From Hot Desking to ‘Not Desking’ - The Shape of Work to Come

Many commentators think a post-COVID working culture is a binary choice between remote working and returning to the office, but the truth is there’s a unique opportunity to reinvent work as once again what we produce, rather than where we go to produce it. Let’s start with that.

Ever since the rumblings of the first lockdown back in March 2020, social media has been awash with a polarised debate around what this will mean for the future of work. ‘Nobody wants to work in an office ever again,’ goes toe-to-toe with ‘But you lose so much through remote working’. The truth is, both sides of this debate have their merits, and confidently polarising stances though they are, they also share a fundamental characteristic: they’re missing the point. The new world of work isn’t about picking a side or picking bits from one and bots from another in a merged work-life. It’s about starting anew. We don’t have two paintings to choose from; we have a blank canvas.

The ‘where we work’ debate is an example of getting stuck in the weeds and addresses the symptoms of broken working culture, rather than the cause. Why must we think of ‘work’ as the place you go for your job, rather than what you do while you’re there?

If instead, we start with the question of ‘how do we facilitate the best work?’, you begin to realise that where you’re sitting while you do it is only one component of a landscape of variables to consider as we open up to a new world of work. Not only that, the answer isn’t the same every day (or even every hour). And before you suggest we should start with, ‘what’s best for the worker?’ — the truth is it’s one and the same. A happy worker produces the best work. What’s best for the worker isn’t an afterthought, it’s a fundamental consideration.

So, if we are to really grasp the opportunity to change how we work for the better – what do we need to consider?

1. Wherever we work, we should be in our ‘element’

In a post-pandemic world, organisations have the perfect opportunity to rebuild all areas of their working culture around teams operating in their ‘element’ — where, as Ken Robinson defined it, their talents and their passions collide. That means sometimes they will need the comfort and isolation of working from home, and sometimes the collaborative space of the ‘office’ will be better suited to them. Sometimes, they might just want to work somewhere different.Employers need to be cool with all of the above.

We all know some work is better done solo, and some work benefits from human collaboration. Some is better done in silence, and some in the midst of chaos. Some meetings are helped by being hosted on Zoom, others are made cringe-worthy and pointless.

The challenge, therefore, is not to ‘pick a side’, but rather make the differences between home and the office more stark to offer a broader scope of work settings for everyone. If your working environment consists solely of a desk and a screen in both environments, then the spaces become interchangeable and you’re missing the real opportunity a hybrid working world brings.

2. Bring new freedoms, not just new rules

The future of work, for those organisations looking to help teams thrive in their element, needs to allow more freedom for their teams to optimise their own working habits around what’s best for the work. Asking people to pick which days they are going to work from the office or from home and stick to them — or worse still mandating which days we are in or out — is just overlaying a new rigid structure over the old. It’s just a new set of limitations for old.

Expecting people to want to work from the office when it’s simply a bank of desks they can replicate at home is not going to change things either. We all need to look at how we build a working environment that gives teams everything they struggle to get working in isolation at home. We need to assess conventions like working hours, resourcing and vacation allowances to see if the rules we’ve obeyed for decades are actually worth the paper they’re written on.

3. Forget ‘hot desking’ and think ‘not desking’

New hybrid environments are focused on supporting work not optimised for home or remote working. Versatile spaces, comfortable collaboration, adaptable furniture and hybrid-enabled AV setups will transform what we expect of office spaces and provide an incentive to utilise the office when needed. Importantly, people can move within the environment throughout the day, and aren’t ‘stationed’ at all. Forget ‘hot desking’ – this is the era of ‘not desking’.

Shake Shack’s offices in New York provide collaborative spaces impossible to replicate remotely

Learning and development is something dramatically amplified in a collaborative space, and should be considered within workplace environment design. Like it or not, learning from those around you is near impossible at home — and for junior members of the team it’s essential CPD is a key incentive for making use of the office. Build an office that helps people learn from one another.

4. Your tech stack just got more important

Instead of looking at technology in terms of how it delivers functionality, we need to look also at how it delivers flexibility. Hardware-wise, we’ll see the continued rise of professional tablets over desktops and even laptops because we are becoming a highly mobile and agile workforce that demands versatility of working styles as well as seamless mobility. The iPad Pro has completely replaced by laptop — not just because it competes in terms of power and speed, but it offers the ability to scribble, read in portrait, sign documents, scan documents and other things my laptop sucks at or doesn’t do at all.

From a software point of view, systems and processes are going to need to be digitised, and accountability is essential in a freer workflow. Project management will become increasingly important for creative agencies, with tools like Asana managing client projects, Greenhouse managing recruitment, Appraisd managing reviews, Fathom organising financial data and Miro providing collaborative spaces.

Personal side-note — this isn’t a suggestion to choose software based solely on flexibility without addressing other standards. Google Slides, for instance, might facilitate collaborative working, but it does very little else to support good work. Keynote allows the same collaboration (even Powerpoint does now) and it doesn’t have an awful UX or produce godawful documents. You might think your Google Slides look perfectly nice, but I’m afraid they do not. Sorry.

5. Movement is the new Comfort

Spending thousands of pounds on an ergonomic office chair is only required because we ask people to sit at the same one for thousands of hours a year. If we provide environments that not only allow but encourage movement, we can finally worry less about whether a chair is suitable for sitting on for 8 hours a day. It also means we learn from the whole team, not just those in our ‘pod’ (another common office term that needs to be burned and buried).

In terms of office hours – we’ll see more businesses scrapping them altogether as digital systems establish accountability around the work being completed, rather than the hours in which you completed it. Commuting may feel a horrible hangover from the old world of work, but if the 9am start and 5pm finish is scrapped even partially, then rush-hours too will be diluted meaning lighter traffic and more seats on the train. Consider the dominos downstream of those you choose to knock over—we are essentially re-wilding work.

It’s also time to consider extended remote working as an opportunity to augment (but not replace!) traditional holidays. Working-from-Home needn’t be the only alternative from the office — why not Working-from-the-Beach or Working-from-Paris. This kind of period can help focus time on specific projects or provide an improved mindset for certain thinking.

6. Work and Life needn’t be mutually exclusive. They will enrich one another

Work/Life Balance will make way for Work/Life Blend as we seek work that enriches and empowers our way of living, and vice versa, rather than always seeking to strike a compromise.

But this brave new world of work – which offers so much potential and opportunity to improve our working lives – is put at risk by the determination to polarise the discussion. Home vs the Office. Life vs Work. And so on.

All in all, instead of seeing work as a location, let’s once again see it as a product of our efforts. That way we’ll build an ecosystem around producing the best possible work with the best possible impact on those completing it – and we’ll stop tethering it to myopic views on the workplace.

Yes, it will take a lot of thought and maybe a lot of work. But everything worthwhile always does.