Cologne The first rooms for the new normal are ready. The telecommunications group Telefónica recently renovated three of the 37 floors of its company headquarters in Munich. Starting next week, more employees will be allowed to go back to the office if they want to. And on these pilot areas, spread over the high-rise building, the group wants to learn above all. “Everyone is talking about hybrid working, but hardly anyone has really gained experience with what kind of work our employees come back for,” says Nicole Gerhardt, Director Human Resources.
The big test is imminent. With the expiry of the home office obligation on March 19, many companies and employees have to gradually find a new rhythm. Regardless of whether the office space is rented or owned, the pressure to replan every square meter increases. Above all, the flexible use of the rooms is gaining in importance. “It’s very important to give people the freedom they’re accustomed to inside the office,” says Matthias Pranke, owner of the Berlin office furnisher Raumhaus. “When it comes to equipment, it is important to consider materials, room shapes and colors in addition to ventilation and technology in order to persuade people to return to the office.”
Many employees have used the past two years to build their own working environment. Companies are now confronted with a multitude of requests: The developer doesn’t want to go back to the office at all, the accountant likes to work two days a week, the strategy planner every now and then for important projects – but then for a whole week at a time. The single father wants to make flexible decisions, the young professional looks forward to seeing familiar faces at the coffee machine every day.
According to a recent survey by the Belgian personnel service provider Acerta, 61 percent of employees want to work in the office two or three days a week in the future. Surveys in Germany recently showed similar results. Conversely, many companies are looking for ways to give their own locations a new role – as a space for communication or corporate culture.
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The advantage: In almost all companies that enable a hybrid model, more space is freed up. Experts estimate that at least a third of the space is free to use when employees only come into the office two to three days a week. In the long term, this offers enormous potential for savings, while in the short term there is room for experimentation. In particular, smaller offices and classic meeting rooms are likely to become less important.
Freedom for employees
The pilot areas at Telefónica are divided into more classic open-plan workplaces, work areas for up to four people, larger areas for up to ten colleagues and a larger “free space”. A trend: Tables, whiteboards and other furniture are increasingly on wheels to facilitate flexible arrangements. “I can change the rooms for the format I want to carry out,” says portfolio manager Rainer Huff, who helped shape the conversion in the group.
Office furniture manufacturers are reacting to the trend: Many objects are not only becoming more mobile, they are also being given more functions. Some meeting tables can not only be adjusted in height, but also folded up to serve as a note board that can be written on.
Meeting rooms for short meetings do not need solid walls.
(Photo: picture alliance)
The office itself becomes a kind of platform for the new world of work. First of all, every missing wall becomes a locational advantage. “We had already started to adapt the premises to the requirements beforehand,” says Gerhardt, “but now we are in the process of differentiating them much more.” Many companies are still unclear exactly how their space utilization will look in the future . Consultant Pranke says that about 60 to 70 percent of the area in his current projects is designed for communicative working methods.
At the same time, the need for shielded workplaces where employees can videoconference with customers or colleagues undisturbed may increase. Or just work in peace, because that’s difficult to do in the family hustle and bustle at home. This can take place in separate boxes or in work areas with good soundproofing. “The companies of the future will have more extremes,” says Monika Lepel, workplace specialist, interior designer and founding partner of the Cologne office Lepel & Lepel.
In any case, getting there requires a lot of work. Experts advise involving everyone involved – from the executive floor to the support functions – before the interior designers tear down walls and move desks. Whoever plans fundamentally new can throw previous hierarchies in the office world overboard. David Wiechmann, consultant and chairman of the Deutsches Netzwerk Büro association, recommends no longer hiding the coffee kitchen at the end of the corridor: “You have to try to focus on the topic of supply and hospitality so that it depends on the routes taken by the employees .”
Central areas for IT
Monika Lepel thinks even more radically. Core functions such as accounting, human resources or IT support could be given central areas in new building plans. “These are often the colleagues who care and have great emotional significance for the other employees. But today they still often have the worse jobs.”
In addition to the right concept, it is all about the right technology. “In the future there will no longer be a room where digital media will not find their way,” says Pranke, “the hybrid meeting is always there.” That sounds simple – but it requires a lot of work. Where monitors, digital boards or lighting can be moved freely in the room, sockets and internet connections must be within reach everywhere. It must also be possible to quickly connect microphones and cameras to one’s own laptop.
In the Telefónica test areas, employees at the entrance to each floor can see on screens which rooms are occupied and how. If you wish, you can even save your workplace for the current day so that colleagues can find you more quickly on the different floors. The information comes from sensors that record and report occupancy, temperature and air quality. Health protection and reliable distances played a greater role in the long term, believes consultant Pranke. “The trend towards the good old DIN standard in room planning creates security and a sense of well-being in the office.”
Some real estate developers even use this topic as a unique selling point. In Aschheim near Munich, Rock Capital is currently building a self-christened “immune office”. Air filters and sterilizers are also installed in more than 40,000 square meters of office space.
The facility should stand out
The building, originally intended for the main tenant Wirecard, is being optimized for mobile phone reception. Landline numbers have lost importance in the pandemic. The facility should stand out. “In the uniform look of the zoom backgrounds, an individual office design stands out,” advertises the developer.
This aspect could actually become more important. At Telefónica, the brand color can often be seen in the test areas, logos of the O2 brand appear again and again on the walls – and are intended to help increase identification with the company.
The telecommunications group is now looking forward to the number and frequency of office returnees. Some employees would have used the freedom to move to work remotely on a permanent basis. But for others, the attractiveness of the office could increase significantly thanks to the new furnishings. “People like to work in a social system.
There may well be a reassessment in a few months,” says HR Director Gerhardt. You also want to take a few borrowings from the home office world. There will soon also be picnic boxes for lunch breaks – so that nobody has to go without a walk in the sun that they have come to love.
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