_Human centred re-occupancy
Governments around the world are easing restrictions with a view to return the world to some form of normalcy which means that organisation and business leaders who have been busy dealing with the fallout from lockdown have had to turn their attention to the new dilemma of how to bring our people back to the workplace in a safe and considered way.
Knight Frank was one of the first companies globally to publish a re-occupancy roadmap, but our Australian CEO, Rod Leaver recognised the very human nature of what we were dealing with and in the spirit of putting “people before place”, and asked me to lead our return to the workplace taskforce. I was lucky enough to be able to draw on our team of internal experts in our consulting business when formulating our strategy.
We followed these five steps to guide us through the process but maintained the ethos that our people had to be at the centre of every decision.
To kick-off the process, we conducted a survey with our people to gage how they were feeling about returning to the workplace – I was really pleased that our response rate was 80% and the results, whilst not surprising, were interesting:
- 40% of people were concerned about returning to the workplace even after restrictions were lifted
- 70% said they want to come into the office three days or less per week
- 15% were feeling disconnected from the office whilst working from home
- 99% said they were well-equipped from an IT perspective at home
- 91% believe they are productive working from home
The key factor for us with all of this is that there were multiple things for us to consider as we navigated the immediate return to workplace plan as well as our planning for the longer term future.
For the short term, we have developed a staggered approach which sees only 10 people initially in each office, which we will gradually scale up. From a very practical perspective, we had to first deal with the immediate concerns around bringing those who needed to come back to those CBD offices in a safe and considered way. Our taskforce worked tirelessly to develop a set of comprehensive protocols, employee guidelines and very structured physical planning where we took floor plans and overlaid social distancing requirements.
However in a post-COVID world, the question for us has become not just who could work from home, but who should work from home, and not just home – where else does our best work happen?
In the past, we would have thought of the options as only being either work at the office or work at home, but our strategic advisory team has been exploring this concept of the “workplace as a service” and that actually each individual’s best work might occur somewhere completely different and might be much more localised.
We have seen the emergence of “walking meetings” or now local coffee shop meetings for those that live nearby to each other which gives us an indication of the “localisation” of the workplace. We are starting to consider options such as “should we have suburban hubs?”. We know our people are telling us they that are keen to continue with home and local working options and that for each person, that can mean something completely different. There is no “one size fits all” so it becomes all about choice and about creating sustainable solutions for where our people do their best work.
We have started to see the emergence of what we are calling the “Performance based Portfolio”, which as you can see might include 100% virtual networks not anchored to a traditional CBD office. It is all about finding a solution that fits each individual and ensures that they will perform at their best.
Whilst the physical return to the workplace has “real estate” implications, at it’s heart, there are very real and human issues that we need to deal with and hence why it was so important for us that this was all driven from a people and culture perspective. I have been lucky to have had the wealth of resources from within the business to draw on, but ultimately it is through putting a human lens on our solution that we are aiming to get the best for and out of our people.
To read Kristin's original guest blog for Virgin's 100% Human at Work, click here.
Kristin Hay
Partner, Head of People & Culture
Kristin.Hay@au.knightfrank.com
+61 2 9036 6725