Appraising future-readiness
Your workforce is future-ready. It’s time to act.
Are you future-ready? Will your organisation and its spaces sufficiently support your workforce?
Do you see COVID-19 as body-blow to real estate, or a rapid accelerant of trends already underway? Either way, it’s time to respond. It’s time to act.
As business leaders rush to reappraise the role of workplace in their organisations, research from the world’s largest employee workplace experience benchmark shows how a series of simple tests can determine just how primed an organisation is for its post-pandemic workplace future.
The answers to these questions shortcut leaders to where focus is most needed, where the greatest opportunities exist, and where weaknesses in legacy systems threaten to destabilise any sense of a new normality being better than before.
The answers to these questions set the future-ready apart from the rest.
Discover what makes you future-ready
People:
Put employee purpose first
Future-ready organisations know their workplace why. They’re not simply grabbing the latest trending stat for ‘preferred days in office’ and masquerading it as a strategic plan. Instead, led by evidence, they have defined the role workplace plays in supporting their wider organisational and individual employee purpose.
This goes beyond seeing workplace as accommodation, to being able to communicate the specific outcomes workplaces are there to support at a granular level. Their debate and choices around post-pandemic home vs. office operating models stems from these definitions, putting people before place.
Ask yourself…
1. If your organisation has a clear corporate vision, can you articulate what this means operationally for each team? Can you decode this to ascertain who needs corporate workplaces and who would be better staying remote?
2. Can you then accurately test how well these requirements will fare against the pros and cons for remote-first, office-first, or a blended operating model?
3. Do you fully understand if the workspace provision employees have at home adequately supports them in their role?
Ask yourself…
1. Were your pre-pandemic spaces supportive, nurturing places, or merely a building that kept people enclosed together?
2. Employees have a new benchmark for workplace effectiveness – their own homes. Do you know how the space you provide directly compares to those?
3. If your operating place of work model changes, do your central spaces need to adapt and respond to new user requirements?
4. Can your existing portfolio step up to the challenge of being better than the alternative?
Place:
Go big or they will stay at home
An alarming fact, but the average space designed for living supports the average employee better than the average space designed for working. Future-ready organisations understand it’s not what a workplace looks like, but how it works, that matters more.
The best workplaces are carefully crafted ecosystems tuned to the needs of their users. These brilliant workplaces will draw willing employees back. Sub-optimal spaces will act to disenfranchise employees who built better at home.
Time:
Do it now, and with urgency
Employees have spent the best part of a full year working remotely, repurposing corners of their homes into highly effective work environments. They have seen the future of a digitally-connected workplace with porous boundaries. Some are keen to return, some not. But you owe it to both to be ahead of the game.
Future-ready organisations returning employees to offices must acknowledge the lessons learned and repurpose their workplaces for a new fluid, video-first workstyle. Act on those lessons, don’t forget them.
Ask yourself…
1. Are the workplaces employees are returning to ready for a new video-first workstyle, where those office-based can effectively collaborate in the moment with those working remotely?
2. Can the systems you have in place continue to keep employees connected, as they risk increased disconnection the longer they stay remote?
3. Do you have robust and engaging platforms in place that can support employees’ new blended relationship in their tidal flow to and from their corporate workplace?
The future won’t wait. It’s happening. Act now.
Use what you’ve learned from 2020. Understand that workstyles and behaviours have shifted. Recognise that your employees have adapted at home – and they expect you to have done the same. Can you answer the questions the future is posing to you and your organisation? We can help you test your future-readiness.
Download the report
It can be hard to answer the big questions in one fell swoop. So we’ve made it easier. To determine if your organisation is future-ready, download our key takeaways report and share with your colleagues and decision makers. As well as insights from our rich dataset, inside you will also find our 20-point audit checklist to assess each of the three high level tests of your future-readiness.
Download the report
It can be hard to answer the big questions in one fell swoop. So we’ve made it easier. To determine if your organisation is future-ready, download our key takeaways report and share with your colleagues and decision makers. As well as insights from our rich dataset, inside you will also find our 20-point audit checklist to assess each of the three high level tests of your future-readiness.
Resources
We understand the importance of sharing information in times of uncertainty. Whether it’s webinars or written content,
Leesman will stay at the forefront of investigating remote working and employee experience.
Data Debrief overview
March 2021
Listening time – 5 mins
Go big or your employees will stay home – here we asked our Chief Insights and Research Officer, Dr Peggie Rothe, 10 questions to give us a headline overview of our most recent findings.
Open plan offices
March 2021
Reading time – 6 mins
The pitchforks haven’t been lowered since we first published this back in 2017. The witch hunt against open-plan environments is still in full swing. Despite everything we’ve learned about both home and office-based experiences.
EDGE case study
November 2020
Reading time – 12 mins
Edge surveyed its employees’ experience with home working in 2020 and directly compared the findings to existing office-based data from before the pandemic. Read how Leesman supported them through the process.