The Post-COVID Office: “Technology is the Enabler”
Thijs van der Burgt, CEO and Co-founder of Office App, discusses what the COVID-19 crisis has shown us about work and the office, and why technology will pave the way forward.
Since the COVID crisis began, plenty of industry experts have been weighing in on the future of offices and buildings. Some claim the office is dead, while others argue that it’s simply going through changes.
At JOIN, we envision something in between: the lines between office buildings and home offices continuing to blur into one inter-connected community, with technology gluing it altogether. We’re not thinking strictly in terms of single buildings or locations, but rather in geographically spread networks and engaged, data-driven teams. Our habits will continue to change, and so will our technological toolkits.
Office App, the all-in-one engagement platform for offices, is proving to be one of these valuable toolkits. It has just launched its Post-COVID-19 guide for professionals looking to get their workforce back to work safely, offering up tips and tools related to team communication, touchless booking and hygiene, phased employee access control, real-time monitoring of health sentiments and more.
Because Office App is designed to be both a frontend solution that connects people, as well as an insight tool for management, the team behind it has a unique perspective on how work trends may change, what the role of the office will become and how technology will drive workplace evolution.
Here you can dive into Office App CEO Thijs van der Burgt’s thoughts on how technology is allowing offices to adapt in shifting times.
Faisal Butt has spoken about how he thinks COVID-19 will create a tailwind in the real estate sector. People are finally having to adopt new technologies, and they’re going to stay. That’s going to shave off a lot of time. Do you think this exposure to technologies will create a necessity when it comes to further adoption in this space?
Yes, luckily I do see that. We already see the changes, right? The problem with a crisis like COVID-19 is that you need to adapt at such a high pace to make sure that you are able to let your workforce get back to work and be productive. From one day to the next, people needed to start working from home. A lot of organizations were prepared for remote working, but also a lot of them had no experience in setting up an organization or an infrastructure to enable people to actually work from home. So that needed to change at a very, very high pace.
But it also gave organizations insights and showed them the risks of not having technology enabled to make sure that you can change faster. Because if you work through a basic process or through a basic system, it’s very hard for you to change quickly and adapt to new situations.
How is the role of technology shifting in the sector right now?
Technology is the enabler of change at a rapid pace. I think because of a crisis such as this, people — especially on the management and board level — they see what the impact can be if they’re not prepared from a technology perspective. The cost of implementing technology is quite low if you consider the benefits.
We also see that technology can directly solve problems that happen because of a crisis. We just launched the Post-COVID-19 solution to make sure that people can go back to work safely and feel safe at work.
That’s one end of the story. But I think the other side is, all of this is a huge challenge for a lot of real estate divisions and landlords. They have questions such as:
- How can I make sure that I build up a strategy?
- How can people go back to work with policies in place that ensure they’re not only feeling healthy but are healthy?
- How can I make sure that those people, or the policies and the strategies they implement, are successful?
- How can I measure the success of all this, and based on the measurements, improve the overall implementation and success of the strategy?
These are questions that technology enables you to answer and act upon at a very high pace. There’s still a huge human factor in this, luckily. But technology is the enabler. It’s a large part of solving this puzzle.
How are attitudes changing in how people are approaching going to work and going to the office? And what is the office going to look like?
I do think that working remotely is seen differently. I think this is basically the biggest forced test of how can we work efficiently from home. I heard an interview from a large consulting firm with 200,000 consultants working there, and they — from one day to the next day — needed to work from home. But the great thing about it is they log all of their hours because they have to — they’re consultants. So they could measure productivity from one day to the next. What they found is that the only change in productivity was 0.6%, negatively. But it’s 0.6%. It’s not even 1% of productivity and it’s for a short moment in time.
And I think the office is not only about productivity, but also connections. Relationships. It’s about cohesion. It’s about feeling that there is a space where you work and there is a space where you are free and at home. I do think that barrier will be more intertwined and that management for larger enterprises will allow their workforce to work from home more easily. Not only because the infrastructure and the technology are there, but also because in a lot of cases, people have to commute for an hour one way and an hour back. If productivity is high and you can give them the opportunity to work from home, then when it’s necessary they can go to the office buildings.
I think office buildings will always be a vital part of business, but I definitely think they will change. We’re not losing office buildings — I’m not afraid of that. But I do think that more people are also going to work from home.
You mentioned this connectivity aspect. What do you think is necessary for people to feel this sense of connectivity when it comes to the workplace and being productive? And how is that evolving during this time?
One part of our solution is the community. Some customers are very actively using Office App simply to share how they are experiencing their own work-from-home situation. Whether it’s a picture of them typing with a screaming, crying kid next to them or a work station that they built themselves that they’re very proud of, or them showing off all the plants that they have. They’re all trying to find a way to connect.
People are still finding a way to interact with each other. I see it also internally with myself and others — it’s difficult to adjust. People have their workstations at home, but in the largest cities, it can be more difficult because there’s less space. There are people cramped up together, or you have a couple that has a small apartment in London and it can be quite difficult to have in a nice workplace. I’ve seen people working from ironing boards. It will take time for people to adjust.
In general, I think people are doing very well on our team. But we miss the social interaction. We do that through our platform, but I think it’s one of the vital things that an office can offer you.
What have you been hearing from your customers during this time?
The biggest thing, of course, is “Can you help us?” or “Can you help us through technology?” We set up a Post-COVID-19 team internally from different departments to make sure that we came up with a solution to help them quickly and make sure they are actively able to get people back to work in a safe way.
Learn more about how to get back to work safely with Office App’s Post-COVID-19 guide. Or get in touch with the JOIN Capital team with questions, comments and thoughts: hello@join.capital
