The physical space of many traditional office floor plans do not meet the needs of today’s style of working. If employers can make the work office more compelling than the home office, people might return to the office in higher rates or at least with more excitement than experienced since the Covid pandemic closed so many public spaces in 2020.
Midsize to large companies that had already made the leap to open-floor seating, hot desking, and monitors on every desk are now challenged with enticing their workforce back to use these features. Meanwhile, every square foot of the office needs to lend itself to productive usage to capitalize on the real estate and associated (electricity, maintenance, cleaning) costs.
Re-envisioning office space to keep up with the times can be hampered by the current state of the structure. Most employers do not enjoy the privilege to start with a blank plot of land. In fact, chances are high that an office layout or floor plan is older than the majority of the current staff.
Steno Pads and Typewriters
Pre-desktop computers, a corporate floor plan consisted of executives (mostly men) working in private offices. To communicate, workers either met in person, sent letters by mail or courier, or spoke on a landline telephone; personal computers and the internet were not yet part of office culture, and therefore, quiet places to converse were necessary.
Junior-level colleagues might share an office for collaboration and boardrooms were used for larger meetings. But most work was done behind closed doors or on factory floors.
Secretaries (mostly women) were seated outside the boss’ office or within a large open area called a secretarial pool. Correspondence was drafted on noisy typewriters (relative to today’s keyboards). There was a separation of space: offices for the business deals; open spaces for the clack of typewriters. The office floor plan of the past was about hierarchy.
At the same time, when people left work, they left their work behind. They went home, where home was about their families. If they were called at home about work, then they went back into the office. For the average office worker, there was a separation because there wasn’t an easy way to work from home; no computer, no internet, no connection outside the office.
Cube Farms
In the eighties and nineties, most office workers came to know the cubicle. Bosses still had corner enclosed spaces and managers might have corner or larger cubicles, but the rest of us were relegated to the thin walled world of six feet tall uniformity.
Bland and boring, the cube was about democratizing space, but it also reduced individuality and privacy. Computers were more ubiquitous. Secretaries were still necessary, but became administrative assistants helping to organize and file important documents needed for posterity (and legality). Most workers were responsible for their own communications and output.
With so many compelling reasons to stay home, it’s hard to imagine anyone would ever willingly return to office life.
And yet employers persist.
The telephone, fax machine and computers became essential tools for communication and working at the office. Home computers and cellular phones were still mostly for the executive class, but soon that too would change. The line between working in an office and working outside an office started to break down.
Bullpen
By the late nineties and early aughts, “open office” floor plans became increasingly fashionable. Bosses still got offices, but usually with glass walls. The rest of us had long format shared desk tables or shared grouped desk configurations. The philosophy behind this was that it led to more collaboration and conversation. However, if you stood up and looked across an open office space, mostly you would see a swath of workers with headphones on, trying to block out the noise around them.
This was also around the time that the internet became mainstream. Coworkers sitting next to each other started to use instant messenger desktop apps like ICQ and AIM from AOL (predecessors to today’s Slack or Teams) to communicate with each other. Most external and internal communications moved almost exclusively to email.
Workers became more solitary; speaking to each other less, communicating (via apps) more. Employees were stuck at their desks, since work and communication largely took place on their computers. Bosses could see everyone with one sweep of the office floor.
With all the IMs and emails going around, meetings were called to coordinate and make sure everyone was getting the input and information they needed to do their job. Closed spaces were reserved for group collaboration or a supervisor. The open floor plan was about making everyone more visible, more approachable. Instead, it led to less in-person interaction.
Advances in technology, which made mobile phones and laptops more affordable and easily accessible to more people, made workers more available than ever. Someone could step out of the office for a moment and be reached on their phone at the corner deli. If it was an emergency situation, they could quickly return to the office. An employee could take their laptop from work to home and continue working until the “job was done.” Now a worker could be reached on holiday. When work needed to be done, it could be done at the office or at home…or on vacation.
Work-Life Blur
By the mid-twenty-teens, the laptop, mobile phone, and video conferencing further removed barriers between work, life, and family. Companies hoping to increase productivity levels could entice employees to stay longer at the office by offering group kitchens, game rooms, couches, sleep pods and other comforts and conveniences.
Life-Work Blur
Then came Covid. Many employees, especially in large cities, found the office closed and were required to work from home. In between meetings and tasks, workers could help children with assignments, throw in a load of laundry, go for a run, or take a quick nap. Some found home to be quieter than the office, which helped with concentration and productivity (particularly for those whose kids went back to school). People reportedly liked working from home and not having a commute. Video conferencing became the dominant form of communication, and like its predecessor the telephone, communicating via video requires quiet space and some privacy.
It can be argued that people need to work face to face for an unscheduled exchange of ideas to happen. Video conferencing is fine for discussing an already formed idea, but it doesn’t breed spontaneity and it’s not ideal for brainstorming.
