FOCUS FACILITIES MANAGEMENT - COVID-19
Most organisations will be able to measure the eff ect that wide-scale
home-working has on productivity. However, the impact of a lack of
physical interaction within teams will be less easy to determine.”
BACK TO WORK
The lockdown will come to an end, and people
will be expected to return to the o ice, but in
the longer term, will the sudden shi to home
working a ect how organisations and the FMs
who run their facilities operate in the future?
Siddons believes it’s too early to assess.
“Most organisations will be able to measure
the e ect that wide-scale home-working has
on productivity. However, the impact of a lack
of physical interaction within teams will be less
easy to determine. The test will be whether
leaders adapt their approach in a way that best
fits their organisational needs.”
In an e ort to establish an evidence base
on the impact of home working, RICS/IFMA
has joined forces with researchers from the
Leesman Index to compile a survey to help o er
organisations more clarity when it comes to
understanding how their dispersed workforce is
being a ected by working from home.
Says Bagust: “Some people are saying this
is the end of the o ice, we don’t need them
anymore but others miss it and want to be in an
o ice. This is why we need more data on how the
industry works, and why the Leesman piece is
30 MAY 2020
measuring the preparedness and the impact
of home working on productivity.”
The other question is how willing sta will
be to return to ‘normal’, now they’re used to
the ‘new normal’ of home working. Advanced
Workplace Associates (AWA) has been at the
forefront of workplace innovation for years,
and champions agile working and activitybased
working (ABW) as a tool for change
and empowerment.
Says co-founder and Director Andrew
Mawson: “What we know about neuroscience
is that the predominant function of the brain
is to maintain your physical and mental
safety. Once the brain finds itself in a position
where it feels safe, it clings to that. To get
the brain to move to from this state, requires
a lot of communication - which comes into
play with change management.
“The old safe state was an o ice where
you went to do the work. The unsafe was
encouraging people to work away and do
things di erently. Now we’ve been pushed
into a new safe state, which is working from
home. When the government allows o ice
workers to return, the new safe state humans
are going to ask, ‘well actually this has been
working pretty well, what is it that I can do in
the o ice that I couldn’t do before?’
“It is going to be fascinating to watch as the
‘new, new normal’ is going to be much more
akin to a flexible working model and you
only go into the o ice for a purpose which
is clearly of value. When you think of all that
in the context of managing the workplace,
my question is: ‘who is going to manage a
workplace which is based in everybody’s
houses?’”
According to Bagust when it comes
to corporate real estate, a er lockdown
organisations will be asking themselves, how
much space will occupants feel comfortable
with and will they want to sit as close to
people as they used to sit?
Factors such as personal hygiene and
distance between colleagues could become
“metrics by which we judge workspace
quality” argues Hausmanis. “Impacting
on the service contracts put in place to
support them. Knowing how cost is typically
squeezed on these contracts, we can expect
such provision to come at the expense of
other services with an e ect on employee
experience.”
But the social aspects of the workplace
shouldn’t be overlooked says Grimmel. “If
anything, o ices and other places of work
will become even more important as social
contact is what everyone is missing at the