Navigating through the confusion, with insights into the past, present and future of the workplace.

This article is taken from our new publication – The Workplace [R]Evolution

In March 2020, offices around the world were forced to close and millions of people had to adapt to a different way of working. Since then, business leaders have been reimagining the future of the workplace and championing pioneering ideas, but as we now start moving back into our offices, we must accept change. The time for action has arrived.

As questions still remain about the future of the workplace, and how many of these ideas will help maximise potential. We spoke to Craig Murray, Strategy & Design Director at TSK, about the journey we’ve been on and what the future holds.

How were people feeling as we returned to work, and how does that compare to now?

After the initial shock and panic of “how on earth are we going to work? Can our business function remotely?”, I think a lot of leaders were surprised by how well their businesses adapted. That initial fear transformed into a feeling of bravery and pioneering spirit, with some headlines claiming “the workplace is dead”.  

Back then, it was easy to imagine a hypothetical future, but now we’re confronted with the reality of change. Rather than considering how we’re going to work from home, it’s “how are we going to transition back to the office?” How can we make the workplace an environment that people not only want to be in but also a place they can do their best work?

What do you think caused this “pioneering spirit”?

People started to embrace the technology that has been around for years. The likes of Teams and Zoom supported businesses with new ways of working. We realised, on the whole, people operated fairly effectively from home; albeit in a very different way from how they’ve worked before.

It gave people fresh autonomy about how they might like to work in the future, creating new rhythms of work. The traditional 9-5 was replaced with new ideas of flexibility and choice. In the past, many leaders feared that their employees couldn’t work productively from home, but this has proved that wrong – and now it means coming into the office maybe around 2-3 days a week.

Do you think people are still feeling that same sense of bravery?

We’ve moved into a slightly new era now. Both organisations and their people need a level of stability to provide certainty around planning and decisions. While it’s important to remember the lessons we’ve learnt over the past few years, we’re starting to wrestle with those normal everyday problems and practicalities again, as well as questioning the new role of the office.

Most companies don’t want to be outliers – stability and safety are fundamental to success. As we are approaching a more settled future, we’ve never had an opportunity as great as this to innovate. Collectively, we’ve been looking at the extended impact of working across a distributed workforce, and now is the time to make those changes that will help in the long term.

As businesses make decisions and take action, what do you think their main challenges will be?

We’re not doing anything today we couldn’t have done a few years ago and lots of companies across various sectors have already adapted to a new way of working. But for others to move into this ‘new world’, it’s down to leaders to make change happen.

What will start to come back are the complexities of what makes an organisation unique and special. The challenge is in answering, what makes an organisation? What will inspire people to fight for your mission and beat your competition? What will help you attract and retain talent in a more flexible future? The answer to these questions is defined by a clear vision.

Are there any areas of business that leaders are particularly concerned about?

While we’ve progressed in some areas, in others we’re treading water. For many of our clients, training and development is a huge concern. We may be able to work productively from home, but are employees progressing as quickly as they would in the physical office?

Another issue is how we foster a sense of company culture and connection across a distributed workforce. It can be a struggle to manage complex teams of people in one location, now there’s a wide geographic spread, and it’s created a whole new challenge for leaders.

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For Access Group, we created their flagship headquarters with this in mind. To understand their needs and culture better, we ran workshops and discovery sessions and we found that their people wanted a new office base that would foster a sense of pride and connection to the wider organization. It now provides its people with social spaces and technology so they can connect with the brand, colleagues and customers.

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What’s the next step for leaders?

A few months back, it was innovation in a vacuum. Now is the time to start making decisions and implementing those changes that will have a positive long-term impact on your business. Organisations will need to answer the questions we’ve asked about the role of their office.

The main things we should take forward are:

What we’ve learnt this year: There’s been a seismic shift in work that people have adapted to, and the technology to enable this is already in place to support this change.

Predictions for now: People will return to the office, but only if it has a newly defined purpose. The office needs to be seen as a centre for innovation (rather than a place of process) allowing people to come together to do great things and inspire one another.

Action to take: Don’t return to the old; seize the opportunity for change and focus on connection, collaboration and performance.

Define your vision and purpose and deliver against it. And most importantly of all – commit.

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