Adapting office spaces to Covid 19 effects?
Work from Home
- changing the concept of work space
Future of Work
- Hybrid model of work
The Way Forward
- New sectors emerging
The year 2020 has seen a raging
pandemic disrupt the immutable laws of real estate which has stood the test of
time, namely – location. Earlier location used to be the premier metric for
choosing the site location of offices in any particular county, state, country.
Now Covid-19 has changed this concept of geography into history.
This present crisis has seriously exposed the operating models and the
vulnerabilities of almost all businesses, big or small. None more starkly than
the occupiers & landlords of these swanky corporate office parks swept away
by this phenomenon of Work from Home (WFH).
And love it or hate it, this new trend of WFH was forcibly imposed amongst us,
so we’ve accepted it.
Do you need office space?
Due to the emergence of Covid 19,
around 90% of the world switched over to the new Work from Home (WFH) concept
almost overnight. So naturally there were hiccups, like bandwidth, power
back-ups, congenial working environment, data privacy issues and modified home
furniture, serving as office furniture. But both the employees and the
employers adapted to the new normal.
For the corporates had to maintain their Business Continuity Plans even during
this changing business environment to offer businesses their critical services.
There were huge lines of customers
and cars at the Ikea stores to buy the requisite office furniture set-ups,
computer peripherals, increasing the band width of the home network connections.
After six months of working from home, they realized its positive effects, with
little productivity loss and huge costs savings of running the facilities.
Was an office space required when we
can collaborate through Zoom, Google Meet, when most of the coding, back-office
operations could be done from the comforts of the home?
In these times of Covid 19 imposed lock-down and social distancing, why should
they sign a long term and expensive commitment of 10 year or 15 year lease term?
To avoid a long term commitment and to reduce their cost pressure, they’re
coming up with hybrid models of work from home while maintaining a smaller
office space set-up for team meeting, collaboration and bonding purposes.
The New Normal
To adapt to this new normal, employee
wellbeing and hygiene were given the top priorities for the corporate
occupiers. To adjust to the new “6 feet office” for following the social
distancing norms the new office space design and its layouts are being
re-worked, when these offices open.
Gradually the corporates are veering around to having the employees coming back into the office in a staggered way.
Landlord’s Dilemma
For the developers/landlords, the lock-down reminded them of the global financial crisis of 2008. So they hastily moved in to cut losses, by opting to retain the existing tenants/occupiers.
They adopted strict hygiene protocols in their IT office parks and also enabled smart office solutions to stagger the re-entry of the employees to work. Cutting down on the shared office space areas and shared amenities, cafeteria were closed, entry to the office was contact less, and the installation of the contact tracing app were resorted to.
Future of Work
The impact of COVID-19 is still ongoing and only when it subsides or goes away would we come to realize the decadal changes it has wrought on us, within a short span of few months.
In any evolving scenario it is difficult to make predictions, but some of the trends emanating seem to indicate the emergence of a hybrid model of the “Future of Work”. This model would entail a combination of work from home (WFH) along with having a small office footprint for the head office to support strategic operations of the firm.
The corporate head offices would be in the centre of the city, downtown or the Central Business District (CBD) where its core, critical operations, strategic decision making teams sit, and it would be served by a network of smaller offices more near the suburban homes, apartments, of the employees where they can come in to work.
The Way Forward
The old maketh way for the new so goes the saying, and even as we’re seeing many of the retail and hospitality sectors reeling under the effects of pandemic so that even their survival is in question. On the other hand, we’re seeing newer sectors and markets springing up which were not present before and are expanding, like the pharma and life-sciences sector, health & wellness companies, education technology sector where we’re seeing the birth of unicorns and decacorns, warehouses and industrial logistics sectors.
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