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Where is everybody? A leader’s guide to the office of the future.

Office space ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked debate about the role of the traditional office, but the workplace transformation that it triggered also raised the broader issue of physical spaces in general. What will the places in which people live and work look like a few years down the road? With the commercial-real-estate market in flux, and with many employees working remotely or in hybrid situations, leaders may need to take a new look at office space and think about how to redesign it for optimal networking, collaboration, and connectivity both now and in the future. Here are some factors to consider.

Chances are that the traditional office tower may morph into a markedly different structure in the next decade. Leaders may want to think of buildings not as just four walls but as places for communities and experiences, suggests McKinsey senior partner Aditya Sanghvi in a video on how high-rises may evolve in the next few years. “The high-rise of the future isn’t just office for 50 floors,” he says. “It’s office for ten floors; it’s multifamily for 15; it’s a hotel for ten; it’s a club area at the top of the building. And that, to us, is the real future of the high-rise.” With a people-centric orientation, the buildings of the future may also offer a range of amenities, such as cleaning services, childcare, eldercare, and pet grooming. “We don’t believe that it’s possible for the world to go back to the way that it was,” says Sanghvi. “The [organizations] that will be the most successful will be the ones that carefully monitor exactly how our behaviors have changed already and how they will continue to change.”

6

That’s McKinsey senior partners Vaibhav Gujral and Rob Palter and colleagues in an article on the urgent need for office space to be configured differently from how it has been in the past. “The traditional allocation of 70 percent of space to desks and offices needs to be fundamentally challenged,” they say. Given a potential “oversupply of space and a scarcity of offices purpose built for hybrid work,” the authors urge real-estate operators and tenants alike to consider such amenities as smart conference spaces, collaboration areas, and “a food-and-beverage ecosystem of restaurants, lounges, cafeterias, [and] pantries, all digitally accessible.” Biophilic design—incorporating natural elements, such as organic shapes and vegetation, into built environments—also improves employee experience.

For open-source software development company GitLab, office space is a nonissue: the organization has been fully remote from its inception in 2011. Despite the absence of a physical footprint, GitLab has instilled close connectivity and a highly collaborative culture among its employees, according to cofounder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij. “We invest in working practices that enable asynchronous communication, and we’ve committed to educating and supporting other companies through the global transition to remote work,” he says in a discussion with McKinsey. For example, all changes that the organization’s developers make are documented and kept up to date in an online handbook that is available to the public. Meetings have clear agendas, and issues are resolved with “clear next steps, owners, and delivery dates,” Sijbrandij explains.

Long seen as a status symbol, the coveted corner office has gone the way of most other office staples. As office spaces become more flexible and dynamic, top executives may no longer have private offices. While they may still have access to enclosed spaces, those spaces are likely to be communal and used by other in-office workers when available. The amenities and perks that some companies promised workers to lure them back to the office have turned out not to mean as much when offered in isolation rather than as part of a more thoughtful, inclusive design. Employees place a high value on purpose, collaboration, and community. A state-of-the-art gym alone can’t offer this, which is why the office of the future will need to be closely aligned to organizational strategy and purpose and designed to support innovation, productivity, and employee engagement.

Lead by using space well.

— Edited by Rama Ramaswami, senior editor, New York

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by "McKinsey Leading Off" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 02:20 - 29 May 2023