Council Post: The Future Of Workspaces Will Be Unrecognizable

CEO and Founder of dataPlor, human verified small business data in LATAM. 

Prior to Covid-19, there was already a shift in motion. Corporations were abandoning the requirement of working in-office, embracing the remote option as a means of sourcing talent, providing flexibility as a benefit to employees and saving capital.

Many startups, ours included, have operated in an exclusively remote capacity from the start. Yet many organizations hadn’t embraced a work-from-home culture, due in part to the cost associated with establishing the infrastructure to make it work, as well as the cultural shift that running a remote team requires. 

Covid-19 instantly changed that, and because the novel coronavirus has no known cure or vaccine at this time, the path back to “normal” will likely be a long one. When it does finally come time to return to the office, it likely won’t resemble anything we would recognize from before. Here’s why.

Social Distance Adaptations In The Office 

When employees begin to return to offices, new safety measures will be required to ensure social distancing. Occupancy will need to be adjusted, and the open-office concept will likely have to be amended or abandoned as employees are instructed to sit farther apart.

Technology that can detect how many people are present in the office to avoid congregating or overcrowding will likely also be integrated. As employers begin to plan for what this next phase will look like, sales of workplace management software have surged. The demand is so high that the industry is expected to grow 12% annually over the next four years.

Embracing The Remote Office

While many employers previously opposed remote culture, Covid-19 has shown employers that employees can be just as productive at home. To date, tech giants Google, Facebook and Amazon have already taken the lead by announcing their workforces will remain remote (or will have the option to remain remote) through 2021.

Twitter went one step further, announcing it has encouraged anyone who can work remotely to permanently remain remote, even after the threat of coronavirus has passed. This has left employees questioning if it makes sense to live in major cities with high rents if the requirement to report to headquarters is now lifted. Many are speculating this will likely have a large impact on rent prices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley as many tech workers consider permanently relocating.

The threat is so real, Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that, going forward, Facebook employees will be able to work from anywhere. But there’s a catch. If they move to a place with a lower cost of living, their salary will be adjusted to their location — and there will be “severe ramifications” for those who do not disclose the move. With more employees expecting the ability to work remotely and more employers finally on board, the shift from traditional in-office workforces to a remote or hybrid concept won’t come without consequences.

Building And Maintaining Corporate Culture

With most of their workforces currently at home, employers are learning how to maintain their culture among people who don’t see each other every day. Software company Opentext conducts virtual happy hours (paywall), chess tournaments and game nights to foster a sense of community. 

Our company chooses a movie to independently view and then discuss via Zoom every Thursday night. This tradition was in place long before coronavirus and has really encouraged our employees to build relationships and get to know each other outside of work.

Establishing a culture or helping new employees to fit into the culture presents a different set of challenges. Social media software provider Buffer, which has been fully remote since 2015, assigns new employees virtual mentors for the first 90 days of onboarding and then assigns “mastermind buddies” based on similar interests.

The Economic Effect 

As workspaces transition to a hybrid model or forgo physical space completely, there will, of course, be economic effects. The first domino to fall will be commercial real estate. The shares of two major commercial real estate holding companies are down (paywall) 59% and 47%, respectively, since the beginning of the year. 

The number of WeWork’s tenants that have sought rent relief or to terminate their contracts due to the pandemic was so high it caused a crash in mortgage-backed securities. And, as previously mentioned, as more employees consider moves to the suburbs or leave the coasts, residential real estate will also be affected, which may ultimately have a ripple effect on employee compensation.

If Zuckerberg’s announcement was any indication, companies that are still reeling from the economic effect of the global pandemic will be looking for ways to cut costs. Sourcing talent from places with lower costs of living, whether that be Middle America or South America, will have a lasting impact.

Whether we were ready or not, and with few exceptions, corporations around the world have been thrust into the greatest work-from-home experiment ever undertaken. Ultimately, an organization’s ability to remain nimble through this time will determine its success. Those more willing to experiment and adapt will be those that come out ahead. This may come easier for startups and SMBs due to their size, but as we’ve seen from some of the largest tech companies, it will influence the path forward for the largest Fortune 500s as well. Evolution is never easy, but we often emerge with something better than we had before.

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