THE FUTURE OF WORK

COVID-19 has caused fundamental changes to the way people live, work, play, eat, and socialize. Some of these changes, like wearing masks in public places, may, hopefully, be temporary. But others, including some yet to be seen, may be here to stay for a while. To be sure, the world won’t forever be working in sweatpants at the kitchen table, but like other aspects of life, it seems there won’t be some liberating instant when work simply “goes back to normal.” In considering the ways the coronavirus may affect the future of work, one underlying question emerges: What does the return to work look like?

Will there be a new focus on sanitation practices, increased use of building materials that reduce the spread of germs, or a proliferation of hand sanitizer stands throughout office space? Will companies install new voice recognition technologies to allow employees to open doors and control elevators with their voice, rather than touching a potentially hazardous doorknob or button? How can social distancing be enforced in open plan office spaces where “the amount of space per office worker declined 25 percent” over the last decade? Will circulation-based solutions from other areas of life be implemented in the office setting? At least one thing is certain: we’ll definitely be seeing more of these. But beyond the changing standards for workplace safety. How do we ensure that our workplaces don’t become so sterilized and isolating that they begin to feel like nine-to-five prisons?

Two fundamental new truths come to the forefront of this conversation. First, we need to maintain social distance, even at the office, where people tend to be densely packed. Second, as we have discovered, we are able to work from home without significant reductions in productivity. Both in the immediate return to work and in the long run, the ability to work from home can be the answer to the question of social distance in the workplace.

Beginning to think in more spatial terms, this paradigm shift in the amount of time employees spend in the office provides an opportunity to reexamine the traditional cubic unit of the office. This arrangement makes certain assumptions about the needs of an employee, which our time in quarantine has shown us may not be necessary after all. With workplace communication transitioning to platforms like Zoom, hard wired phones do not need to tie an employee down to one working location. Computer towers can be located elsewhere and accessed remotely. Desk side storage can be replaced by more centralized storage throughout the office. And robust partitions enforce a rigid plan layout with little room for change or adjustment. With changing office programs, eliminating or relocating those elements leads to new possibilities for reimagining the office.