In 2020, the length of the “pause button” of the epidemic in some countries and regions is different, but it can be confirmed that entrepreneurs in many countries realize that the home office and discrete office forms that originally stayed in the scope of some Internet giants and high-tech top companies can also be applied to themselves. And once adopted, it will rethink the advantages and disadvantages of centralized investment in offices within the city, and even rethink whether it is the best choice to invest in new offices according to the traditional staffing. At the same time, the change is like a stone falling into the lake, and the ripples promote more trend changes
There are always too many employees complaining about the long commuting time when they work in a city. Traditional large enterprises like to purchase or rent their own office buildings in a certain area of the city, and concentrate their office to the maximum extent, so as to meet the requirements of their past cognition of cooperation efficiency.
However, with the continuous expansion of urban boundaries and the continuous rise of real estate prices, due to various costs or children’s education and other reasons, employees’ residence is far away from the office area, which leads to their long commute time and greatly reduces their work happiness.
Now, more and more large enterprises, especially those in the field of Internet and science and technology, begin to think backward that they should set up relatively independent business divisions or offices within the scope of business units in several areas of the city.
Do you really need so many fixed office spaces? Perhaps many people choose to work in a coffee shop downstairs from the client?
In the city, even on weekdays, cafes are still very crowded, and most of them are office workers with a laptop and a mobile phone. These people are often members of the company with a high proportion of field work. They are very likely to always move between visits to customers, on-site project meetings and other matters. Therefore, in the gap, finding a temporary office cafe or public space has become their daily habit. In addition, the people who are mainly engaged in creative work in the company also deliberately escape from the office where the intensive social interaction or frequent interruptions are interrupted to work in the cafe where no one comes to interrupt their thinking.
These are becoming more and more common in knowledge-based jobs in cities.
Entrepreneurs have to think about whether they still need to reserve so many fixed office spaces when they plan to invest in a new office. Should more flexible spaces that can be repurposed be planned to satisfy the staff returning to the office at any time? At the same time, continue to improve the social atmosphere in the office and increase the investment in equipment in the office, so that all people can satisfy efficient management and collaboration even in discrete offices?
Isolation for a long time has accelerated the company’s adaptation to the management methods and culture required for discrete offices. When returning to the office, employees still look forward to a comfortable and homely atmosphere, and the boundaries between office and home atmosphere have accelerated.
Under the leadership of global Internet and high-tech companies such as Google, domestic Internet “big factories” have a highly similar trend in the planning and design of the office interior environment, and pay more attention to the public space outside the office area. And these spaces, in the planning and design and soft furnishing collocation, often take the creation of a hotel or home atmosphere as a main feature. Therefore, more and more “non-office products” are gradually entering various office buildings in the city, becoming one after another warm corners like “home” in the office.
In 2020, some quarantine measures in various countries and regions around the world have prompted employees of companies to experience home office for half a month or even half a year. These have further promoted the progress of office innovation.
Office planning after the epidemic requires a planning strategy that is more compatible with future changes. How to work agilely and how to quickly change office forms at low cost has become a strategic thinking in 2021.
In the past, office interior planning often started from the preparation of the human resource provided by the administrative personnel department for the company’s development plan within three years. Interior designers were required to fully understand the company’s future personnel planning and the preparation goals of each business unit. Therefore, the interior design team , The primary goal is to compress public space, reduce meeting rooms, and provide business owners with a fixed office location that meets the needs of future staff growth in the limited office space. Then consider the needs of office meetings, training, etc., and finally look at the space that can be used as a public space.
At the beginning of 2021, we began to receive requests from end-users, requesting that the previously designed floor plan according to traditional space planning be re-planned and modified. The goal is to provide more mobile office possibilities, enhance the social atmosphere of the company, and increase the company’s remote office Support while reducing the fixed office location by nearly a third. Companies are beginning to think more urgently about the expensive real estate resources and the increase in the proportion of discrete office workers. Those fixed office spaces that are often vacant have become a glaring waste of resources. Due to the lack of corporate public space and poor social atmosphere, more field employees stay in external cafes and other places to meet and work with customers for a long time, which also increases the difficulty and efficiency of corporate management.
Therefore, a more “agile” office idea was proposed. Companies are beginning to think about how to make existing office planning more flexible to deal with future corporate development plans in an uncertain world environment.
The rapid demand for telecommuting has greatly accelerated the development of IT technology. Similarly, the planning of office IT equipment and environment is more significant.
Telecommuting, the primary problem is how to make long-distance communication as close as possible to the face-to-face communication effect. How can members of a team located in several regions share their files and data forms without barriers, and exchange opinions with each other in a whiteboard-like way? How to make a person communicate with overseas teams in the company without interfering with others? How to support the booming video conference in the enterprise internal environment?
These are placed in front of enterprises and interior design companies need to rethink the content. At this time, all kinds of traditional large conference rooms and training rooms can not meet the needs of a large number of small video conferencing. On the contrary, it causes employees to interfere with each other and cannot communicate with each other normally.
At this time, the demand for some isolated island products becomes strong. For example, a single-person phone booth can meet the needs of one person to focus on long-term meeting communication with the remote team, and at the same time, it can also isolate the interference to other teams. Or a 3-4 person phone booth can meet the needs of small-scale teams for a quiet video conference.
The turbulent year 2020 brings dramatic changes to the global economy and life. In the face of the future, enterprises need to have more keen awareness, quickly adjust the direction and pace of development of enterprises and become the strategic thinking mode after. And the indoor office environment has always been a big investment of enterprises, but also a visual carrier of the corporate culture. Therefore, rethinking the office environment has become an important topic for our furniture practitioners.
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