FORBES: Ask These Questions Before Reducing Your Office Space

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David Cocchiara is the Chief Executive Officer of OfficeSpace Software, the creator of better workplaces.

As organizations continue to eye a return to the office, the uncertainty of the labor market and the new emerging Covid-19 variants could potentially throw a kink in their plans. According to the results of a Morning Consult poll, as of September 20, 2021, only about 59% of current remote workers feel comfortable returning to the office, although that’s up from 44% at the start of the year.

However, the evidence indicates that an increasing number of organizations are working toward a return to the office. But there are a few critical questions companies must ask to fully understand their office needs moving forward.

For starters, what will the office look like when employees return? Will the company need the same size office that it did before the pandemic? How do teams engage, and what type of space will they need to maintain connection and productivity?

On the surface, the questions seem simple, but their answers are more nuanced. Additionally, there isn’t a particular path a company should follow.

Before determining the future look of the office, companies need to ask themselves a few baseline questions as they chart a path forward. To answer them correctly, companies should look at their needs for today and how they might evolve in the future.

In determining the future office, it’s critical to understand the role it plays within an organization. An office is more than four walls, furniture and equipment. An office is an incubator; it’s where teams converge and ignite ideas.

It might be tempting for many organizations to try and find a standard formula to determine what size office they need. With X employees at an average of Y square feet per employee, the office should be Z square feet.

As organizations evaluate their needs, they shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many employees don’t know how they want to work. It’s not just the real estate teams who don’t have all the answers. It needs to be more nuanced than that, and the numbers will differ by industry.

Some industries — consider marketing or advertising firms as an example — might be better accustomed to transitioning to virtual work. Concurrently, companies in other industries — such as warehousing, logistics and service companies — might need more team members to work from the office.

How does the team collaborate now?

Regardless of the path forward, it must enable collaboration and productivity. The first step is to evaluate your employees’ office needs, including how they use the space and could use it better.

As part of that evaluation, and before addressing the real estate-specific questions, consider office capacity limits, the number of in-person meetings and the size and number of workstations and collaboration spaces needed. Only after gathering this information can companies determine the square footage and space configurations they’ll need.

What are the hidden costs of moving to fully remote teams?

The obvious draw of working remotely for many companies is the opportunity to reduce real estate costs. But the costs of a fully remote team could exceed those costs.

Organizations may need to invest in additional IT infrastructure to enable their teams to work remotely. Additionally, remote teams may increase travel budgets, depending on how often an organization necessitates an in-person meeting, and some organizations may adjust employees’ salaries depending on where they live.

But there are also costs tied to productivity. Despite all the collaboration technology, are teams more productive when they work from the office? If teams work from home, but they aren’t as productive as they are in the office, what impact does that have on the company’s bottom line?

For the moment, they might enjoy the flexibility of working remotely, but do they want to work this way indefinitely? Many workers think they want to be remote workers, but when they start working from home, they don’t like the experience. They’re worried about what they’re missing.

What does the future hold?

Perhaps the biggest question many organizations are asking is what does the future hold? Let’s be honest; it’s not always possible to predict the future, and no one has a crystal ball.

Employees and employers alike had to adapt and pivot to the new ways of working, gaining new habits and approaches to their roles. Employees will want their employers to accommodate the changing reality.

Sometimes, the best approach necessitates an educated and informed guess based on data — not a complete shot in the dark. To make an educated guess and tackle the pressing questions, companies must capture ongoing feedback to understand their teams’ thinking.

How are you capturing feedback?

As with many things, it’s easy to make decisions in a vacuum. But as I noted in my last piece, collecting feedback and actionable data to understand your teams’ productivity is vital to evolving the office.

An organization’s leadership must also understand the satisfaction and engagement perspective from a real estate cost standpoint. This information will be critical for companies as they look three to four years ahead to understand how their office environment should evolve. Today’s workplace may not suit the workforce of tomorrow, and organizations must understand they’ll need to evolve their plans moving forward. However, they should only evolve the workplace if they understand what their teams want and what works best for their business objectives.

The world is undergoing an incredible transformation, and the office will soon look different. Companies must keep their eyes open and recognize the evolution will be constant, and as such, their plans may continually adjust. The best offense isn’t always a good defense. Sometimes, it’s an audible.


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