Happenings No 3. Are offices, our dinosaurs?

6 May

We set about writing these blogs to share our insights of the building game, from our observations, and from what our clients, suppliers and customers are telling us.

First up, we wrote about offices in the post pandemic world, some 6 month’s into COVID-19.

But things have changed a lot since then. Borders are still not open, the sky did not fall in, and closer to home, there is a positive business sentiment out there.

But what will be of the elusive office as a workplace? Is the office, the skinny jean, of 2021?

Well first omission, is I still wear skinny jeans. I hadn’t realised it was considered a past fad, until insta told me it was. My Second omission is that I moonlight (daylight, any spare time I have light) as an employment lawyer, so I do happen to know a thing or two about working flexibly, working from home, its benefits and pitfalls and what our rights are. I mean I could talk all day about this stuff, and maybe in a future blog I will.

But, this is not a blog on the law, rather our latest install on what we think workplaces and offices will look like.

Now, you may have read about the billionaire co-founder and co-chief, Scott Farquhar of Australia’s largest technology company Atlassian, who has introduced a Team Anywhere policy, where workers only need to be in the office FOUR times a year. You heard that right! This policy really is paving the way for a new workplace system.

Scott Farquhar is likening the time spent in offices to resemble attending a work conference. In the Sydney Morning Herald “Four times a year in the office: Atlassian goes all in on WFH” article on 29 April 2021, Scott is quoted as saying: “A conference you go there, you meet a lot of people. It’s an intense experience, often residential, you might be away from family or at least you’re dedicated towards that particular endeavour,” (reference the SMH article). “It’s a lot of learning, it’s a lot of building social networks and connections and we think that the office will be dedicated more towards those activities versus ‘Let’s come together to do the work’.” I personally think that this is great! But what does this mean for offices, and the typical office partitioning we commonly see or cubicle spaces? In order to do introduce a conference style office space where collaboration is at the fore front, it is clear that offices will need an overhaul and some innovative redesign.

We are seeing more:

collaborative team sharing spaces,
communal spaces,
working hubs for groups rather than individuals,
repurposed meeting rooms (the new think tank);
conference rooms,
designated quiet zones where calls can be made in private;
more break-out zones,
larger communal amenities with a different spin, such as the traditional kitchens, where we are seeing areas for group working to take place too;

The list goes on…

It all starts with one leader, and this may well be Atlassian, to take a bold move to attract the best talent, and if others don’t innovate and take bold steps to a future work they will be left behind.

Oh, and as a fit-out company, we can certainly help with taking that bold next step!

Written by - Deanna Oberdan