Back to the office! 5 things that might change in your workplace after Covid-19

After lockdown, how are we going to get back to our workspaces? And how will shifting attitudes change the future of office culture?

It was the second week of March and both my partner and I sat down and talked on how we’d work remotely at our house, a small but cozy apartment in central Lisbon. Staying 24/7 with someone with little space could be challenging. Surprisingly, this was not my main concern. I was a bit more worried about the office environment. What about the team, our daily meetings, or even that cup of coffee in the morning while you’re catching up with colleagues? (I know, I need a lot of social interaction in my life.) We all knew things were going to change from that moment on, but how?

For years and years, companies have been competing for great space in major urban cities. Many are even offering after-work activities, free drinks, and many more perks to ensure people stay motivated and happy. However, during this global pandemic, companies realized that teams managed remote working mode very well. So well that companies like Facebook mentioned in a CNN article that “up to 50% of its employees could be working from home for the next five to 10 years.”

So, how will that change offices in a nearby future?

There are a lot of lone rangers that are enjoying working remotely from their houses: no commuting, homemade meals, the family is around, working in their favorite pajamas, and essentially, really good coffee. But what about the families with babies, hyperactive dogs, and lousy wi-fi? And what about the essential workers that simply can’t work remote and will be forced to get back to the office space? We can’t return to the same casual, noisy, open-plan space, and shared dining areas without a ton of new health and safety measures.

Twitter’s Vice President of People, Jennifer Christie, said in the same CNN article that “if employees prefer to come back, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return.”

So, here are 5 things that might change when we come back to your offices, besides masks, disinfectant gel, social distancing, and the same old sh*tty coffee but now in paper cups:

1. Real estate will be optimized

Think about it, flexible conditions at work and the possibility of more remote workers allows companies to have smaller offices.

Companies like Google have already announced that they’ll keep their workers fully-remote until Summer 2021, while Basecamp has completely given up all their office space. This spells disaster for the commercial real estate industry but also changes to the way we live. Will workers move away from cities now that physically going to work is no longer required?

Even if companies decide to work in shifts. Shared desks will be more efficient, there’ll be fewer meeting rooms and therefore smaller and more affordable office spaces. The new office is in the cloud.

2. Health and safety measures will be mandatory

Thanks to the pandemic, people got more aware of hygienic habits. I have never seen so many ‘wash your hands’; ‘don’t cough without covering your mouth’ and ‘wait for the surface to be clean’ signs before. It’s always in my mindset.

Companies might become really strict in terms of sick employees and might not allow them to come to the office when they feel a simple flu. We might have a ‘bring your own cutlery to work’ policy, or we even might have to clean our workstation after using it for the next shift.

3. Shared offices, shared tools

Nothing new here but since we went all-digital, we felt the need to be even more aware of everyone’s work and make it easy and efficient to collaborate with your team.

Eventually, it’s not only the way offices will change but also how people collaborate. How projects are put together and the need to be more in sync with others, not by getting up from our seats but instead by working together in a real-time live update tool. Bye-bye Powerpoint, hello Google Slides!

4. Communications 2.0

When you’re in need of advice or would like to discuss a project, your team was just a few desks away. Many of us have taken this for granted and had to learn about how we should communicate in a 100% digital way. But how can we do it without overwhelm and be overwhelmed?

This is the only thing that I want to thank the pandemic for: making it easier to choose which communication tools to use when dealing with specific matters and timelines.

When do you write an email? When do you opt for a Slack message? Or when do you need to call your manager? We have so many channels and tools available that it is easy to become confused.

Going fully digital made us rethink this and maybe in the future, we’ll have a clearer view of how to better communicate with our team.

5. Remote work will be a viable option

This whole confinement period was definitely a trial test to remote working, a model already used by many start-ups and tech companies. The big deal was seeing traditional organizations and smaller businesses reacting to the mandatory reclusion. There will be possibly a lot of improvements to work on but overall it appears to have worked just fine.

People were sometimes happier, companies found that productivity didn’t suffer as expected, and this experience made us rethink “work-life balance” and look into the future to see how we can incorporate remote working in our 9 to 5 schedules.

Maybe the time is right to start investing in some athleisure and nice slippers for the workweek.

We are animals of habits

According to healthline.com, it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit. On average, a new behavior becomes automatic in just 66 days!

This “new normal era” started with a bumpy road for companies and employees but, hey, here we are and we are still counting the days in remote working. I have been working from home for the last 5 months and I still haven’t divorced!

The challenge we have ahead is to look into the future, think about all the possible scenarios, do what’s best for people (first!) and companies and get back to creating some certainty in a world that somehow changed in a couple of months.

For the offices, well, we will be back but we will look at them in a totally new way. Let’s see what the future brings!