there’s always a room available rather than rooms being block-booked.

With a serviced office, you’re not locked to one office; rather you’ll have access to several centres, amenities, and alternative offices should you need them. Serviced offices also make it easier to up, down- or right-size as the needs of the business dictate. The shorter duration contracts mean that opportunities to move come around more often, and even within contracts there are options to move within a Serviced Office.

Serviced offices feature short-term licence agreements making them much easier to understand, negotiate, and close - and saving days of legal advice.

Cover the whole Serviced Office Market with Rubberdesk

Rubberdesk is the Serviced and Flexible office space Marketplace that helps match office spaces with a company's business requirements.

Our proprietary platform combined with industry insights from our office specialists helps you find the best office for your needs. With a view across all available options and pricing, we simplify the process to create a bespoke shortlist, arrange tours, and negotiate the best deals. All for free and without obligation.

If you’re thinking about what your office space might look like over the next year or two, reach out to us. We’re happy to talk you through options and help you understand what serviced offices have to offer.

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