The tremors caused by the pandemic have shaken the very existence of the office. Is the office doomed to disappear? With the ultra-reactive implementation of remote work, our open spaces and other workplaces were radically deserted for several months, supplanted by 100% digital collaboration methods.
The disappearance of the office as we know it, or of satellite offices, is hard to imagine. Among the hundreds of companies we have talked to, none can imagine it. The issue is not the disappearance of the office, but rather its profound transformation.
"Coming to the office on a daily basis is no longer essential for everyone." That's the answer from a large majority of the companies we surveyed. Yet, three quarters of them consider that the shared workplace between colleagues should be used to promote the relationship between everyone, for the benefit of a better working environment.
To be more specific: to the question, "Today, for what reasons is it useful to come to the office?" They answer:
The profoundly social, even socializing function of the office has been highlighted more than ever by the health crisis. The isolation caused by remote work is an aspect that the future office must take into account. During the confinement, we saw teams separated for months on end, causing real "suffering" at work for employees, according to the majority of our interviewees. The need to be together was revealed far beyond the workplace by this collective ordeal. In fact, almost all our interviewees made a point of talking to each other at "Zoom cafés" during this period of estrangement, creating a new working space.
Moreover, with the drift of theopen space, we now see that communication is not just about being in the same place. It is about more subtle and complex aspects to be truly productive and value-creating in new environments.
So how to install the creation of links in the premises of the company or the third places? Conviviality yes, but with the right dose. Experts deplore the trend towards "hyper-friendliness". They rank Google' s slides or the trend to integrate table soccer in the office. Their opinion and that of company managers is not to put it before the functions mentioned above. The attractiveness of the office must be studied with finesse, because it is truly strategic. However, it should not be done at the expense of the other functions of professional life, i.e. working and exchanging with colleagues.
This need for user-friendliness is concretely translated by the creation and development of a separate role in the company: theOffice Manager. This position, which is often attached to the Human Resources team, has become very important in recent years. Even though some Office Managers have told us of their distress at not being able to manage the subject matter of their work during periods of confinement, their role is now crucial. The position is gradually being entrusted to increasingly experienced professionals, to the point of having an entire Facility Management team, as at Blablacar for example, where the Office Manager reports directly to the company's management.
Another sign that times are changing is that a community of Office Managers is forming, and professionals are regularly exchanging best practices, similar to what has long been done in Human Resources. Slack channels each gather several hundred professionals from different companies, who exchange on their habits and seek advice. This recognition of the role of the Office Manager as a crucial part of the corporate culture speaks volumes about the revolution that is taking place around the office as the central place for the expression of the corporate culture.
While the crisis has shown the importance of connections between employees, it has also revealed a crying need for quiet, isolation and sometimes a closed office. Like freelancers or nomads, employees may need a personal workspace or an individual office. The issue of sharing home space across generations has been much talked about. We can't put it any better thanAlain d'Iribarne, a labor sociologist:
"To be ideal, the office must first meet the fundamentals of "working well". It must be a place that lets in natural light, offers thermal comfort, quiet, ergonomic comfort and, of course, shared spaces."
It may seem trivial, but ergonomics, from the most micro to the most macroscopic, has an impact on team productivity: the comfort of chairs, the quality of furniture, noise, odors, available outlets, lighting, soundproofing, temperature, the presence of plants, proximity to one's neighbors, and the trajectories of each person in the room... These needs are all the more important because the office is in competition with the home: he must then show a very fine listening to his employees to ensure a good quality of life at work, if he wants his employees to visit him.
To be complementary with the home, the workplace must be professional. According to Alain d'Iribarne:
"There needs to be more spaces than the number of people, spaces that correspond to different work postures so that employees move around, meet each other, in clearly identified spaces for different functions (focusing, making phone calls, exchanging via video conference, doing quick check-ins, leading coaching sessions, meetings, conferences...)."
The office, also to allow emulation, must make room for the movement of employees. It is this need that gave birth to the concept ofactivity-based workingThe office is no longer unique but is divided into zones corresponding to the functions of the company that are installed there, either temporarily or permanently. There are "silent" and "noisy" zones, over-equipped "tech" zones and "flex" zones with empty, uncluttered offices. Everyone can work in the offices according to their needs.
Discover below, an example of zoning carried out via the Deskare application in a delivery company, where the work spaces have been adapted and where the flex office has been implemented, in favor of shared offices. The Tech teams are assigned specific zones according to the equipment present on the concerned workstations. The Human Resources functions have offices in closed areas, to respect the confidentiality of their function.
Once this space has been designed, management and scheduling must be adapted to these requirements. Indeed, setting up remote work several days a week will require asynchronous, i.e. deferred, communication. Alan is a successful example of this. By using different modes of communication (group messaging, individual messaging, forums, etc.), it enables us to separate phases of productive work from phases of collaboration, so that we can divide our work efficiently between what we do alone and what we do as a team. Alan goes a long way in this mode of communication, radically revising his staff's meeting policy: the no-meeting policy. This kind of practice, according to employees, enables them to take full advantage of remote work.
Such examples are ambitious, and do not represent the average company, but they show us that it is possible, even with several hundred employees, in a growing company. Open space offices do not have to disappear, they can simply be redesigned to meet the expectations of employees who would like to work in open space, but also have a personal workspace.
To go further, find out how Pretto switched to hybrid work.
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