How Companies Are Using the Office to Transition to the New Reality

Our shared experience of the past 20 months has forever changed the fabric of our society, including the attitudes, practices, and environments attached to the way we work. While 2020’s overnight shift to remote work underscored the importance of a physical, shared workplace, it also exhibited our unimaginable resilience and aptitude for change. More importantly, it taught us how to listen. As colleagues, leaders, and a population, we’ve become more vulnerable, empathetic, and aware of each other’s needs — both in and out of the office — and are better equipped to respond to them to benefit our employees, clients, and communities.

Create space for shifting priorities

There’s no question that we do need offices, but do we need them the way they were? Now that we are transitioning back after many months apart from our colleagues, it is more obvious than ever that collaboration, mentorship, group innovation, and other critical interactions are hard to replicate at home. There is simply no replacement for being in a room with your team. Since redefining the office’s primary purpose, we are now better able to design incredible shared environments that foster those connections we can’t recreate from our living rooms.

Several years ago, a good office building was measured in terms of density and efficiency, but now we are looking at the quality of employee experience. In light of the pandemic, an emphasis on personal health and wellness has led companies to add more terraces, clinics, decompression rooms, and workout areas in their offices. Because of this collective shift in priorities, many companies are reallocating square footage by deemphasizing desks and replacing them with multiple seating options — such as café seating, huddle rooms, or terraces — giving employees a newfound sense of autonomy in the workplace. Others, especially in