16 Futurecasting: OFFICE SPACE
Post-pandemic offices can actually offer greater value to employees and employers than they have in the past, but must be planned in more forward-thinking ways.
RYAN ANDERSON VICE PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS, HERMAN MILLER
While the dust has yet to settle on what the post-pandemic office looks like, one thing is clear. Employees, who began 2020 trudging to the office for the typical 9-to-5 grind but ended it on Zoom calls in slippers from their living room, will expect to retain some of that flexibility. As offices reopen in 2021, employers of all sizes will grapple with questions regarding the configuration of work spaces, traffic flow patterns, and the longterm balance between work from home and working from the office. Shared spaces and individual working areas are not going to look like or be utilized how they were prior to COVID-19. The buzzwords of the emerging office paradigm are “hybrid” and “flexibility,” both in terms of the work week and office design.
