THE RESILIENT WORKPLAYCE

THE RESILIENT
WorkPLAYce

The new role of offices in a post-pandemic world.

THE RESILIENT WORKPLAYCE

It is of crucial importance to figure

out the future we are moving
towards as organizations and the role
spaces will play in the near future.
The big shift towards home office caused by the COVID-19 outbreak has led
many to wonder if offices have a future. The change has not been well received
by many employees, nor has it been easy for them, so we are convinced that
it is of crucial importance to figure out the future we are moving towards as
organizations and the role spaces will play in the near future.

As we mentioned in the research and diagnostic document “5 mega trends”,

developed by spAce a few months ago, the COVID-19 outbreak, among many
other things, has been a trend accelerator. We could focus on the particular
trends that have accelerated or only see the superficial consequences such
as the increase in remote work, but there is a more complex and much more
interesting underlying trend.

For two decades we have questioned multiple organizations about the role of
spaces and the transcendence in their success. At that time, scientific research
about the impact of space on the behavior and psyche of its users was really
limited, luckily, a global movement was beginning to rise.

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The second revolution starts

from questioning whether
the main function of the
office might not be work

In its beginnings the guiding idea was simple: office

spaces should be analyzed with a different perspective to
stop being “employee containers” and begin to be seen
as potential competitive tools for organizations». This
seemingly simple idea completely revolutionized the
office design and furniture industry, causing an absolute
revolution in the workplace.

In two decades much changed in the world of office

space, and the second revolution of workspace was slowly
beginning to take shape. The second revolution starts
from questioning whether the main function of the office
«might not be work». It evaluates the bias that the idea
that “the office is for work” imposes, an idea that had kept
us from seeing the other more complex and important
functions that the office resolves.

Recent research in the field of neuroscience has shown

that the tools we create and use are shaping our cognitive
processes, which has shown that we think with the tools
we have created. One of those tools is space, and without
a doubt, it is one of the most dominant.

Space is part of our cognition, part of our culture and

also a way of understanding ourselves and our society.
Today there are thousands of organizations in the world
questioning the role, the purpose and the possible future
of the workspace, and the COVID-19 crisis is responsible
for accelerating these questions.

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THE OFFICE FOR A TECHNOLOGICAL

AND REMOTE WORLD

As governments begin to ease restrictions and bring life back to a certain level
of normality, executive directors’ immediate concern is figuring out how to
keep employees safe and healthy. In the short term, this means looking for
solutions that allow social distancing and reduce density in the workplace
(for this purpose spAce developed the certification COVID FREE SPACES that
has been of great help for many organizations internationally). As for the
long term, the massive experiment of forced home office has aroused various
considerations about the future of the office and although the current situation
cannot be considered an example of legitimate home office–because it is
something more similar to house arrest–, it does show that there is indeed no
binding link between work and an office space.

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Why do we need offices?

And so we face the obligatory question «if we no longer have to attend a
physical space to work–the traditional way–, why do we need offices?». This
is not a superficial or easy question to answer, especially if we consider that
in most organizations the real estate destined to office space represents the
second largest expenditure of a company after salaries.

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THE RESILIENT WORKPLAYCE

There are things that an

organization simply cannot
do without the help of a
physical space
After months in quarantine a lot has changed and a lot
will continue to change. We witnessed how millions
of employees worldwide managed to work remotely
thanks to the advantages of today’s technologies, we
cannot begin to imagine the impact that this pandemic
would have had without the internet and the various
technologies for home office.

Our experiences are all different, depending on the

country and its particular approach to the pandemic, but
every organization worldwide has to analyze what will be
their near and not-so-near future. They will have to, as
mentioned, answer the question: will there be offices? And
if so, what will be their role?.

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Regarding the first question, we must consider the

fact that human beings have needed physical space to
collaborate, meet and tell stories since the beginning
of their existence, for a long time that space was the
campfire. It is impossible for corporeal beings that
inhabit spaces to develop fully without physical space,
but definitely the office will not be the same. The priority
that the architectural program had in the work area as a
fundamental element will disappear.

The office will have to start supporting the organization

with functions that it most likely did before, but that
were almost invisible because for decades we assumed
that the office was “just for work”. There are things that
an organization simply cannot do without the help of
a physical space, at least while technology and virtual
reality evolve into a mixed reality that convinces us all.
And so, we can affirm that the physical office space will
not disappear, but it will be radically transformed by
having to play the following roles–which organizations
can hardly solve at a distance–.

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Accelerated
change & resilience
Without a doubt, the COVID-19 was able to accelerate
trends and one of the most obvious is the acceleration
of change. The first major role of the new workspace
will be to help build resilient cultures, because in a
world of accelerated change, resilient cultures will be
invaluable. Not only will it be important for the space
to help build and frame the resilience of organizational
cultures, but for the space itself to be resilient.

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Innovation and
Creativity
Steven Johnson, in his book “Where do good ideas
come from”, argues the importance of physical space
for the generation of innovative ideas, also, Johnson
is convinced that all the intellectual revolutions in the
history of humanity happened simultaneously with
a revolution of physical spaces that made it possible
to connect previously isolated ideas to create a great
new idea. Without square footage, there are simply no
ideas. Whether it is an intellectual revolution, as this
author refers, or a new product line, it is indisputable
that physical space is a vital component of innovation
processes.

During this period of isolation, if anything has lacked

within the organizations is the ability to share ideas in a
physical way and to have processes of co-creation among
the collaborators. Therefore, without a doubt, the role
of the new workspace will be serve as innovation hubs
in which the space promotes co-creation and creative
thinking.

As Winston Churchill
once said: “We shape our
buildings; thereafter they
shape us.”

