COMMENT It is hard to avoid the debate raging at the moment about the future of the office. Everywhere you look, there is a view that the office is dead, or conversely, nothing will change in the long run. As soon as one business leader is reported as saying that working from home is the future, another states the opposite.
It is perhaps understandable that we want to get to a black-and-white, one-size-fits-all answer, but the truth is that the future of the office will not be black and white, it will be complex and multicoloured. There will not be one answer that works for everyone; some people will work from home more, others will return to the office. Some competing companies will take different approaches, one benefiting from more people being in the office, the other from a wider and more flexible pool of people to employ.
Different strokes for different folks.
What we can say is that, for most, the role of the office will evolve – it will need to become more human-centric, be healthier for people and the planet, and more clearly support a productive workforce.
So, while the impact of Covid-19 on the amount of office space needed in the future, and where that will be, continues to be unclear, we can make some fairly solid predictions about the technology needed that every company should be focused on now if they do not want to get left behind:
1. Data: Real estate has always used data, and in the past few years this has started to accelerate. We now need to move much faster and tackle this head-on as a sector. Data about people, buildings and how they interact will become centre-stage. Decisions are going to need to be made much more quickly by companies and these will have to become more data-driven.
And this is not something that we can take our time about; the people in the buildings we own, manage or occupy are about to leap ahead on the data-driven journey. As mobile devices, wearables and access to public data sets become more readily available, individuals are going to become more informed about their own situation.
Just taking indoor air quality as an example, when people can measure this themselves in real time it will inform their decisions about where to work. At a time when people are going to be able more easily to work from home, or a different office, or for a different company, it is imperative that building owners have the data to understand how the building is operating and what to do about it.
2. Flexibility: As we move into the “new normal” (which is in many ways where the old normal was heading anyway – it has just been given a massive kick up the proverbial), the way we work will become increasingly flexible. Some will work from home, some in the office, most somewhere in between. Companies will need to provide staff with a flexible technology infrastructure that allows them to work safely, securely and productively in the way that suits them, whatever the device and wherever they use it.
Flexibility will be the key here – a digital infrastructure that allows people to be flexible in their work and the digital tools to allow them to be productive while doing so.
3. Skills: Last, but certainly not least, is digital skills. We do not all need to rush back to school to learn how to code; nor do we need to be experts in configuring algorithms. But we do need to know what technology can do, and what it can’t, and how to use it.
It is easy to assume that technology is just too complicated and difficult and, as a result, we often don’t dedicate the time to learn how to maximise the benefit of the tech that is available. It doesn’t matter how clever a technology is; if it is unusable, then it is really of little value. That is why technology companies spend fortunes on user experience (or UX) expertise, to make it a better experience for the user.
Anecdotally, I have spoken to many people who have confessed that Teams, Zoom or a similar solution was “much easier to use than I expected”. We will find this with many of the digital tools that are available to us and at first glance look too complicated to bother with. We must invest the time in learning about the basics of the digital tools that we have available. As far as technology is concerned, a stitch in time saves a lot more than nine.
The future role of the office may not yet be completely clear, but technology will have a growing role in the future. Owners, operators and occupiers – companies and individuals – must think about data, digital flexibility and digital skills today if they want to be well placed for the future.
Dan Hughes is founder of Alpha Property Insight
