Meaning of "Office" has changed for ever...

It seems “Mr. Covid” is not going anywhere any soon… So, the world has started to adjust; lifestyles are changing, shopping habits are changing, relationships are changing. While some of these changes are temporary, some will have a lasting effect. Lets focus on one such aspect - the future of the office or workplace as we know it today

Most offices around the world are still closed and close to 75% of the workforce in large corporates are still working from home. The corporates are keen on taking advantage of this situation. They want to benefit from the “forced work from home “ situation and try to make it permanent as this will reduce their cost for facilities. Corporates have already started selling properties, cancelling leases, or leasing out their office premises in an attempt to decrease costs.

These moves however will have several implications for:

-         The individual

-         The family

-         The home real estate market

-         The office real estate market

-         And more importantly, for my startup entrepreneur friends

-          

Implications for the individual:

I suspect that in the future, your office will most likely ask you to fill up a survey to know what your “workplace” preferences are. Newly hired employees will be asked to fill out a similar form, and smart corporates will offer a menu of choices such as:

-         work from home/online all the time

-         work in the office all the time

-         work at the office for only 2 days a week etc.

They may even offer you a few hundred dollars to complete your office setup at home (without mentioning of course the thousands of dollars they are saving in the bargain).

Consequently, the not-so-friendly Local IT team will disappear. Instead, you will interact with an Amazon-like app for all your computer needs – if you need a new one, order it there; if yours is broken, you’ll get a temp one by post and a box to ship your old one for repairs etc.

I can speak from my personal experience here: you will start working longer hours than previously, you lunch time will be consumed by online meetings and calls. You will feel privacy invasion with peer pressure on keeping the video on during meetings. Also, lets not forget the long hours of sitting in a not-so-comfortable chair and the recurring back pain that you have been so desperately trying to avoid.

Based on my experience, I would suggest that you schedule specific times in your calendar for lunch and believe it not, but for bio breaks too. Make sure to buy proper office furniture so you have a proper, table, chair, monitor etc. And most importantly, get yourself a wireless headset so that you can walk around while attending calls – this will be a savior for your back.

  

For the family:

If you are not the only one working online and have family members that are working/studying online in the same house, you are in for some interesting times. Get ready and have fun with constant fights on who needs to keep quiet when, whether its ok to play music or have the TV on etc. 

For the home real estate market:

The premium for houses in the metros that are “nearer to offices” will disappear – people will prefer to stay in the suburbs in cheaper and larger homes which will eventually cause their prices to rise and make the downtown homes much cheaper than currently. Newer homes will probably have some sort of office space inbuilt perhaps having one or two cubicles with sound proofing.

  

For the office real estate market:

The offices as we know today will cease to exist. Offices will be replaced by “event locations”. Rather than being used as static workspaces for individual employees, these “event locations” would be used for :

-         coffee days

-         lunch and dinner meetings

-         team building events

-         Design thinking workshops

-         Creativity Studio sessions

-         Client meetings

-         And the like…

  

The prices of office real estate will naturally drop and these places will be largely repurposed.

And finally for my startup entrepreneur friends:

The smart ones will launch an “Airbnb for office” or an “Uber like aggregator” for these “event locations”. What do I mean by this? For example, I work from home and I need to meet a client for a presentation that needs to happen face-to-face followed by some agreements that need to be signed, products demos to be done etc. I will send an invite to my client through this App, the client will accept the time and both of us will be given a few location options and we can choose one that suits us both. The options offered by the App are based on several factors:

1.     time of the meeting

2.     my starting location

3.     client’s starting location

4.     traffic conditions

5.     availability of “event locations”

6.     my preference – say I would prefer a small business center that provides good coffee

7.     client’s preference – for example “I don’t have any location preferences but want to save as much time as possible”

I am sure you get the gist. And mind well, this will reduce your personal carbon footprint too (and the app could tell you your carbon footprint for official purposes, and the corporate will consolidate the same and report it in their “Green” or Sustainability report)

Feel free to expand on the idea, let me know your thoughts/criticisms.