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Socialization
and fun
Something we all miss about the office is socializing with
coworkers, casual encounters in the coffee area, if we are
lucky and spAce designed our offices we will surely also
miss the informal interactions in “casual collisions”, and
definitely the giggles and jokes with our coworkers. The
human being is a social animal, only positive things have
emerged from the ability to empathize with others and
build community and society.

A few years ago Matthew Lieberman, one of the

neuroscientists in the world obsessed with investigating
social interactions, discovered that the mechanisms of
social isolation in the brain share the same regions as
physical pain. Which means that not only are we social
animals and amazing things happen when we exploit our
socializing skills, but additionally, not doing it is physically
painful.

Until we have the vaccine, we will continue to respect the

social distancing measures, but we will definitely have
to implement new models of socialization in the new
workspaces, and in many cases more intense than usual
to balance the distance that will generate the increase of
remote work.

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Brand
Experience
The Resilient Branding
In a world where people no longer have to attend an established work
schedule and where technology has provided solutions to work from
anywhere, surely we will see the emergence of digital nomads, people who will
take advantage of these new opportunities to work from anywhere in the world
and consequently, we will see companies that will no longer limit their hiring
to a certain office-proximity radius.

This new model will certainly bring many benefits, but it will represent a huge
challenge for most companies. Brands will in many cases have to question
how they communicate and how they connect emotionally with people who
will now spend much less time in office spaces. The emotional connections of
brands will have to be much more intense, possibly closer to what happens in
a showroom or a hotel than what has traditionally been done in an office. It will
no longer be enough to have a nice office to attract talent, now certain services
will be required to make it an unparalleled experience, we have called this
new concept BRANDspAce: where the brand and space coincide in a unique
experience.

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Organizational
Culture
The Resilient Mindset
Since the pandemic began, at spAce, we have encountered
the need to hire staff continuously and fortunately we
have found a lot of talent available–largely due to the
economic crisis–, but the new staff have not lived the
spAce experience, in fact, a lot of them we’ve only met
through Zoom. If this becomes a common practice–
taking into account that the space we build, builds us
back–one of the great risks that organizations run in
this “new normal” is the dissolution of organizational
culture. Organizational culture is something that is
difficult to learn via Zoom or by mail, culture is built by
behavior imitation, by leadership examples, by personal
experience and all these fundamental elements of cultural
construction are put at risk when everyone is sitting in the
dining room of their home interacting through a screen.
Future spaces will have to prioritize the fact that space
builds, among many other things, culture.

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Evidence and
Hard Data

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Until recently, there were few efforts in Mexico that measured the feelings of
employees regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. For a firm like spAce, which has
always distinguished itself for using scientific evidence to advise and help the
clients, it was not enough to have studies and samples done in Europe or the
United States.

Therefore, a few weeks ago we decided to partner with ZIMAT, leading

company in strategic consulting, to carry out a series of national-extent
sampling to provide decision-making tools and confirm the imminent need to
implement Resilient WorkPLAYces. This study was carried out from the 5th to
the 20th of July 2020 with a sample size of more than 1,000 people and was
divided into three chapters:

GENERAL PUBLIC SENTIMENT

TOWARDS COVID-19
Chapter 01

OPINION ON THE DIFFERENT

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE AUTHORS
Chapter 02

OPINION ON THE APPROACH

OF LARGE COMPANIES
Chapter 03

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GENERAL SENTIMENT

Generally, everyone thinks there is little chance of

contracting the virus, but as the circle expands, the
possibilities increase.

90%
More than 90% think that COVID-19
is a serious health threat.

50%
About half of the population has felt alone at
some point during quarantine.

70%
About 70% have felt depressed at
some point during quarantine.

80%
80% have sometimes
felt anxiety.

31%
31% have felt anxiety
most of the time.

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As for work from home, the results show that:

The two biggest challenges have been the existence of an optimal internet
source and the distractions from home.

05%
Only 5% of those interviewed consider that they
do not have a good space to work remotely.

49.2%
49.2% of respondents are completely
satisfied with the computer they have.

45.2%
45.2% are fully satisfied with the natural
light in their workspace.

25.6%
Only 25.6% have an
isolated space to work.

31%
On ergonomics, only 31% are fully satisfied with the chair they use, which
represents a fundamental challenge to solve.

Lack of ergonomics can have negative short and long term

consequences on the health of employees.

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PREVENTION MEASURES

20%
20% of interviewees consider that the use
of masks and gel is unnecessary.

78%
78% of respondents consider that continuous
sanitization of workspaces is necessary.

67%
67% consider that work at home
is quite necessary or indispensable.

75%
75% of those surveyed believe that it is necessary or indispensable
that workspaces have distance measures.

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Based on the results it is safe to conclude that the pandemic, in combination

with isolation, has affected the emotions of a significant percentage of the
population and until the vaccine is safe, the issue of mental health will have
to be addressed in the future workspaces. On the other hand, while work from
home has worked relatively well for most organizations to date, it is clear that
many of the employees do not have the at-home infrastructure to adequately
address this need.

One Way
Towards The
New Normal...
There are two different moments in the future of spaces: during the pandemic
and the post-pandemic. Beyond than a return to a “new normal”, we will
witness a long period of strange normality in which the organizations’
collaborators will expect companies to be prepared with measures of
distancing and protective equipment.

While no one has the magic formula to see the future, it is undeniable that
the world will not be the same and we will just learn to live with the virus,
and we can be sure that we are on the eve of a new revolution of spaces, this
revolution will not only be of corporate spaces, although for most people what
structures their life and organizes the rest of their activities is work.

We are about to experience something similar to what happened a couple

of decades ago, we will witness the emergence of a different, more
empathetic, more flexible and more––much more––fun work model.

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Will be a space where culture, brand and fun will
merge to create resilient cultures.