Is this the end for the office?
With no end in sight for mass remote working, how long until expensive commercial real estate gets axed? Computing speaks to IT leaders to find out how technology is informing the decision, whilst simultaneously being heavily impacted
While news began filtering westwards of a new virus in China, few organisations did much to prepare for the lockdown to come. In February 2020, none were expecting that just a few weeks later work and life would look drastically different.
The gradual return to normality, continuing with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's recent announcements of further easing of the rules, is something which organisations are planning for, however. But many questions remain, chief among them what to do with the expensive properties most firms own or lease.
The End?
The concept of the office has been around at least since Roman times, where they were used for civic administration. But do we still need them in a world where many people have found they can work from home perfectly well?
Some organisations have already decided they don't. Engineering firm Worley has announced it will save $70 million by the end of 2021 by reducing global office space and expecting half of its 46,000 staff to work remotely.
A global CIO, who didn't wish to be named as the plans she was discussing have yet to be announced, said that her organisation would operate "a dramatically reduced footprint with tools like fever screening in use."
She continued: "A third of office space will be removed, and we're looking to exit building leases. There'll be much more flexible working and shift patterns, with ‘A' and ‘B' teams of people that never mix, which is one of the things we put in place during the height of the Covid problems."
Lots of organisations are following suit, including Parcel Force Worldwide (PFW). Its CIO, James Robbins, said that his department will be working remotely.
"The plan is for PFW IT to work at home for the foreseeable, but it's not as easy as before. Some folks would like to go back to the office but use it differently, with social distancing measures."
He added that the organisation is also discussing plans to reduce the physical footprint down to just collaboration spaces.
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Terry Willis, director of technology at the Church of England said his organisation is "seriously re-evaluating the amount of space needed."
"I doubt that the traditional office space scenario will ever return to the same numbers. Large organisations like the one I work for have, by necessity, pivoted to remote working as a start-up would operate.
"Speaking with peers in similar roles we think it's more likely to start at occupation of 20 per cent and rise to possibly 40 per cent in six to nine months."
He explained that this is as much due to preference as it is to necessity.
"Although people have been stressed by the lockdown the upside of flexible working and the hours saved by not commuting has changed the hearts and minds of many. Those issues of technology not being good enough have been answered and between Teams and Zoom who hasn't enjoyed a quiz night with family and friends?"
Other organisations are looking to use what space they have differently, but not necessarily reduce it. In the case of RG Partnership, a firm of architects, this is in part because they resigned long-term lease agreements in 2019.
Its head of IT Nick Ioannou explained that the office will be used less though. "Between furloughed staff, the two-metre rule and staff working from home, we are looking at around a quarter capacity compared with the previous normal."
The situation is similar at publishers HarperCollins. CIO Laura Meyer told Computing that reducing the footprint isn't on the table, just a re-organisation of space.
"The office has been set up with social distancing in place with 30 per cent capacity, one-way walking, separate staircases for up and down and limited capacity in lifts together with the wearing of masks.
"The company has done a great job to create a safe working environment. Staff are still working remotely at this stage unless they need to be in the office for a certain task."
And at financial services firm Saunderson House, CIO Nick Rosser admitted that a smaller office is at least being considered, but added that some organisations may even be looking to increase office space.
"Some firms I know are upsizing to make sure they can accommodate social distancing when staff return to the office," he said.
The Met Office is also expecting to see fewer people in the office, but to such an extent that it sees an opportunity to downsize, according to its CIO, Charles Ewen.
"As part of our analysis it is clear that there is likely to be a significant increase in remote working," said Ewen. "Inside that there is significant variation driven by personal preferences, the nature of specific jobs and roles and context. Context ranges from personal, such has having a plausible internet connection or a viable place to work from home as well as the type of work - such as team meetings or inductions where the current technologies do not ‘work' very effectively. This means that we are anticipating lower occupancy at any given time however not to the extent that we are currently planning any downsizing," he added.
Richard Calder, CIO of grocery logistics firm Reynolds admitted that his organisation has been hit hard by the pandemic, but this doesn't necessarily mean that office space will reduce.
"Reynolds is in one of the areas most affected by the pandemic, being suppliers of produce to the food service and hospitality sector. Therefore as sales dropped by nearly 90 per cent overnight, so did the business and the role of IT and application development undertaken."
