Revisiting 2020 Predictions: What We've Learned in the Last 3 Years
Matt Newstrom
Principal, ConsultingMatt leverages more than 25 years of senior management and consulting experience in corporate real estate, workplace strategy, and business development to help guide Hyphn's vision, strategy, and execution.
Back in March of 2020, after we were mandated to shelter-in-place and for the majority of us “leave the office,” I wrote a blog about some of our experiences at Hyphn and made some predictions about the future of the workplace. Just shy of three years after that blog post, I thought it’d be worth updating our point of view and see how those predictions were or were not realized.
Prediction #1: People need to stay connected. The office will always be here; the value of in-person human connection and collaboration can’t be replaced.
Today: Realized. So much data tells us that isolation is not good for any of us humans and that social connection has been missed. According to HBR, approximately 40% of employees report that they have weakened connections today and over 80% would go to the office to rebuild team bonds, socialize and see their functional teams.
In the last 30 months, we’ve seen increases in turnover, silent resignation, a reduction in engagement and increases in mental health issues. We are missing the human connection.
Prediction #2: Real estate/space will continue to become more flexible. While I believe that the co-working industry may take a short-term hit, they will bounce back and continue to lead the charge on how people approach their real estate strategy.
Today: Realized. Many organizations are prioritizing flexibility and more will follow. Not only in flexibility of their real estate holdings but in how they are supporting their employees. We are working with many organizations and consistently, our research shows that flexibility is one of the top three things people are asking for. Flexibility and control in where they do their best work for the task at hand, as well as how they can be more agile in how teams work and collaborate.
At the organizational level, companies are looking to shed space, negotiate shorter lease terms or vacate their offices altogether. According to JLL’s Q3 market report, nearly 1,000,000 SF of office space was put back to the market. I strongly believe that moving to a 100% WFH model will have negative impacts on organizations and their employees, but there is a way to strike a balance on what can sometimes feel like competing priorities.
Prediction #3: Companies and designers will finally abandon the archaic model of every employee in a dedicated workstation. Data has been circulating for years that on average—across all industries—at any given time, no more than 60% of commercial space is being used. Why have people continued to pay 40% more than they need on the expense that is only second to payroll?
Today: Trending toward realized. I don’t think there is a day (including weekends) where I do not hear the word Hybrid, or use it myself. The stats I mentioned in my March 2020 blog were pre-pandemic and those numbers have changed drastically over the course of the Pandemic. At Hyphn, we embrace a 100% hybrid model where no one has an assigned desk. This shift took a lot of intention, planning, design mitigation and change management to execute successfully. I observe that there are more companies than not who are not sure how to approach this. Data shows that the majority of business leaders do want their teams back in person, but without a thoughtful strategy, mandating a return without changing the environment can easily back-fire. We need to earn our employees’ commute and that will take investment.
Prediction #4: Companies will prioritize operational and project spend. This means fewer “really cool light fixtures” and more things that engage their employees, help them collaborate in and out of the office, and fully enable remote work.
Today: Realized….or partially? Ok….I must admit…our new Design Studio has some of the most “really cool light fixtures” that I’ve seen! However, the fit and finish of our space is not the main driver of our employees choosing to work in person. The power of a well designed (aesthetically speaking) space will always be an attraction, but that alone will not create the desire for our employees to choose for themselves to make the effort to be in person. Our “design” must create an environment that builds trusting relationships, culture, and community. It must also be a place that has less operational friction than our offices had pre-pandemic — segue to prediction #5.
Prediction #5: People need to stay connected. Companies will invest heavily in quality virtual conferencing systems. Standard conference call services will either die or need to pivot to allow full VC systems with adequate lighting, acoustics, cameras, etc.
Today: This prediction very clearly came true. I do not see many meetings in the future that will not at least have one person remotely in attendance. An equitable experience in virtual meetings has never been more important to an organization. I remember the virtual experience we had back in 2019– if you weren’t in-person, you’d just assume that you couldn’t participate with any decent level of engagement. Pre-pandemic it was very common to buy a display from Amazon, add an HDMI cable to the display, and say “we have AV,” even though the experience is less than stellar and does not support an equitable meeting experience.
Our research shows that out of the top 10 workplace priorities, access to new technologies for collaboration and to support hybrid work is in the top three and the majority of company CIO’s are planning to continue to invest in new and more robust technologies.
Prediction #6: Companies will implement tools to understand exactly how much space they need prior to making a lease or purchase commitment and will use similar tools to monitor their utilization in real time. The use of real-time data will allow organizations to pivot quickly, not just to a downturn, but also for all of the surges we will see in the future.
Today: Trending. This prediction is still playing out, but we believe that momentum in this area will continue to increase. Old utilization metrics that rely on cost of square footage per employee no longer tell a complete story. Badge swipe counting, “bed checks” and surveying employees in arrears leave a lot of gaps and without proper context can actually send groups down a completely wrong path. There is no shortage of systems that allow us to reserve desks and conference rooms, and while many of these say that they provide utilization reporting, in many instances the utilization data is actually self-reported. Speaking for myself, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast last week, let alone exactly when I was in our office, either in a meeting, in a phone booth, in our cafe or at one of our workstations. Using inaccurate data to inform strategic decisions is risky business.
When we designed our new space, we used data that we’ve tracked for over five years gathered by infrared motion sensors to ensure ourselves that we were planning for the right footprint. There is still too much guesswork being done when determining how much real estate organizations need and it will vary widely based on differing occupancy models.
Many of the ingredients needed to create an engaging and beneficial workplace today are the same as they were pre-pandemic, but the recipe and measurements have drastically changed. I think we’ve seen ten years of workplace evolution over the last 32 months and we cannot expect that by doing the things with a pre-pandemic mindset, we will get the results that we want to see in our post-pandemic workplace.
We need the physical workplace, we need to support our teams in new ways, we need to forecast and invest in ways that we were not all doing before the Pandemic, we need to support the desire to be together to take advantage of all the many benefits that being together brings us, and we must put the people at the center of this effort if we’re going to succeed at doing so.
