The new worklife is taking shape. Today’s business environment encompasses 5 generations of people in one workplace. We can now do anything, anytime and anywhere. Our opportunities are endless, and it’s driven by our ability to be constantly connected. We now have an opportunity and a chance for us to shape a new, healthier and more balanced place, pace and style of work. Here I have given my  personal take on how we could seize an opportunity to combine what worked in the past, reshape what didn’t, and inject into it both the good and the bad from our work-from-home experiences. Ultimately, we need to return to the workplace in some capacity. We must rebuild our workforce culture and find a new sense of productivity through a flexible and balanced approach, which will be paramount in the success of our businesses going forward. 

Changing the pace, empowering the people 

Gensler’s research has shown that the hybrid workplace will be common for a lot of companies. It promotes collaboration, advanced technology, unassigned seating, and activity-based design, and offers a comfortable atmosphere driven by elements of hospitality. Important to this is that employees are dictating what they want from the new workplace, as opposed to the employers or organisations who traditionally made those decisions for us. Although employers will have their own protocols and guidelines, the experience working from home has empowered people to choose whether to stay with that company as a result of their approach to the entire event, their return strategy, their values and their culture as it evolves. 

This has led companies to adapt and change not only their working style, but the pace in which they choose to work. They have seen the benefits for their employers, and themselves, on having more family time, more time to focus on their health and wellbeing, more time to reconnect with their local community and more flexible working hours. For the first time, we have seen health, wellbeing, sustainability, and a focus on the individual catapulted to the forefront of company’s minds across the board and across all industries. We have seen incredible change in a short space of time and that change has empowered people to take control of their daily lives and futures in new ways.  

Culture is Key 

What I have seen with friends, colleagues and clients alike, is the drive and need to install, and reinstall or redefine, a company’s culture.  After all, it is what shapes our organisations and glues us together, and what injects fun into our workplace. At Gensler, we are driven by our guiding principles, and we really do pay attention to their meaning and purpose, living these out in our everyday working environment. This keeps our people together and drives our organisation forward. But it is difficult to continually integrate a company’s culture without being together physically in one place. Humans are physical beings, and video conference calls cannot and will not take place of a true face to face connection. Regardless of what industry you’re in, and whether you work with other people, my guess is you will eventually find yourself back in a workplace of some kind in the near future because the workplace is not going away. It may look a little different going forward, but it will still be a necessary driver of business culture, employee satisfaction and productivity. 

Has the WFH stigma finally been lifted?

I would like to continue to encourage a flexible working environment for all my team going forward. Although we already had those systems in place before COVID, I know that many employees, similar across a lot of companies, didn’t feel comfortable working from home without a specific reason or permission. As a leader, it is my duty to continue encouraging them to find their own work-life balance. Ultimately, it’s about putting trust in the people you employ and being flexible to support the decisions they make. I believe this fosters the best working environment and encourages everyone to do their best work.

Evaluate, regroup, rebuild

I can say, like many others, that my previous pace of life was probably unhealthy, unbalanced and unsustainable.  I spent many late nights working and attending multiple weekly industry events which left very little time for anything else. So, what will the new balance look like? Ultimately, whilst we have seen clear benefits of slowing down and reassessing, many are now laser focused on how they will shape their new working pattern in an increasingly hybrid worklife. Whilst we should focus on the new workplace, what is equally important is to bring it back to the people who occupy that space. What will the employer’s new balance be? How will we maximise our productivity in the new way we work? The answers are still unclear, but we have learned to focus more on wellbeing and both physical and mental health as important components to a balanced life.  It’s time to return to our places of work, to regroup and to rebuild our worklife culture, together.