Kyle Harrison
article
This Is the End of the Office as We Know It (Vox)
This Is the End of the Office as We Know It (Vox)
Rani Molla (Vox Recode, April 2020) on how the pandemic would change offices: more permanent remote work, smaller or more flexible leases, private space over open plans, and fewer but more deliberate in-person meetings.
Why it was kept
Kyle pulled the passages on co-working losing its communal model, people spending on home offices, voice technology moving into offices, and in-person meetings becoming reserved for what matters. He paired several of them with tweets that push back or extend the point.
As Kyle captured it
- Read This is the end of the office as we know it from Vox - Remote Work
- Some who are still employed will now permanently work from home, and some employers will choose to downsize their leases or look for flexible office space rather than long-term leases. Co-working spaces will probably never be what they once were as they forgo hot desks and communal spaces for more sanitary — and less profitable — private areas.
- Counter-point: https://twitter.com/jmj/status/1254085658504597504?s=20
- “Companies were caught with their pants down,” said Lister. “Companies where the technology and culture were aligned with working from home were more successful in working from home than others.”
- Employees themselves are also spending more money to create better home offices. Katie Storey, principal at Storey Design, says that her residential and commercial interior design firm is already seeing the trend. - Interior Design Remote Work
- “It added some humanity to us,” Lister said. “You don’t have a choice: The dog is going to walk through the meeting, your child is going to walk through. Period. We’ve just relaxed our standards to that. Maybe it will bring us closer.”
- Automation and voice technology could also play a role. Technology like Amazon Alexa for Business, for example, could become a new interface and remove the need for physically pushing a button or touching a surface in an office. As Bret Kinsella, founder & CEO of the voice technology publication Voicebot.ai, explained, “There is voice tech in warehouses today but very little in office settings. That will absolutely change.”
- “We’re going to reevaluate face-to-face meetings: which are really important and which can be substituted,” Gensler’s Pogue-McLaurin said. “We want to reserve when we do come together to be special and important and about creating relationships — and to create social distance without feeling awkward.”
- Some who are still employed will now permanently work from home, and some employers will choose to downsize their leases or look for flexible office space rather than long-term leases. Co-working spaces will probably never be what they once were as they forgo hot desks and communal spaces for more sanitary — and less profitable — private areas.
Connections
- Remote Work · Co-working · Interior Design
- The tweets Kyle attached, archived: Hypothesis Not traveling for sales… (tweet) (the counter-point), [[Untitled tweet [34]… (tweet)]] (Simon Sarris), The open floor office will… (tweet) (Sarah Tavel).