2022 - The "H Year" for the Office

What can we expect for the office in 2022? I'd say that it's something akin to the Hybrid Högertrafikomläggningen (say that three times quickly).

Högertrafikomläggningen Day, now known as H Day, is the day when Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side of the road in 1967. The picture above was taken in the midst of the change. While it looks chaotic, tangled, and unorganized, and it may have felt that way for the drivers in the midst of it, that wasn't the case. It was planned over several years and it was a relatively smooth transition that went better than expected. But in the midst of the process, it looked like a mess, and that's where we find offices as we begin 2022.

Offices are being reimagined for an era of hybrid working, but many organizations are impatient with the process, disappointed with low re-occupancy rates and don't yet have a clear plan to improve their spaces. Pre-pandemic offices became what they became - congested seas of open desks and generic conference rooms - because of a decades-old assumption that all work needed to be done in the office at assigned locations. That stopped being true fifteen years ago when mobility became a reality, but many organizational leaders have yet to experience offices designed to support work in any other way. After two years of working from home, workers are (rightfully) demanding more flexibility, with 76% wanting more flexibility with where they can work and 93% wanting more flexibility with when they can work. The good news is that 80% still want access to an office (but on their terms), and improvements to office design could significantly increase that number in the future.

Organizational leaders need to embrace the idea that offices are now on-demand resources that need to support shifting use patterns, including different hours of use, different activities, and different desired experiences. While the entire transition won't happen in a day as in H day, those organizations that embrace this and land on a smart transition plan will find 2022 to be a year of progress and new beginnings. Those that don't may find themselves stuck in an awkward transition that could last well beyond this year.

Thankfully, the research done by MillerKnoll's family of brands brings decades of insights as to how to transition effectively. This isn't the first time that companies have made this transition towards on-demand, desirable offices as flexible working existed long before 2022 and we can gain great insight from past examples. As I have the privilege of leading the Global Research and Insights team for MillerKnoll, here are my top suggestions to accelerate your transition smoothly based upon what we know:

1. Refocus for 2022: Make this year a time of reimagining and improving your office experiences in partnership with your organization's employees. The notion of an "RTO week" is unrealistic in most cases - people don't change our patterns that quickly, particularly in the midst of confusing mask mandates, limited daycare options, and calendars full of meetings booked weeks in advance. Office re-occupancy should be understood to be a months-long process that is done in partnership with employees, not something that's demanded of them. The focus of communication with employees should not be compliance ("we expect you back on this day") but rather co-creation ("let's rethink how the office can help you be more productive and provide high-value experiences you can't find elsewhere") if you're seeking long-term returns on your real estate investments.
2. Free up people's calendars: Interestingly, many organizations that already have desirable, on-demand offices have shared with our team a new problem limiting the use of their offices - people's calendars. This is something that all of us will need to address. Employees are so locked into all-day video meetings that they're experiencing fatigue and have little time to take advantage of flexible work policies. Experts in remote working will tell you that in the beginning stages of supporting remote work, organizations try and recreate in-person experiences through video meetings, which is incredibly demanding for employees (hence the 93% that want more flexibility when they can work). Leading organizations will address this by reducing meetings in favor of asynchronous interactions in Slack, Google docs, Microsoft Word, Trello, Miro, and other digital platforms. Unfortunately, very few organizations have yet to prioritize this. I admit frustration here as I've been banging on this gong for years (examples 1 and 2), but we've not yet made much progress. Consider sharing this challenge with your RTO committee if you have one, or discuss with your HR and IT leaders how to reduce the number of meetings on everyone's calendars to enable them more time to transition into and from the office. Don't be surprised if this is a year-long challenge to tackle.
3. Brush up on best practices: The good news is that organizations like ours produced lots of useful resources in 2021 to help reimagine offices for an era of hybrid working. The bad news is that there's a lot of information out there to navigate. To keep things simple, I'd like to refer you to three places where you can find a lot of what you might need to create a transition plan in 2022. If you can spend time in January - say, a few hours a week - brushing up on these, you'll be surprised how many weeks or months these insights can save you later in the year. They are: Herman Miller's Future of Work hub, Knoll's K Talks, and the blog at Future Forum (of which we are a founding partner). As an example, you can find ideas of how to address overscheduled video meetings here through a concept known as "core working hours."
4. Prototype new experiences and over-communicate: You might think that because I represent contract furniture and textile brands that I'd recommend you redesign your entire portfolio of offices in 2022. Nope, that's not how I think most organizations should begin. Instead, consider spending limited amounts of capital to prototype new approaches that can later be scaled. Talk with your organization's employees about their personal wellbeing and productivity, and their sense of connectedness to others. Consider what experiences your employees miss or struggle with most while working remotely that your office could best support. Good places to start include how the office can reconnect extended networks of employees, how neighborhood based-planning and other design approaches can enable teams to interact for longer durations than video meetings will support, and the value of spaces for individual focus and concentration (including supporting individual video calls in the office) for those facing distractions at home. See examples of how your existing spaces can evolve to support these needs here and here and consider making some incremental improvements to your space. Ask small groups of well-networked employees to try these new space designs and share feedback, and be direct in asking them if and how they'd use these spaces before making further investments. It's important to gain this feedback as part of your due diligence and you'll want employees to feel ownership in these changes so that they can evangelize their value with others and accelerate future use.
5. Seek value: This one is simple. Let's stop budgeting, planning, and measuring our corporate real estate based upon headcounts and occupancy costs. 2022 is the time to set a new standard: offices must deliver value - to our employees, to our organization, and ultimately to our shareholders. If done right, the move towards hybrid workplace strategies and the support of more flexible working (including investing in your employee experiences at home) won't be the death of your office, but rather its rebirth, helping to move beyond old assumptions about how work is done in favor of a far more strategic and value-added approach for the future.

Cheers to 2022, friends. As always, you can reach out to me or your local MillerKnoll team members to help you navigate these complexities, manage change, and add greater value to your organization. Someday I believe we'll look back at 2022 as the long-overdue year of transition that set the office upon a more sustainable and strategic path.