Can PropTech bridge the gap between office and home?

This article was originally published by Unissu.

The Covid-19 outbreak has opened up a new horizon for remote working. Where once spending your 9-5 from the home office seemed like either a periodic nightmare or a far-off pipe dream, it has rapidly become a required part of the daily grind.

This trend won’t end with the fading of the coronavirus. Sure, many companies will send their employees back to the office, but many more than ever before will allow their employees to remain remote. This is for a variety of reasons. Not everyone is in love with remote work. But, for those that have tasted the forbidden fruit and found it sweet, being forced to return to the office could be frustrating. It may even prompt a new job search. Some teams may have found themselves to be more productive remote than they were working in the office. And for other companies, even those with teams which may have taken a productivity hit from going remote, the opportunity to slash real estate costs may be too good to pass up.

What this means is that all the articles out there trying to answer whether we will go back to the office or not are missing the point. Clearly, some of us will and some of us won’t. This will necessitate a big change for companies used to working entirely out of physical offices, and it may even represent a bigger challenge than going 100% remote. Companies with workforces that are more remote than before while still retaining a major onsite component will have to balance the management and space needs of two groups of workers who operate in totally different fashions.

So, what will the office look like when it’s shared between in-person and remote staff? Remote workers who have in-person colleagues will use the office more for things such as client meetings, periodic check-ins, and collaborative work that for whatever reason cannot be done remotely. Even before Covid-19 it was known that offices are in general under-utilized: too many desks for the number of total workers. With that in mind, expect to see a rise in the prevalence of office “hoteling”, where hot-desking workers share (regularly disinfected) areas with employees who are always on-site. Collaboration spaces will probably come to represent a bigger percentage of overall square footage, absorbing some of the desk space left behind by employees now working from home. Lounge-type work areas could become more common as well.

With so many options and design choices, how will businesses help their employees navigate the process of finding and using space safely and effectively? This is a golden opportunity for PropTech to shine. Apps that allow workers to reserve space on demand will become increasingly common and could very well come to be ubiquitous in the office within five years. Tools that facilitate periodic collaborative work sessions, like modular breakout rooms that can be reconfigured into extra desk space when necessary, will also become more common sights. And applications that streamline and standardize building access will become more common, too.

Workers shouldn’t have to check in with security every time they need to use the office, even if they spend most of their time at home. At the same time, providing a physical key to every single employee is certainly not practical; not only does it increase contact with high-touch surfaces but in the event of a rekeying, the logistical challenge of replacing everyone’s key would be nightmarish. Instead, apps that allow for touch-free access to the property premises will probably become omnipresent in the office of the future.

PropTech may be facing rougher waters soon, but the need for reliable, customisable platforms to handle these challenges is about to explode. Each company will need to decide for themselves what the best tech stack includes, based on their culture, management style, and the number of remote vs in-person employees. But whether they choose to use only one PropTech tool or the whole gamut of them, one thing is certain: the future of the office is on demand.

• Spaceflow is a global tenant experience platform