Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 3 "It's way better than sitting in my steel box 40 floors up." When it comes to enticing people back into the office, "it's going to have to be pretty special to get you out of your bunny slippers," says Sannella. That means places of work might be more socially focused, with more amenities to make the workplace special. For example, a "sunshine room" can encourage people to take a break for 20 minutes. "Unusual draws might be something good to bring people back to the workplace," she says. And while this particular pandemic may subside, other viruses will come along, in addition to the common flu, so that is leading to innovations in design such as fewer open-concept spaces, Flexible, green spaces At IBM, offices will become places that employees visit with purpose, according to Katherine Faichnie, director of HR at IBM Canada in Toronto. "The future workplace will be lean, flexible and focused on experience." IBM's space design will evolve around three key themes: technology, space and well-being, she says. "Given the current pandemic, the focus will be to continue to increase automated and touchless elements. The layout will take into consideration the increased use of digital tools, and our space planning will leverage intelligent space management systems." The workspace should be "flexible, reconfigurable and fit for purpose," says Faichnie, and it will be important to incorporate green elements. "It will provide wellness-related layouts and areas for community and social gatherings." In large cities such as Toronto or Vancouver, a lot of people live in small abodes with no green space, so providing that element in the workplace is important to a person's psychology, says Sannella. It's about optimizing the type of space you have and how it suits the employee's work profile. "We had already seen a big trend and a push toward biophilic design in the past... To most people, that means 'Oh, let's just stick plants around the workplace.' Well, no, that's not exactly what it means. It's incorporating the idea of natural materials and the natural forest and the natural world into how we design physical space. And if we can do that, we've accomplished a lot," she says. along with antimicrobial materials and touchless fixtures, says Sannella. "Those things will become common- place and more standard in the workplace. Things that you can clean more easily, things you can disinfect. Different types of lighting may be used for disinfection [and] gender-neutral washrooms where all washrooms are individual rather than grouped together." The psychology of hot desking One trend that's almost certain to grow with the hybrid workplace is hot desking or hotelling, where employees share the same desks on different schedules, says Pimentel. "Certainly, there will be a sense of loss for folks who maybe had a beautiful office, with a window and a door, and now you're telling them go work in the bullpen and make sure you pick up everything when you leave at the end of the day," she says. "But there's a compromise to be made about, 'Well you can have the flexibility to work from home when it suits you. And in exchange, you're going to have to accept this reality that we can't just keep an office empty three days a week if you decide to work from home three days a week.' And, so, it requires a bit of a mindset change for employees and a recognition for employees that just having a desk that's assigned to you doesn't mean that you're any more or less part of the corporation, part of the company… You're still one of us, although the ties that you have may be more digital than physical." Switching to hot desking is a big debate for many employers, including Thinkific. "Previously, everyone had a desk and TOP CHALLENGES OF A HYBRID WORKFORCE "Managers will become 'designers of work' who will determine how projects will be managed across a distributed workforce." Katherine Faichnie, IBM Canada you could personalize it and set it up. But, fundamentally, if more people are going to be working from home, it doesn't necessarily make sense to have designated desk spaces," says Nagy. "[It's about] being a bit selective in how we lay out the space going back. But it's thinking about maybe more in the hot-desking mentality where you get the desk based on when you show up and less private spaces that may not be used to too often." The idea of fewer individually assigned desks and more sharing in the workplace may seem counterintuitive in a pandemic, but once the COVID-19 virus has subsided, companies will want to make the most use of the space they have, says Sannella. "One way to do that is to have undefined space," she says. "It shouldn't be daunting… There's all these great apps you have on your phone and scheduling systems that help you with this and reminders, and you can map it out… to actually see which workspaces are available… there's also software that helps with capacity planning." It's also important to manage behav- ioural protocols in an assigned space, says Sannella. 30% Maintaining corporate culture 13% Creating parity between the remote and in-office experience 13% Providing a seamless employee experience Source: Gartner Thinkific employees take part in a company scavenger hunt in Vancouver.

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