Property

Hybrid work, the office of the future and the office as a meeting place are topics we have been hearing a great deal about lately. In Zuidas, the storm of Covid has mostly dissipated and everything appears to be back to normal. From the outside, at least, there are few real signs of the shift going on behind office walls. Nonetheless, it seems companies are vigorously rolling out new workplace plans. We sat down to talk about this with Harry Vlaardingerbroek, chief workplace officer at Deloitte, and Wouter Oosting, executive director of workplace strategy & innovation at CBRE.

HARRY VLAARDINGERBROEK

Chief Workplace Officer at Deloitte

You are the chief workplace officer at Deloitte. What exactly does this job entail? In my job, I am responsible for three prongs of our support division; namely, Corporate Real Estate, Facility Management, and Services and Mobility. All three have undergone major changes in a very exceptional period brought about by the coronavirus over the past year and half. You firm is based in The Edge. A piece recently published in the Volkskrant noted that you are working hard to create an ‘office of the future’. Could you briefly describe what that office is like? We expect office use to be different relative to the pre-Covid period. Without discounting all the restrictions and pain Covid has caused, there have also been some positive things to come out of the crisis. For example, it proved that employees can very well work independently from home with a high degree of commitment and responsibility. Productivity shot up. Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone, so we have to account for that. Our prognosis came out of conversations with our own business units and a staff survey. More than ever, offices will have to function as meeting, teaming, coaching and project spaces. We are already redesigning our office layouts to be better adapted to the new situation. Virtual meetings also require adaptations, both in terms of facilitation and to give participants a fuller sense of involvement. In future, independent work can continue to be carried out more from home – provided the home-working situation allows, of course. People will commute less, which in turn is good for the environment helps to solve traffic congestion.

Is there any one element out of all the adaptations Deloitte has done internally that would lend itself to offices in Zuidas generally? Technological adaptations to better support virtual meeting and digital presentations and the design adaptations linked to that. Also more team zones, so that teams that are in the office just one day a week can actually sit together on that day.

WOUTER OOSTING

Executive Director of Workplace Strategy & Innovation at CBRE

All the media are saying that hybrid work is the new normal. How do you see this affecting the role and size of offices? Offices are increasingly becoming places to collaborate with colleagues in ways that you can’t get on-screen. A place offering connections and serendipitous moments which are impossible to come by at home. Simply put, it’s great to get out and go to the office. Initially, expectations were for office space to decrease significantly, but that hasn’t happened so far. In our 2021 CBRE occupier survey, only five percent of all organizations stated they plan to reduce their office space by more than a third in the next three years .

There is no one-size-fits-all template for hybrid work. What options are out there, and what are the most common questions you get from clients? A sustainable hybrid solution can only be achieved through careful research, understanding who your people are, how do they work (together) and where they do their work most effectively. The research findings will tell us how and why your people want to use the office. We get many questions about equality and diversity; it is very important to create an equal experience for your people in- and outside the office. Success can only be achieved through an integrated approach incorporating space, technology and people.