Again, it's a case of different office usage, but the same physical space.
"The office will at least be a lot more airy post-lockdown! Within software application development programmers are encouraged to work remotely, and we see no reason to change that policy significantly going forward after lockdown ends. Meetings on Teams are a lot more structured and given the pace of change and demand for new applications or amendments to existing ones we have never been busier!
"In other areas of IT like service desk, there is still a need for a physical presence for the break and fix tasks within a logistical operation, but pretty much all of the other tasks can be performed remotely. Once again we don't see that pattern changing much post lockdown.
"When the pandemic first hit we were already well placed for remote working but the lockdown itself accelerated the introduction of Microsoft Teams overnight. Our workforce just ran with it and there is no appetite to change that way of working," said Calder.
Any old iron
Whether organisations are looking to downsize or do away with their office spaces, one clear area of common ground is that there'll be fewer people on site at any one time. Given that reality, what of on premise equipment like deskphones and printers? How long until they go the way of the fax machine?
Richard Calder at Reynolds admitted that it's an area of investigation.
"At present the server requirement remains the same as the business is still running the same applications. However we are investigating IT equipment sales in terms of desktops and printers. Where these are purchased assets we are seeing a drastic reduction in click charges and a change of mindset about employees needing a hard copy of documents."
Meyer at HarperCollins said that her organisation has already been on the path to redudcing on-premise equipment.
"We don't have desk phones as we had already moved to VoIP and have headsets which work well if you are in the office or working remotely. We use O365 already and Teams has been hugely beneficial in this situation. Printers have clearly been used less so we will review usage in the future."
Interestingly, both Nick Rosser at Saunderson House and James Robbins at PFW said that they're more likely to increase IT spend and purchase more equipment to support the new normal, than they are to reduce the existing estate.
The same is true for Nick Ioannou at RG Partership, who said he was looking at purchasing printers for some staff now working remotely.
Anecdotally Computing has heard several other organisations purchasing unified communications tools and softphones especially, and binning the more traditional deskphones and associated PBXs (Private Branch Exchange).
The axeman cometh
With IT systems and equipment changing, what of the people tasked to support them? With many workers increasingly worried at the prospect of losing their job to AI, will they lose it to the pandemic instead?
Many of the IT leaders Computing spoke to anticipate change rather than outright job losses.
"We see a need for ‘help gurus', to advise rather than desktop support to fix, and we are looking at how we will address this," said the Met Office's Ewen.
PFW's Robbins struck a similar chord.
"The pandemic accelerates agile working and more combined IT roles - dispersed teams creates bigger overheads in a virtual world," he explained.
Terry Willis sees at least one new role being created.
"It's too early to say if the roles in the team will change, we already had remote flexible working for our support team and that has been invaluable. If anything there's potentially a new role for a digital concierge who can guide users to better ways of working and signpost to the various tools we plan to implement."
Calder at Reynolds said that some functions may need bolstering, but steered clear of any reference to job losses.
"Within the IT and infrastructure roles we are focussing on improving alerting of issues within key infrastructure and are conducting a review of of software and security applications with a view of preferring those which have genuinely embraced proactive monitoring and AI in order to reduce workload and enable effective remote working."
Whereas others see team structures staying more or less the same.
"What I think it will do is impact the importance of certain technologies for staff and as such change the technical focus and specialisms we put around them," said Saunderson House's Rosser. "Obvious candidates include things like video conferencing, but also other wider unified communications and remote enabling technologies will become key business enablers in the future as opposed to potentially nice to haves for some firms," he added.
Meyer of HarperCollins said that IT people are well-used to change, which counts in their favour in times of flux.
"Tech staff are used to being adaptable and working in many different scenarios and I think that will continue - we will need to provide the right tools and technologies going forward and change focus when needed," she said.
However, Ioannou at RG Partnership confessed that redundancies could well be on the cards.
"If the economy doesn't pick up soon, IT support may be cut as other staff are also cut."
What's obvious is that every organisation is affected, and the one certainty is change. As Meyer said though, change is something which IT staff, of all roles, should do well.
And whilst some systems and even roles could be consigned to the scrap-heap, new opportunities will arise at the same time.