Workplace

Prior to March 2020, it was estimated that we spent about a third of our waking lives in the office. As covid-19 upended our relationship with where we worked, the worldwide home-working experiment has been hailed by some as a success, with widely reported increases in productivity the principal indicators of that success. However, indicators of productivity are not indicators of satisfaction, and moreover, this working from home experiment has only been taking place for six months so far. When the novelty of working from home has worn off, how will this affect productivity? 

How does an employer ensure their workforce is suitably equipped - and accommodated - to carry out their work, whether from home or in an office? Is it even an employer’s responsibility to ensure their workforce is happy in their physical environment? Why does this matter? 

These questions strike at the heart of shifting attitudes to organised employment in general, and to attitudes towards types of employers specifically.

Among architects, there is a palpable nervousness about the perceived reduced need that companies have for physical office space. “The office can’t ever be replaced” is a sentiment I have often heard from colleagues, often ones employed in practices that design commercial tower blocks for large multinational tenants. However, I think this sentiment is simplistic, as we need to consider just how much the workplace itself, as well as attitudes to work, have shifted. 

Being able to carry out work tasks from the comfort and familiarity of your home environment allows you to save time and money, both for yourself and for your employer. Productivity therefore increases, and linked to this increase in productivity, one would expect an increase in available free time for the employee - or else an increased workload. Either way, this new arrangement is good news for the employer, who will perceive this new arrangement as a critical way to cut costs and increase productivity - and cash flow.

It becomes tricky then to explain what a separate office space is for, and why they are still needed, when this new work-world-order seems to function nicely for everyone. Even in cases where working from home isn’t perfect - consider a flat share for example, with flatmates employed in different industries have different timetables - any alternative arrangement involving rented office space would surely be seen as needlessly expensive now. 

What is an office for then? What happens in an office that can’t happen in a zoom conference call? What was all our commuting for? How can architects contribute meaningfully to this conversation?

The design of spaces is never neutral, it is always created with purposeful decisions. These decisions have an impact on how people feel. Whether a workplace inspires loneliness or a sense of unity - and dedication - if often a combination of organisational cultures and spatial structures. An office then, affords a company with a powerful means to make concrete that company’s organisational culture, and in so doing, directly mould the perception of a brand. 

More importantly, an absence of an office means a reduction in human-to-human interactions, and crucially, a reduction in spontaneous interactions that are extremely difficult to replicate in a virtual environment. Such peripheral interactions and chance encounters are unexpectedly critically important to a company, and play an important role in sparking new ideas, generating innovations, raising service quality, and attaining milestones.

The office then is not going anywhere - but we should consider what kinds of offices we will be returning to, and what kind of working lives we would like to have. Research from the Harvard Business Review has found that people would like to spend some time in the office once things return to normal. Some organisations are adapting to this by conceptualising the office in a different way: it is a place that is seen as an add-on to virtual work (as opposed to the default), where the purpose of the physical office is refocussed to facilitate chance encounters, creative meetings and human-to-human interactions. The office then might be smaller, but it re-emerges with a revitalised sense of purpose.

Architects are uniquely suited to shape this office renewal, as they possess the skills and knowledge of how chance encounters and creativity are best fostered. Whether a space is comforting or alienating, what materials work best for sound-proofing, what qualities of light best suit a given task - these are merely a few aspects that architects are uniquely trained to resolve. 

It is critically important that design takes a powerful leading role in the creation of the new workplace. Only then will we be able to refocus the workplace discussion away from a cost-cutting imperative, and reassign meaning and happiness to our working lives.