These latest workplace trends have kept our experts busy
As employees return to work, organisations are preparing to welcome them back to new ways of working. Both understand that the pre-pandemic work environment will no longer work.
So, what are some of the trending developments taking place in the corporate world?
At Sodexo, we are actively engaged in supporting a number of initiatives as our major multi-national clients rethink their Real-Estate and Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) Strategies to adapt to a new normal. While it is hard to paint with a broad stroke, for such a nuanced and complex region as Asia Pacific, we are sharing three emerging workplace themes that we’ve observed as we helped our clients navigate unchartered territory
Experience is the new normal
Across the region, we’re quickly observing our clients take a consistent and structured shift towards designing ‘experience’ driven workspace models. Experience is a holistic concept and encompasses a wide spectrum, including the physical design of the workplace, the services provided at the site, the sense of ‘community’ and belonging as well as remote working experiences. Such a broad topic requires an ecosystem-wide approach and a carefully curated exercise involving Real Estate, Facilities, Human Resources, Finance and Country Leadership Teams.
Wx Tip: While designing your target employee experience, remember to get inputs from different employee personas and leaders in your organisation. Piloting a specific concept is also a great way to get detailed feedback on what works and doesn’t for your organisation.
Workplace standards are evolving
While the transition from Traditional Workplaces to Activity Based Models have been ongoing for many years now, the pandemic has hastened the transformation significantly. Organisations that are already familiar with Activity Based Workplace Models, are quickly starting to take things further by reducing the workspace allocated to individual workspaces (i.e., desks) and focus on more open and enclosed collaborative spaces (eg. meeting rooms, brainstorming corners, informal café spaces etc.). In addition, there’s a renewed emphasis on having smaller focus areas that are enclosed, to undertake heads down focused work or attend conference calls.
Wx Tip: Take time to evaluate your workplace space allocation metrics. Are the space hungry functions being utilized effectively? Is there any scope to optimise or transform them into spaces that might suit your organisation better?
Phy-gital Workplaces (Physical + Digital)
With many organisations choosing to adopt flexible ways of working (usually implying 2-3 days each week spent at the office and 1-2 days spent working from home) there is a huge emphasis on upgrading workplace technology across the board. If Audio-Video Conferencing Tools and Virtual Collaboration Technology is not at the right standard, it would be impossible to work with colleagues both in-person and remotely at the same time. This has now become a pre-requisite to support the new ways of work.
Wx Tip: Every organisation is different and has a different DNA or working style. Consider getting support in choosing the right technological solution and ensure that all the different elements fit into a consistent wider ecosystem that allows for a seamless user experience.
How is Sodexo helping our clients improve the Workplace Experience?
Experience Design Playbooks
We’re working with our clients through a multi-functional approach to help them discover and craft a target employee experience in a new normal. What’s more, we help work out various tools, techniques, and performance criteria to help them upskill existing IFM infrastructures to support a new experience model.
Real Estate Optimisation and Strategy
Our clients have different workplace portfolio needs. We help them understand and identify areas of optimisation and consolidation in various time horizons. Our strategic missions are informed through deep research and engagement with our client’s organisation, to deliver a roadmap that is both socialized and realistic.
Our report on Breathing Space: A New Workplace Comes to Life, investigates why spaces need to be living, breathing and fluid to cater to these needs, and what firms can do to make them a reality. Download and read to understand and create a vision for your workplace.
Workplace Change Management
Across the region, we’re helping a number of our clients transition to new models and ways of working, including but not limited to Activity Based Working, Hybrid Models, Transition to Co-Working Space Models and more.
Through our Workplace Consulting subsidiary – Wx, we are actively working with our clients’ real estate / IFM teams to help them craft a strategic response to the new workplace models.
We do deep dive consulting to:
- Understand the business drivers and culture of the organisation, and the new ways of working they are adopting.
- Assess the success levers for experience and the space, technology and services required to support, including gap analysis of the current IFM scope of services.
- Create future experience maps to understand how people will navigate the new ecosystem.
- Create future service maps, that are tactical toolkits to adjust and refine our services to suit client needs.
- Review cost management to understand the cost-impact of various service options, to help our clients get the best value