Offices fit for the post-covid future

The renovated Nestlé HQ, built by Vector Mais and designed by Openbook

After more than a year of pandemic, vaccination offers hope for a return to normality and with that going back to the office permanently seems to be closer than ever. However, this unpredictable situation has shaped how many companies and their employees view the way they work.

While the predictions of the offices end altogether now seem exaggerated, there is a consensus that the pandemic has become a unique opportunity to rethink workspaces and the very culture of companies.

Since 2000, Vector Mais has closely observed changes in offices, having built and designed hundreds of workspaces to date. In this sense, we leave here three trends that are already shaping some offices today, which will influence many more in the future.

Flexibility

If there was a lesson from the past year, flexibility was one of the greatest. It is fundamental in the way companies operate and how teams work and communicate with each other. Even with the return to the office, it is essential to understand the individual workflows of each employee, allowing adaptations to face-to-face working hours and teleworking days. In this way, the balance between work and personal life becomes healthier, promoting productivity and employee happiness. These measures also boost individual responsibility and work driven by objectives and not by presentism.

Office Organization

With the increase in flexibility, the office must reflect the distributed work model and become a place where employees want to return. Instead of being a space with a workstation dedicated to each employee, the post-covid office assumes itself as a club, a place for socialization that promotes creativity. In this sense, the lounge and collaboration areas play an essential role because they are where the best ideas are born and where the corporate culture is maintained informally. Employees may no longer want to be in the office five days a week, but when they go back, they intend to be in an inspiring space that reminds them of the company's values ​​and objectives.

The Hub-and-Spoke Model

While the reorganization of a company's headquarters (Hub) is essential, satellite offices (Spoke), installed close to the employees' homes, are very interesting to reduce commuting times and maintain culture corporate alive. While the headquarters remains the central meeting point for the teams, and the house can be an occasional workspace, these satellites can end the isolation of telework. They allow people to interact with colleagues regularly, without commuting and promoting the mobility of employees. This model is especially appealing to growing companies that want to attract new talent through a distributed work model between the headquarters, the house and the satellite office.