Occupants now require better hygiene standards and more efficient layout, and this would inevitably lead to changes in intercompany relationship between employees, there will be a huge focus on the human element, how employees adapt to the new environment. Leila Zreik, Head of Pan- EMEA Accounts at WeWork, shared some key findings of WeWork research: employees value the opportunity to choose if they should go back to the office or not, employers on the other hand could attract staff members back to the office by improving the office space design to serve a purpose and resonate with the words “networking”, “efficiency”, “career development”.
Andy Poppink, Chief Executive Officer JLL, added that in his opinion the decision whether to work from home or not, should be taken collectively as a firm, rather than on individual team basis. For him the word “elastic” instead of “flexible” better depicts how working from home should be defined going forward. Miguel Nigorra, Partner at Fifth Wall, added that productivity should be the new measurement matrix when thinking about evaluating the efficiency and value of office space, not number of desks or cost per sqm/per tenant.
He also added that the office space is evolving to any physical building (to the hotel lobby, the local cafe) rather than staying at one location. The common understanding between all participants at the end was that we don’t have yet all the answers and we should go through a testingphase, before knowing what the future of office space is.
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