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Old School Thoughts for the New Age Workplace
Old School Thoughts for the New Age Workplace

April 7, 2022

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The exile is finally over. We are back at our workplaces. As people flood their social media with feelings, photos, and reactions to coming back to the office, let me share some thoughts on what Occupiers should be prioritizing in their new workplace build process. The foundation of these thoughts is based solely on overt experience and covert common sense.

Knowing your Work and People 

A lot has changed in the last two years. The nature of work has changed. People have changed. Their priorities have changed. It is prudent to conduct a detailed study or survey of the work and people for whom the workplace is being built. 

Revisit the work dynamics and your current organizational workflow and evaluate the impact of digitization and technology on space. Define the current priorities of your employees. Analyze all the inputs and map them with your organization's goals. This exercise will help you establish a clear design brief for the new-age workplace if conducted by a professional agency. The brief will define the organization's spatial, functional, and aspirational goals and guide the team entrusted with its delivery. 

One box does not fit all, so please do not blindly copy a peer organization's template. It is easy to build your own identity and brand when you know your people and the purpose of your workspace.

The Value of Design 

Once you are clear about the brief, choose your designer wisely. The right design will always strike the right chords. It can help you make a statement, enhance productivity, achieve sustainability goals and amplify the brand in the workplace. 

Once chosen, please nurture the design team. Push them for better options but also encourage their efforts. Steer the design ship carefully through cost and time currents. A mature and experienced designer is the key to opening doors that can usher the winds of change. The office design must acknowledge the present and create a blueprint for the future. Bulldozing a competent design team to a "the client is always right" tag team will not benefit your organization. 

Choose designers who can debate and discuss new solutions and ideas with you. View the creation of a workplace as a beautiful opportunity. Do remember the final quality of the built space will be driven by the quality of the design team we deploy. Cutting corners while doing the same is strictly not recommended. Finalizing your designer remains one of the critical decisions in the project life cycle.

The Technology Pivot

It is crucial to make sure the workplaces are future-ready when building scale. Technology plays a vital role in the same. Our design brief had already defined our objectives. But is the design team entirely abreast of the latest technological innovations in their field?

The lead designer will not be able to give us the right solution if he is not clued to the various advances happening or possible in the workplace solution arena. The MEP schemes we adapt for our spaces define the extent to which we can achieve our sustainability goals. Today, a large workplace can be transformed into an entity that generates millions of data through sensors. Collating the data and analyzing them can help us increase productivity, take care of mental health, save energy, keep our offices secure, etc. 

Face recognition and visual analytics will soon replace access card control systems. Wireless networks will be the norm, connecting employee laptops and other IoT gadgets in a workplace. Remote monitoring of site execution and having digital twins of your built space is already the talk of the town. Drones are expected to monitor site safety norms. Technology is changing at an increasingly fast pace. It is the responsibility of designers and occupiers to be first aware of what is changing and then quickly choose solutions that will help workplaces be relevant in the longer run. In the absence of timely insights and analysis of what is possible, the risk of opportunity lost is high. 

 A " never stop learning" attitude is essential for all professionals. The onus is on designers and project managers to be aware of new things. Only then can it be placed on the table of the Occupier to give them visibility and elevate the quality of design decisions. 

- By Arnab Ghosh, Managing Director, Project Management, Colliers India


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Colliers India
Sukanya Dasgupta, Head Marketing and Communications - sukanya.dasgupta@colliers.com

Colliers (NASDAQ, TSX: CIGI) is a leading diversified professional services and investment management company. With operations in 66 countries, our 18,000 enterprising professionals work collaboratively to provide expert real estate and investment advice to clients. For more than 28 years, our experienced leadership with significant inside ownership has delivered compound annual investment returns of approximately 20% for shareholders. With annual revenues of $4.5 billion and $98 billion of assets under management, Colliers maximizes the potential of property and real assets to accelerate the success of our clients, our investors, and our people. Learn more at corporate.colliers.com, Twitter @Colliers or LinkedIn.

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