Want to see the office of tomorrow? Welcome to the ‘clubhouse’
How to build a post-pandemic office
There’s been a lot of discussion about what the future holds for the traditional corporate office. Will companies dispose of their real-estate assets and go completely virtual? Or will we keep going with this work-from-home culture until the pandemic ends and then go back to how we were before?
Now, some six-plus months into the pandemic, there seems to be growing consensus about what’s coming next. A model that has a high percentage of work-from-home employees is actually just as — and often more — productive than how things used to be. It’s why we’re seeing many companies, including Synchrony, Dell and, most recently, Microsoft, starting to make longer-term commitments to this new dynamic.
Organizations that can satisfy our need to belong to something bigger than ourselves — while spending more time at home — will be the ones that build engaged and productive workforces.
But long-term work from home has impacts on a critical area for every organization: corporate culture. The big question now? How do you establish and maintain your all-important corporate culture in a world where your people are sitting at their desks at home — and could be working for virtually anyone in exactly the same setting?
Organizations are grappling with this question. Any decision on a long-term strategy for remote work needs to factor in the importance of culture to us all — both in providing us with an identity as individuals, and in maintaining our sense of community.
Keeping the corporate culture alive
Spending long hours in the office, sitting at the same desk or in the same cubicle, increasingly looks like a relic from the past. The focus is shifting toward planned attendance — whether that’s to take part in specific group activities, attend an event, or use a specific corporate asset.
It all means there’s a much narrower window to build that all important sense of community, based around a shared corporate culture.
Enter the “corporate clubhouse”
It’s where the ‘clubhouse’ concept comes into its own. Much like the sports or social clubhouses we all know, these new corporate clubhouses will be places where we come together to interact and work collectively to achieve our joint goals — just as we do in non-work environments.
The clubhouse will also be the place where those all-important shared assets live. Much like a golf or tennis club, religious or cultural center, the corporate clubhouse will have large spaces where people can gather. Modular furniture, equipped with fully featured collaboration capabilities, will allow people onsite to work seamlessly with those unable to be there in person.
Smaller spaces designed for specific high-frequency use-cases — like design thinking or agile scrum planning — will be more prevalent. And we’ll see less demand for generic shared spaces that offer little additional value (or in many cases less) than a virtual experience can provide.
It will also be a place that encourages in-person interactions between colleagues who usually interact virtually, but may just happen to be physically present at the same time. AI could even be used to suggest the days when you’re most likely to coincide with your closest collaborators from work.
Making it happen onsite…
People will deliberately plan ahead and carve out time specifically so they can be in the office. That means they’ll expect everything to run smoothly when they’re onsite. Reliability will be essential. So will completeness of experience. Anyone making the effort to go “into work” will need to feel it’s all been worthwhile.
To deliver on their brand promise and continue to encourage people to venture in, organizations will have to pay close attention to ensuring all onsite services are fully operational. Just one or two negative experiences may well be enough to discourage employees from coming in again.
…and virtually…
We’re seeing more organizations turning to virtual and extended reality options to instill a shared sense of culture. That might mean building exact virtual or extended reality replicas of flagship corporate spaces where people can “meet” and interact.
It’s what we’ve been doing with our Immersive Collaboration Platform (Accenture ICP). With face-to-face meetings prevented by the pandemic, we’ve relied on the ICP to keep global collaboration active — among our workforce and with our clients.
Unique in terms of its quality and rendering, and its accessibility, the platform supports a fully immersive interactive experience through Oculus VR headsets, along with seamless participation through iPads and desktops.
Solutions like these can be used for key recurring activities and events — from initial recruiting and local office “all hands” meetings to time-honored water-cooler discussions. Especially valuable from a culture perspective, the platforms are more immersive than standard Microsoft Teams or Zoom calls — they can also be clearly branded.
Belonging to something bigger, wherever we are
The future may still be taking shape, but the direction of travel for many of us is much clearer than it was, even a couple of months ago. Organizations that can satisfy our need to belong to something bigger than ourselves — while spending more time at home — will be the ones that build engaged and productive workforces. And a fully-featured, welcoming corporate clubhouse will be a key element in their success. Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear your thoughts below…
(This story was originally published on LinkedIn on October 28, 2020)
