This blog post is based on a webinar — The remote workforce 12 months on: Is the office dead? — featuring Janet Jones, Head of Industry Strategy, Financial Services, Microsoft, and Alexi Marmot, Professor Emerita of Facility and Environment Management at University College London. The webinar is available to view on demand.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world of work has many ripples, and the future of the office is one that business leaders are currently dealing with. As they attempt to dissect the impact of the past 12 months, which has been dominated by widespread homeworking, and acknowledge the likelihood of hybrid or permanent remote work moving forward, they must make decisions about the future role and need of their physical real estate. Is the office dead or does it still have an important function? How must it evolve and adapt to meet changing employee needs?

In this webinar discussion, five priorities and considerations emerged as we explored what the office might look like in a post-COVID-19 world.

Technology and moderators will be needed to facilitate an equal experience between the physical and remote office.

As offices begin to re-open and organizations manage a complex hybrid workforce, a key priority will be ensuring that employees have an equal experience, whether they are at home or in the office.

Janet Jones of Microsoft says technology will play a pivotal role in offering a consistent experience between the physical and digital office “so that people can fully participate from home, on the go and in the office.” She sees moderators playing a key role in this, facilitating for those who are remote to ensure there is no distinction between people who are in the room and those who aren’t.

Leaders will need to offer clarity and lead by example.

Jones says that, in the move toward hybrid working, there will be a “phase of clarity” during which new expectations will need to be set by leaders. “A huge amount of responsibility sits at management level to facilitate the right type of collaboration, the right type of connection, and communicating clearly what is needed from the employee in this new way of working,” she says.

It will be critical for leaders to lead by example and model how hybrid work can function in a way that’s sustainable long term, supporting a healthy work/life balance. They must also avoid creating a a culture of digital presenteeism for those working remotely.

Organizations may need to create a “third” space that is not the home or the office.

In a hybrid world of work, people will likely use home for focused, individual work, and the office for collaboration. However, a third place might emerge: a local hub that people can drop into that is close to home, providing an escape from the home office without the commute.

Alexi Marmot, Professor Emerita of Facility and Environment Management at UCL, supports the view that post-pandemic, businesses could be looking to use co-working spaces for collaboration and communication. “We know that co-working spaces, such as the WeWork model, have been a fast-expanding area, and some corporate offices have increasingly emulated this model.”

Jones believes public spaces such as libraries and empty corporate or retail buildings could also be used as a “third” space for work, to support SMEs in particular. “I think there is a space for cross-industry collaboration, utilizing [unused] spaces on the high street. Confidentiality and security matters would need to be considered, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t head towards this sharing of spaces,” she adds.

Offices need to be attractive, energetic, healthy to entice people back.

People have gotten used to working from home and the greater flexibility that it brings. If leaders wish to attract workers back to the office, they will “need to recreate compelling and energetic spaces, along with a mix of places to collaborate or get more focused work done,” Jones says. “If they don’t get that right, people will want to continue working at home.”

Marmot agrees that the office will need to become “a place of connection” where “you want to be.” Otherwise, she asks, “when we have numerous remote working tools, how will we justify investing our time and planetary resources in going somewhere where we don’t really make the most of being together?” She believes offices will need to be healthy spaces “where you feel good, connect with nature, can be healthy and connect with others”.

Too much progress has been made for us to go back to the office as “normal.”

Remote working strategies were already under way prior to the pandemic, which simply accelerated change on a global scale. While the initial response was reactive, a year or so down the line, more sustainable remote working models are being designed, which appear to be very much here to stay.

“I don’t think we will go back to what offices were before the pandemic,” Jones says. “This next phase of hybrid work and the way people react to it and the choices made, will impact the ability to compete for the best talent, which then in turn drives creativity and innovation, to create that inclusive work environment that we all want to be a part of.”

Ultimately, organizations will need to embrace an experimental and agile approach to the hybrid office, consistently looking at the data to understand how well things are working and what aspects need to be tweaked, at any given moment in time.

View the complete webinar on demand.