What’s more it takes a lot of time since something we would solve quickly face to face, can involve a time-sucking video call. The endless on-screen video meetings that now populate a day lead to low morale and the feeling of being chained to one’s computer or desk; regardless of whether that computer or desk is at home or in an office.
Hybrid Work
When employers summoned their workers back, some moved to a hybrid of two or three days a week at home and the remaining days at the office. Employees generally report more satisfaction with this model, saying they find more balance between work and life, and they also report less burnout. Bosses, on the other hand, tend to express dissatisfaction about this way of working. They don’t seem to like empty offices; they want to see their employees “doing the work.”
Regardless of whether employees need to be visible to do work, there are challenges to build culture and continuity with a hybrid format. For instance, not all employees are on the same schedule, which can make collaboration challenging. However, that has always been the case for businesses where a large group of the workforce is in the field, such as service workers, sales people or those who work in a distributed company.
In countless surveys of the last few years, workers report that they wish to remain remote or hybrid, and requiring them to do otherwise, will make them look elsewhere for work. Some of those remote or hybrid workers took the tools of the modern office (computer, phone, video conferencing) and moved from large cities to smaller cities or rural locations to work from anywhere, which makes it harder to return to the urban centers where their employer may dwell.
Fifty-four percent of American “white collar” workers say that working from home is more comfortable than being at the office. This study has so many compelling reasons to stay home, it’s hard to imagine anyone would ever willingly return to office life. And yet employers persist. They may have to get creative to make the office more suitable to the way we work today.
Untethered
The future of work may require a more hub-like approach. Some workers could be in smaller cities outside major hubs and only commute in on an infrequent basis. This could benefit employees and employers alike. Employees who moved far from their employers during covid would be relieved from moving back to the urban tether from where they once fled. Miserable commuters would spare their sanity and the planet by reducing their commute distance and frequency. Employers whose urban commercial real estate costs may be steep, could reduce that office space or rent a portion to others and have a smaller price tag in lower cost locations.
Shape Shifting
A secondary hub may not be practical, especially for employers who are already stuck with long-term leases or owned real estate. In some markets, like Los Angeles, office buildings are selling for 45% less than 10 years ago. The pre-pandemic headache was finding enough office space; the post-pandemic headache is filling that office space.
Although offices may not be full to pre-pandemic levels, employers who embrace a hybrid model workforce may be using less resources (not needing as many lights on, reduced heating/cooling), which could help the bottom lines and the environment.
Less people in the office at any one time also gives an employer room to stretch and make the office more livable. Architecture and design companies specialize in adapting office space to meet the current needs of its workforce; for instance, creating work space on the fly with modular walls. Wheeled walls allow workers a degree of autonomy to create privacy or collaborative space, as needed.
Meet Ups
Some businesses are hedging their work culture on the idea of remote work, but with mandatory meet-ups. For example, Gitlab, which claims to be one of the world’s largest remote companies, with 1,500 employees, allows its workers to be fully remote but has a requirement that they must attend at least one offsite meetup around the world each year. The cost of leases or real estate can be repurposed to host a culture building experience.
Video Vampire
If the common denominator for meeting is now the video call, then we are back to the equivalent of the noisy clacking of typewriters in the secretarial pool. The level of noise and distraction from video calls means no one can hear, focus, or concentrate in the open desk plan. The modern office has a variety of phone booths, quiet cubbies, couches, and conference rooms that belong to no one and everyone. It’s the temporary office equivalent to hot desking—open to whomever needs it for the time they need it; most have 30-60 minute limits before being released back into circulation.
Beyond a conference room, these private environments do not typically come with direct connection monitors. But work life is no longer a one-monitor activity. One screen is needed for the video call; another for displaying the employee’s work; and a third, if one is lucky, for housing an array of distractions: slack feed, email, calendar, dashboard and other must-monitor apps refreshing in real time.
Going into a private space means disconnecting from one’s desk monitor and peering into a laptop screen to participate in a video call, while at the same time, possibly expected to present or do side work, and keep an eye on the chat-email-calendar Hydra that will surely explode if you look away for even a minute.
Instead of investing in more and more big desk monitors, companies could install tablets on flexible arms at work stations, in phone booths, in cubbies and around couch stations. The primary purpose of this screen would be to carry the video feed, freeing the laptop to serve as the work station. If the tablet is positioned at eye-level with the subject, so much the better for our necks.
Better Together
The office of the future cannot be static—physically or culturally. It needs to be dynamic to get us interested enough to return. It needs to support the way we work. It needs to be versatile, incorporating the convenience and comfort of a home space. And it needs to be a place where workers feel part of something larger than themselves. At home, they are individuals, but at work they can be inspired by the innovative environment and collaborative spirit of the group. Offices must combine the best of remote and in-person work, using technology and physical infrastructure to turn the old idea of “the office” into a shifting workshop for co-creation and collaboration.
Sign up for our free newsletter, find us on instagram and linkedin, and tell us what you think.
Evelyn Hafferty Fischer
