Hybrid Office Space

Hybrid Workspace 

As the new normal in the post-pandemic work, businesses have come a long way in embracing the digital office over the past more than a year, ever since work-from-home trend started. More and more corporates will transform into a hybrid model as the employees would demand workspaces with greater emphasis on higher standards of health and wellness. With the universal roll-out of vaccines across the world, the organizations have started returning to their workplace. What should this future of work look like; it’s going to be more tech-enabled, contact less engagement with the work space. Hot-desking approach to the corporate office, wherein most of the employees won’t be assigned dedicated desk/work-station. It would increase their needs of physical storage (lockers et al) along with digital storage needs per employee (mail box size). Social distancing has to be kept in mind while re-designing the offices for the employees’ return to office. Now that these occupiers are increasingly prioritizing the health & well-being of their employees, the developers would have to refurbish & retro-fit their older, aged office properties. 

Collaboration & Team Building 

In this new office design the hybrid teams would still need meetings and group calls to make them feel inclusive and productive. While many of us are already familiar with usage of the cloud technology e.g. Google, Apple cloud, and Dropbox, not every employee would be at the same learning level. So the HR would have to impart additional training sessions for such workforce to make them competent enough to work alongside their teammates. Such investments will create a solid infrastructure for teams to work from physically in the office, or from home, café, co-working or anywhere. What if we move the concept of co-working to the employee’s homes, would it not translate to a genuine “Walk to work” scenario. Already few developers are working on these models. To book your apartments in such urban developments, give us a call.

Seamless transition from Virtual to Real 

While digital workflows have been top of mind, with the imminent return to office, re-configuration of offices lay-out has to take centre stage. The layout of the current offices will have to be re-configured so as to make them more efficient and effective for the hybrid workforce. After more than 18 months of lock-downs and remote work, operational teams will be tasked with re-configuring the existing office layouts: placement of work spaces, allocating more space per employee to make them feel comfortable in the office, demarcating larger sizes to the common areas, corridors and shared amenities. In this hybrid model of workspace, conference rooms will still play a larger role than they did in the pre-pandemic office and they will experience a major makeover.

The pandemic has forced de-densification of the office space, and its usage is looking more like a space for collaborative development and corporate culture development. As the Covid 19 pandemic is evolving and its response is differing across the city, state and national governments. These newer age offices won’t have everyone present in the office at the same time, not only due to safety concerns but also due to the flexibility the remote work provides. Conference rooms equipped with high-quality video cameras, microphones, and speakers along with seating for the virtual employees along with the physically present employees seated at the same table provide a glimpse of the things to come. These would enhance the quality of experience for the employees, making the virtual employees feel included, even while working remotely. We’re still on the road of creating the future-proof workspace, but it would certainly encompass solutions which make work from anywhere seamlessly possible for the employees and their teams. Office parks built with high specifications will be better placed to meet this new demand of corporates & employees, focussed on health & wellness amenities which would be delivered through the help of new technology.