Reimagining Office Density Can Ease Return-to-Work Resistance

Since COVID-19 vaccines have become widely available and restrictions have been lifted in many parts of the world, some employers have faced resistance over their return-to-office plans. Pitting remote work versus working in offices, the media’s framing of business-sector discussions continues to miss the mark by reducing workplace dynamics and return-to-office deadlines to a binary debate.

What we are witnessing is the culmination of something that has been building up for many years. The past 18 months have fast-tracked this decades-long trend that most businesses were unaware they were creating: an exodus from the office.

Increasing Densification — and Dissatisfaction

Back in 1985, a Harvard Business Review article created the template of what was to come with trends in office design: activity-based workplaces. This idea played out in the 1990s with more flexible workspaces — furniture for individual privacy and tables on wheels — to conform to team and individual needs. Over time, these individual personalized workspaces have evolved into fully open tables and benches with on-demand reservation systems. Absent individual offices, spaces intended for meetings have been in demand by people seeking moments of individual privacy rather than collaboration.

The fact is, long before the pandemic struck, many office environments were becoming increasingly harder to navigate due to higher densities, smaller workspaces, more noise, and less space per person. In fall 2019, respondents to the annual Gensler U.S. Workplace Survey reported dissatisfaction and frustration with typical office settings, a shift that had been amplifying for several years.

Commercial real estate companies CoStar and Cushman & Wakefield estimate that over the past two decades, office space allocated per employee shrank from 250 square feet per person to less than 135 square feet in markets like New York City, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Intending to break down silos and bring people together through open-plan design and open-area lounge seating, many organizations also used this strategy to fit more people into the space, making the individual workspace increasingly more compact.

There is an unmistakable correlation between workspace and performance. The minimization of individual work areas can dehumanize the workplace and even decrease employees’ satisfaction and emotional and cognitive connections to the organization. A groundbreaking 2015 study published by the International Facility Management Association concluded that “perceiving your work space as satisfactory leads to greater job satisfaction. … This in turn leads to increased engagement.” A 2016 global study by Steelcase similarly found a strong correlation between employees’ workplace engagement and satisfaction with their control of and access to private space. Some individuals may need more privacy than others, and most need more than their current offices provide.

Ironically, the cubicles often made fun of in the Dilbert comic strip of the 1980s for being repetitive and dull would be considered a luxury by today’s standards. Perhaps this decades-long trend of densification has reached its point of diminishing returns.

Reimagining the ‘Destination-Worthy’ Office

“Flexibility” is undoubtably a buzzword today, and for many individuals, it means the option to work from home. But for top companies, flexibility also translates into rethinking the workplace to give people what they need to do their most outstanding work.

Many companies are implementing “hybrid work” using a predetermined approach to work activities in and out of the office. But people don’t work in full days of entirely focus mode or collaboration mode. Gensler’s research since 2008 has shown that people spend around 45% of their time each day collaborating and roughly 55% on individual-focus activities. Furthermore, the cadence for interaction and concentration occurs randomly throughout the workday; a cycle of individual and interactive experiences together can create the flow need to create positive work outcomes. Hybrid models therefore need to find ways to imitate the rapid interplay of different modes.

While the Dilbert-cubicle workspace of 30 years ago isn’t the answer for today, the more recent pre-pandemic workplace isn’t the best path for the future either. Through the experience of working from home, today’s workforce has gotten a taste of the value of sufficient space and a quiet environment to work — not to mention the value of a workspace that does not need a reservation.

Gensler recently released the findings from its summer 2021 U.S. Workplace Survey. The data, collected between April and May from over 2,000 office workers across the United States, shows that more private, individual work settings top the list of what makes people most comfortable with returning to offices. Additionally, if companies were to assign each person a dedicated workspace, more than a quarter of respondents stated that they would be less likely to leave the company.

But the most surprising results from this study showed that top-performing companies — organizations that have recently been ranked on a list of the most admired companies, best places to work, and most innovative companies — are in fact increasing the size of their physical workplace environments. These companies are three times more likely to increase their real estate footprint in the next few years — recognizing individual workers’ unique needs and understanding that increased investments in the workplace correlate with an investment in their people. As a benchmark and bellwether in their respective industries, these successful organizations are defining the best practices, behaviors, and trends for the future.

As we near winter, many U.S. organizations that were originally targeting a return-to-office deadline around Labor Day have modified their timetables. The delay offers companies the opportunity to make adjustments to their workplaces and create stronger, healthier, and more resilient offices. And with this unexpected pause in office reopening schedules, the best-performing organizations are using this time to their strategic advantage. They are reevaluating their real estate to determine how to invest in their most valuable asset: people.

In new, pandemic-era research from Gensler, Microsoft, and business thought leaders, all evidence points to the fact that employees need workplaces that better meet their needs — and that they also need the experiences that they can best get in a collective work environment, from feeling like valued contributors to developing the types of collaborative and mentoring relationships that can blossom in the office.

Reimagining a more satisfactory workplace will involve creating a system of flexibility, along with a physical workplace that is built on individual performance stations and collaboration hubs, all enveloped in a visceral cultural experience unique to each organization. Forward-looking organizations are studying new design considerations to offer a work setting that addresses past dysfunctions and builds on what we’ve learned about the workplace during the pandemic. These new workplaces will define a new era of people-centric workplaces that produce greater business competitiveness through improved collaboration, culture, innovation, and individual excellence.