Reinvented workplace will be more employeefriendly

We know that the post-pandemic workplace will be markedly different from the model we abandoned, of necessity, last spring.

To start, as many as 20 per cent of us will be permanently working from home (WFH), according to surveys of workplace experts. That’s about four times the pre-pandemic level.

And for workers returning to the conventional office, expect a reinvented workplace that is more employee friendly than the one you last set foot in more than a year ago.

Employers feel obliged to embrace both WFH as a permanent fixture of the postpandemic economy, and upgraded traditional offices calculated to lure back a large portion of employees who’ve gotten used to WFH.

StatsCan reported last month that most of the Canadian WFH employees it polled believe they have been as productive as before the pandemic. About of a third of them think they have been more productive.

The many surveys of WFH employees across North America have shown that they want to continue working from home, or to have the option of splitting their time between WFH and a conventional office.

Some of that employee canvassing reveals that a majority of WFH workers are willing to take a pay cut, in the 10 per cent range, to keep working from home. And that half the WFH workforce is prepared to quit a job that doesn’t offer the flexibility of alternating between WFH and a conventional office.

That was bound to happen. WFH has been gradually increasing in popularity for three decades. An unprecedented yearlong experience of most office workers toiling from spiffy home offices that match their conventional counterparts in functionality has made WFH a permanent fixture of the economic landscape.

So, what changes can we expect, in home offices and traditional ones?

More support for at-home workers

Employers like Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp., whose CEO says the firm’s WFH regimen has been “working incredibly effectively for us,” have invested heavily in WFH supports. That includes improved communications and networking technology.

Employers committed to WFH will follow and improve on that model.

In surveys asking WFH workers about the challenges of working from home, employees cite as a chief concern the difficulty of achieving a healthy work-life balance. They’re also coping with tech problems including lack of reliable Wi-Fi.

Employers intent on keeping their WFH workers will improve existing flexwork plans to accommodate the family responsibilities of their employees.

And in a Canadian economy hobbled by long-standing skills shortages, the more enlightened employers will bolster that commitment with financial assistance.

For instance, there will be mounting pressure on employers to subsidize their employees’ daycare expenses. The shortage of affordable daycare spaces, which goes to the heart of achieving proper work-life balance, was revealed by the pandemic to be of crisis proportions.

Universal daycare, on the European model, is a long way off in Canada. To curb absenteeism and high turnover, employers will find that they need to step in and step up.

Employers will also provide faster response to tech issues, using more efficient centraloffice IT teams and mobile IT squads that do on-site WFH tech fixes.

A safer traditional office

Landlords and their employer tenants are revamping office properties with safety improvements. The new office building will be largely “handsfree.” Sensors, mobile apps and voice controls will be used to summon elevators, open doors, and activate office equipment.

There will be more outdoor spaces — courtyards and terraces, for instance.

And many ventilation systems have already been upgraded with filters to trap smaller airborne particles.

At Google’s reconfigured Googleplex headquarters, workstations are at least six feet apart. That standard will remain after the pandemic, to guard against seasonal colds, flu and other contagious diseases.

A more employee-friendly office

The new office has fewer workstations and more shared spaces for meetings.

The reduction in workstations marks a radical reversal from the decades-long practice of cramming a lot of employees into the available space, on the theory that intimacy breeds collaboration.

It doesn’t, as employee surveys have long shown.

In guarding what little personal space they have, workers lodged in cubicles (“veal-fattening pens”) discourage dropin visits by colleagues. They are already distracted by the ambient noise in these so-called open-space offices.

The new office is more spacious, and can be quickly reconfigured to suit a variety of planned and impromptu functions, including one-on-one chats, team meetings and group presentations.

Don’t be surprised to find that almost everything is on wheels, including sofas, tables and partitions.

To accommodate workers who use the office only two or three days a week, otherwise working from home, there will be more “hot desks,” or unassigned workstations.

Hot-desking is not new. The twist is that you can now reserve a hot desk, instead of hunting for one.

Google is experimenting with chairs at hot desks that, with the swipe of an employee badge, automatically readjust to the employee’s preferred ergonomic and airflow settings. The air flow is unique to each workstation, and provides additional protection from viral spread and helps block out ambient noise.

Fewer and more useful meetings

Meeting overload was a problem before the pandemic. In the pandemic, it has become a curse, since video meetings are more taxing than in-person ones.

WFH employees are spending twice as much time in meetings as before the pandemic, according to Microsoft’s Work Trend index.

To combat “Zoom fatigue,” employers have begun to curb video meetings, with, for instance, Zoom-free Fridays.

And providers of digital meeting tools are upgrading them to signal to a message recipient when a response is not immediately required, notify when an employee is not to be disturbed, and enabling workers to contribute a video commentary to a meeting without having to attend the lengthy online gathering.

That’s a start.

The next step, which doesn’t require a tech solution, is to identify and scrap pointless meetings.

If you need help, impose a quota — say, five hours a week, or one hour per day.

A new office etiquette

We never did like sharing your germs. In the post-pandemic, don’t come to the office with a cold.

Leave a cleared hot desk behind when you quit the office, so that its next occupant needn’t dispose of juice containers or stumble on a confidential memo.

“Personal space” has been enlarged. At least for the first year back, social distance is three feet.

Remember to lower your voice. Voice-meeting participants have been found to speak about 15 per cent louder than normal.

And do dress for the office, not the backyard deck or the man cave.

If you’re part of the new corps of workers dividing your time between traditional and home offices, you’ll be returning soon enough to a workplace where you can negotiate a merger in your pyjamas.