What do you miss, what will change and what matters to you?
“I miss the office.” We’re not sure if that’s become a commonplace saying just yet. Particularly as most of us are still putting the final, final touches on our work from home arrangements.
By now, many have tried their best to make the kitchen or dining room table the place to be during normal working hours but have probably opted for the spare room or dedicated study nook and in many respects, it doesn’t even matter. And why not? Well, while some of us have simply cleared children’s bedroom shelves of action figures or lego creations to provide a semi-professional backdrop, the fact remains, we needn’t have bothered – virtual backgrounds are here to stay!
But it’s not the lack of elbow room or the sharp tingle of said lego blocks breaking the skin as you make your way from your workspace to the “executive washroom” that has us reminiscing about the office, it’s the people. It’s always the people that make the difference to a work culture that has you wishing you could get back to the office – even for a little while. Maybe even just a couple of days a week. And yes, its true that the commute may well be just a memory for now but so is the familiarity of familiar greetings and awkward silences in the lift. We miss them.
The only constant is still change, but the questions are constantly changing too
Here are three simple questions that you may want to consider – particularly if office design, functionality, leasing, workplace culture, HR, people management, vision setting, facilities management, efficiency, resource management or any combination of those areas interest you.
- Will your current office look and feel the same if you return to work, months from now, to find 20-40% of your colleagues have taken up an option to work from home?
- How are you supposed to work out what your office needs to look like, feel like and achieve from a functional perspective in a year from now if we can’t yet see what the economy is going to look like, feel like and achieve in that time?
- How do we grapple with questions one and two?
There is an incredible volume of links, posts, papers – white and otherwise, that address the challenge of how to adapt and feel at home, at work, while at home but, at some point soon (probably sooner than you think), there’ll be a need to consider how to return to the office and what that office will need to look like and how you and yours will function in that brave new world of work.
To talk discuss a workplace needs analysis or just to talk about commercial office design in general, connect with us at www.powerhousegroup.com.au/contact-us/.
