We need to do more than give up the office lease if we want to work differently.

As I sit here in London on yet another dark January lockdown afternoon, it’s hard to imagine that eventually there will be a return to the dilemma of where we work. But it also feels good to dream about a time in the (hopefully) not-to-distant future when our choices about where we work can be expanded.

Certainly, the smart businesses are already planning for it. In a recent survey we asked whether you thought you’d be:

• Back in the office as normal by the summer (41%)
• Using the office for networking only (47%) or
• Cancelling your office lease (12%)

So nearly 60% of you are already making plans for a very different set of working arrangements, recognising that the office as a place where we go to do our work is increasingly outdated.

I find these figures exciting. They show that many of you are recognising the huge opportunity this crisis has given us – to completely re-set our thinking about how, where and when we work. This doesn’t just give us the potential to transform our working lives and to continue to reap the individual and business benefits of increased work/life balance or productivity. It has the potential to dramatically expand our talent pools and business innovation, to transform the communities we live in, and help save money and the planet! But – and it’s a big BUT – this potential can only be realised if we change our thinking, not just our work locations.

We weren’t great at WFH pre-crisis

Over recent years, we have done our best to promote the benefits of working from home occasionally. But let’s be honest, we haven’t really been terribly successful. Managers have clung to their need to see their staff to be reassured that they are actually working. Being allowed to work from home continued to be seen as a perk, almost as if you were taking the day off. Our most senior leaders tended to be in the office and so the important stuff, the big decisions, were things that happened there. Whilst the crisis has changed a lot of this, I do wonder whether the beliefs that under-pinned it have actually moved on all that much? I don’t think we should assume that the lack of trust from managers or old-school leadership will have been eliminated by the virus.

We’re applying old-fashioned thinking to future plans

It’s telling that many companies who are promising a change to their future workplace continue to apply old-style thinking. They are telling their people that the new normal will involve working at home say, three days out of five with the remaining two days being back in the office. Whilst this limited choice will go some way of appeasing our desire for increased flexibility, it doesn’t change the thinking behind it. Working from home is still being framed as a bit of an indulgence and everything about this approach screams ‘BUT, THE REAL WORK HAPPENS IN THE OFFICE!’ If we don’t change the thinking, we’ll be back to packed commuter trains and cubicle-working in no time at all.

Now I know that some aspects of work can be diminished when there’s lack of physical contact, collaboration and creativity for example. And I’ll do a future blog on how companies are ensuring that these can still thrive without being office based. But for this one I’d like to look at three trends and changes in mind-set that are gaining momentum and which have the potential to offer a genuine re-set once the crisis ends.

15 Minute Living

Whilst the idea of ‘15 Minute Living’ idea isn’t new, it is certainly getting some traction since the crisis. This model of urban planning is where all our needs, whether they be work, school, gym, shopping, socialising or healthcare, are no more than a 15 minute walk or cycle from our homes. Instead of long commutes to huge offices in city centres, there is growing trend around the idea of ‘localisation’ – vibrant local communities that cater for all our needs. Companies are already responding to this trend with Google planning to create smaller hubs and satellite offices as alternatives to the big HQs. Similarly, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently explained his vision of having ‘one floor of office space in ten cities, rather than ten floors of office in space in one city’. This distributed model of offices has the potential to breakdown the soulless HQs that have burgeoned over recent decades. Moreover, because these hub working spaces will be based around where people actually live rather than where certain departments are based, they shouldn’t automatically re-create the mini fiefdoms we tried hard to get rid of in the first place.

WFA – Working from Anywhere

The old ‘work from home or the office?’ debate is thankfully evolving into the concept of ‘Work from Anywhere’ (WFA). Rather than being constrained by an office with all of the costs and hassle that go with it, companies are expanding their options of where work can happen. Whilst we saw co-working space growth before the crisis, the predictions are that this will shoot up from 5% to 30% of the office market over the next 10 years. The search optimisation agency Novos for example, has recently signed a lease with We Membership and give employees their own monthly budget to spend on booking workspace. Not only does this save the company money, but they are now less reliant on the competitive London market for talent, with recent recruits coming from as a far afield as Poland.

In addition, hotel chains hit hard by lockdowns and travel bans are waking up to the idea that they can provide businesses with flexible space options. Accor and Marriott for example, are both offering ‘work from here’ packages – possibly a more attractive option for people struggling with working from home due to lack of space or young children. Travel company Expedia has even been promoting the idea of changing your four walls during lockdown for a holiday location with their Work From Here campaign and there’s a new platform called Jubel that makes it easy to plan so-called ‘workcations’.

Level Playing Fields

Back when I was in corporate life, I used to find it amusing that the location of the Executive Team would act like a magnet for large numbers of staff who would try and move their own desk closer to the seat of power. If we continue to see the office as where the important work happens, all of these exciting new trends will lose traction. And we will gravitate back to the centres of power like some Elizabethan court! The smarter companies have not only re-set expectations of where work can happen, but have supported these changes with efforts to level the playing fields between office work and elsewhere. Here are just a few examples:

• Pay the same regardless of location: Reddit have promised to set salaries based on the role, not where it’s located – in sharp and welcome contrast to those companies who pay more if you’re back in the office.
• Create the same experience for people, wherever they are: Coinbase, whose CEO has promised that ‘there are no explicit or implicit disadvantages to working from any location’ ensure that everyone dials into video meetings from their laptop at their desk, even if they are in the office – to reduce the risk that you miss out on side conversations and get ignored.
• Help your people create the workspace that meets their needs: Slack is just one of the companies who gives their people an allowance to enable them to create the best working space that works for their individual needs.

The plans we are making now for a post-Covid world offer a genuine opportunity to re-shape our businesses and the lives of our people. If we want to fully realise this opportunity, then we have to re-shape our thinking as well as giving up the lease on our office.