FMJ.CO.UK INTERVIEW FOCUS
MAY 2022 53
estate portfolios and facilities management
practices.”
O ice building utilisation was between
50 to 60 per cent usage across a typical
working day before the pandemic, and
while people were working flexibly, the
di erence was they all had assigned seats
and were expected to be in the o ice all of
the time. Cushman & Wakefield take regular
analysis of the impact of the pandemic
on working patterns via its Experience per
Square Foot (XSF) tool and has collected
a huge amount of data on people’s
experiences working from home.
Explains Katsikakis: “We found that the
ability to focus and to collaborate stayed
consistent while working from home, which
proved you could work remotely and the
technology was there and robust enough
to do that. However, people’s ability to feel
connected to company culture, to their
colleagues, to feel inspired, to collaborate
in an innovative way, to be mentored and
to learn from others started dipping and
dipping.
“That was particularly di icult for
younger people who didn’t have the
networks in place, who weren’t already
connected to the business and who didn’t
have the physical space at home to work
e ectively.
“But the biggest change during the
pandemic was that 90 per cent of people
felt trusted by their managers to work
remotely, compared to 35 to 40 percent
pre-pandemic. People also felt they could
continue to focus and collaborate at home.
The data showed that 78 per cent of people
want to have choice and flexibility – they
don’t want to have mandates of coming
into the o ice, but they do want to come
back to the o ice two or three days a
week. That way they’re more connected,
wellbeing actually increases, their work/
life balance goes up, and they’re more
informed and inspired.”
WHY WORKPLACE?
According to Katsikakis, the reason why
people want to come to the o ice is to
intentionally and meaningfully connect
with others, which does challenge the
workplace to compete with home and
allow occupants to do the things they
couldn’t do elsewhere. If people come into
the o ice expecting to do what they did
before it is not going to work she argues,
and if they come in expecting to do what
that do at home that won’t work either.
“We need to adapt our behaviour
and adapt the space and businesses
accordingly. This includes all the social and
mentoring opportunities. How you make
sure those things will happen comes back
to the intentionality of planning. If people
know who will be in the o ice and know
where they are going to sit it will be more
of a driver to come in, rather than if they
show up and no one is there or they are
all on zoom calls.
“This is where intentionality is a key
factor and it is going to create more
pressure on how we manage buildings
and teams in order for people to be able
to know why they’re coming in and act
accordingly. That is where we’re going to
see a lot of emphasis and planning
and why a lot of our clients are
creating pilot environments
and bringing in di erent
groups of people to
test and measure
what works and
what doesn’t, as
a lot of this is
about behavioural
change.”
Collaborative space is going to
increase from around 30 per cent to
about 50 per cent and that will include
more virtual tech integration so that you
can really embrace the people who are
not there, o ering experiences that
REPURPOSED
WORKPLACE
The disruption caused
by the pandemic has
resulted in a massive rethink in
the design and layout of the o ice.
According to Katsikakis while around
60 per cent of space in an o ice was
previously devoted to individual desks, it
is now predicted to be reduced to about
30 per cent for individual workspaces,
supplemented by focus rooms, booths
and the introduction of other types of
quiet areas such as o ice libraries.
Meanwhile, she explains: “Collaborative
space is going to increase from around
30 per cent to about 50 per cent and that
will include more virtual tech integration
so that you can really embrace the people
who are not there, o ering experiences that
are much more e ective.
“Social, wellbeing and amenity space that
would typically have been about five per
cent pre-pandemic we expect to go up to
about 20 per cent. If you think about the
o ice as a place to connect, to learn and
socialise with others, being able to create
those intentional opportunities, to make
those collisions happen will be really
interesting.
“It changes the whole nature
of FM if we’re moving from
wrenches to smiles. It’s
all about curation and a
hospitality mindset, by
creating and inspiring
destinations for people to
want to come in and be
part of the o ice.”
There has and will be
some debate on whether
these changes will result in
cuts in corporate real estate and
Katsikakis believes clients tend to
take one of two approaches: “Either
using the same amount of space but with a
di erent layout and design or reducing the
core space and leveraging an ‘ecospace’ of
locations which will be home, third spaces
and the o ice, so less space but better
designed and more curated, alongside
touchdown and home.”
One of the discussion points of the
BCO debate will be how to meet the
expectations of employees which have
are much more e ective.”