As we look to the future, a wealth of possible worlds opens up in front of us. Some are scary, some are exciting, all of them are mostly unexplored. 2021 will be about creating new maps to help us uncover what’s yet to come and planning a route to the world we want to live in.
We’re all exploring, which is creating a safe space for experimentation, prototyping, and learning. Throughout history, after a global crisis, a new era of thinking has begun. For a significant proportion of us, working from home has become living in the office.
Meanwhile, services that facilitate remote collaboration have, unsurprisingly, seen their user numbers spike. The office as a workplace is not dead, but different organizations are now considering other options. We can confidently surmise that the future won’t be one-size-fits-all —in fact, the employee experience may look different for every organization. In one global survey, three-quarters of workers said they want a mix of office and remote working to become the new norm, with a half-and-half split seen as the ideal balance.
2021 will be the year we finally get to enjoy the real benefits of the remote work revolution. We’re finally beginning to understand how radically the world of business has been transformed.
Reduced commute times. Asynchronous communication. Less carbon in the atmosphere and more livable cities. A world where employees are more productive, organizations are more resilient, and workplaces are more equitable.
“It should make it more equitable for people to get praised and promoted for the right things—that is, the results that they drive—not the wrong things, like the kinds of clothes that you wear, or the way you verbalize in a meeting, or just because you happened to get an office next to someone you can rub shoulders with.
The politicking that harmed anyone that wasn’t a white male, hopefully, that will start to degrade, and you can build more equity around advancement and career progression tied to results.”, Darren Murph, head of remote for GitLab.
According to the FlexJobs study, 95% of remote workers have been equally or more productive overall since leaving the office; 73% say remote work has improved their work-life balance, and 81% would be more loyal to their employer were offered flexible work options moving forward.
Remote work can also help expand a company’s available talent pool, from those living within driving distance of the office to just about anywhere on Earth with internet connectivity. Murph says it’ll be a lot easier for companies to hire and scale-up, given that they’ll be able to tap into a much more diverse population of workers.
To enjoy these benefits, organizations need to shed their “office mentality” and truly embrace a remote-first culture. That means not just allowing workers to continue operating remotely but also providing them with the resources, policies, and training that will enable them to thrive in this new work environment.
“Our best estimate is that 25-30% of the workforce will be working-from-home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.”
Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics
Some megatrends we must pay attention to in 2021
Collective displacement
In 2020, the world collectively came to know what displacement feels like. How and where we experience things changed, leaving us feeling disconnected from familiar comforts, both big and small. While work to eliminate Covid-19 continues, organizations must find new ways to reach and communicate with people, and
to deliver brand experiences at a distance, in a different spatial and social context.
Sweet teams are made of this
A reframing of our relationship with work, working hours, and workspace has been underway for some time, driven by technology. This shift accelerated in 2020, creating a need for organizations to rethink not just the employee experience but the reciprocal employer/ employee contract
Reduced Business Travel
Covid-19 will also likely cause executives to rethink the need for travel to meetings, conferences, etc. They will learn that while virtual meetings may not have all the same benefits of being face-to-face, the savings may outweigh the costs much of the time.
Returning to the office won’t be simple.
The rollout of vaccines is raising confidence in returning to the hybrid office, but uncertainties remain about how to bring employees back safely, as well as how to align workforce scheduling with school reopenings or when to resume business travel.
Companies should develop a strategy that helps meet their goals, while also addressing employee safety expectations and the need for increased flexibility. Employees are likely to expect to work in less densely configured spaces and to seek assurances that health checks are being made.
Hybrid work is driving the office footprint strategy
Executives continue to worry about what might be missed by giving up the office. Findings make clear that companies are actively reviewing portfolios as they invest in making the hybrid workplace effective. As a result, PWC expect that the drive to align the real estate strategy with the hybrid workplace strategy will pick up speed in 2021, with implications for assumptions on real estate savings as a result of WFH trends.
Interaction wanderlust
The vast majority of us have been spending much more time on screens to interact with the world — and even with our neighbors. Consequently, people have noticed a certain sameness caused by templated design in digital. Organizations should reconsider design, content, audience and the interaction between them to inject greater excitement, joy and serendipity into screen experiences.
According to Accenture, employers have some key opportunities to innovate around four areas:
1. Technology: new software and hardware
2. Culture: building a sense of belonging when we are physically apart, face-to-face as a premium
3. Talent: recruiting and rewarding talent
4. Control: privacy and quality of client experience
It’s critical to decouple our notion of ‘an office’ from a physical space – instead, design for the best use of dispersed teams with the right digital technology. We are just entering an era of prototyping what the future of work could look like.
Curious? Here some valuable, resources:
-Accenture: Fjord Trends 2021 full report: http://ow.ly/qVLU30rtQFJ
-It’s time to reimagine where and how work will get done, PwC: http://ow.ly/6HNd30rtQAv
-The office as we know it is over – and that’s a good think, Fast Company: http://ow.ly/PJ3a30rtQzc
