Location

*Trends & Next Steps* Jabra Hybrid Ways of Working 2021 Global Report

Location

While 2020 taught us many lessons, the biggest shift to our working lives was location-based.

We shifted our primary work location from the office to home, and realized that with the right tools, we could be productive and maintain business continuity throughout remote working.

So much so, that most employees now consider the majority of their tasks as possible from home.

Our research showed that knowledge workers feel most tasks can be better accomplished from home, with the exception of collaborative work, where engagement, socializing, meetings, and onboarding new employees are considered far more effective in person.

Here are the key location-based trends impacting the future of the office and where employees get their best work done.

Offices spaces will be seen as an added resource for social and collaborative tasks
First impressions count – reasons for return could potentially be misread
Technology will become more central than physical spaces in the war on talent
Workplace design requires rearchitecting for offices to be effective resources in the future
Younger generations want office spaces more than those who have longstanding careers

Location > Location Trends > Offices spaces will be seen as an added resource for social and collaborative tasks

01 Offices spaces will be seen as an added resource for social and collaborative tasks

Knowledge workers primarily want to use offices for collaborating in meetings, socializing and training team members, or onboarding new employees. For many though, the office will center around informal collaboration opportunities, with 71% of the global workforce seeing the office as a social amenity, while independent work will happen off-site.

_{^{In order to maximize the resource of an office, employees should experience something special that you couldn’t accomplish at home. First and foremost, the office is not the primary place to work. That’s a very important message companies should provide to employees. There are other more important reasons we want people to come back to the office. It’s a place where you act as a team and where you come together with your coworkers. It’s about coming together and getting “we” work done together, not “me” work. It’s about building culture and camaraderie.}}

Holger Reisinger, SVP, Jabra

Next Steps

Organizations should consider the value of unstructured interactions and informal collaboration in the office and how much their teams will benefit from information exchange or networking. This requires rethinking how offices are designed and how to guide employees on their use.

In their real-estate and facilities strategies, leadership should consider what types of tasks and reasons they want employees in the office for, creating spaces that suit those needs and then communicating guidelines that help employees use office spaces effectively.

Flexible hot-desking arrangements, dedicated collaboration spaces with whiteboards, and library-like zones, are all examples of different zones you should look at creating in your new office layout. By creating this campus feel, you can facilitate the type of hybrid environment that brings employees together in offices again for the right type of face- to-face interaction.

73%

agree that 'in the future, having office space will considered an employee benefit rather than a mandatory way of working'

Location > Location Trends > First impressions count – reasons for return could potentially be misread

02 First impressions count – reasons for return could potentially be misread

For many people, a desire to return to work might not be because of the reasons managers think. The dominant pain points for remote workers are reduced team connectivity and motivation, as well as equipment challenges, but this may be because of poor organizational support helping employees adapt with the remote working transition.

_{Rather than mandating a return to the office, we need to enable people to work from anywhere, and then positively say that it’s okay to come into an office space however often or not they want to.}

Holger Reisinger, SVP, Jabra

Employees are more likely to request more days working in office – 3 days or more a week – if their company did not do a good job transitioning to remote work during the pandemic, with 17% wanting to be in the office full time, compared to 14% for those who had a good experience with the remote work transition.Because of this, organizations should not jump to the conclusion that employees want to come back to the office because leadership has created an accommodating space for work and culture; it could just as likely mean that lacking trust and support for flexible remote work created greater challenges.

Next Steps

In formalizing hybrid-work strategies and agreements, make sure to understand the driving factors and uses for which employees want to return to the office. Our research confirms the findings of many other studies that show that those in senior leadership positions usually display higher confidence levels in returning to the office than employees. In this light, it is key to understand that home working challenges do not directly correspond to return-to-office drivers.

Location > Location Trends > Technology will become more central than physical spaces in the war on talent

03 Technology will become more central than physical spaces in the war on talent

With the shift to remote working, digital transformation accelerated and the only way to create a centralized hub for meetings and information sharing was virtually.

This inversion from physical to virtual hubs will have long lasting outcomes, but it has seen a noticeable and immediate shift as nearly 8 in 10 knowledge workers would rather work for companies with flexibility than a fancy physical headquarters. Furthermore, 75% want to be able to work from anywhere in the future.

Technology is now the enabler of workspaces, as employees seek personal technology that allows them to convert any space into an office. In our research,85% of respondents said that technology is critical to a work from anywhere future.Interestingly, this desire does not have any major variance across age groups.

Location > Location Trends > Technology will become more central than physical spaces in the war on talent

Companies that invest in the right formats for bringing people together, and technology to keep them connected from wherever, will benefit more than those who invest primarily in traditional physical resources.

_{Because the transition to hybrid is organizational change at a mass scale, we need to make it comfortable for people to join the conversation at their own pace. As of now, when many people think about hybrid, it isn’t just standard knowledge that they can work from anywhere and that they’ll need a new set of tools. We need to combine inclusive communication and innovative technology to thrive in a hybrid future.}

Aurangzeb Khan, SVP, Jabra

As we move forward, three in four people would prefer to work for a company with hybrid working options. This will require technology to enable everyone to turn any space into a workplace. More than half (55%) of employees want personal technology to take with them wherever they wish to work and almost three in four (68%) would prefer companies to select and provide that technology to make the hybrid experience equal. With the change in location for where we work, organizations should reconsider the tools needed for a distributed workforce.

_{Hybrid work has made us reconsider the uses for our products, because our personal and professional lives have become far more integrated. This broad context of uses means we need better tools than we had purely for remote work, so that they can optimize our workspaces, no matter what we’re doing or where we’re having to work. We’re designing a new generation of collaboration technology that is location agnostic, allowing us to accomplish our goals – whatever they are – in this new hybrid lifestyle.}

Iain Pottie, Head of Design, Jabra

Location > Location Trends > Workplace design requires rearchitecting for offices to be effective resources in the future

04 Workplace design requires rearchitecting for offices to be effective resources in the future

Employees are primarily wanting to return to the office for collaborative tasks. But for many, the attraction of an office space is also balanced with the need for dedicated concentration spaces.For non-collaborative tasks, employees would prefer dedicated desks, but not if it requires them to come in for a set number of days.If in-office time is stipulated with a dedicated desk assignment, there is a shift in sentiment to flexible hot-desking arrangements. With this in mind, 55% of the workforce would rather have personal technology bundles that they can use to create virtual workspaces wherever they choose in an office space or remotely.

_{The return to the office is driving and will drive a physical re-architecture. For the longest time, collaboration rooms were long and narrow because of what the video technology could comprehend, but that has changed. Let’s take advantage of the innovation in the collaboration industry to equip these spaces with the right technologies that enable an equitable hybrid experience}

Aurangzeb Khan, SVP, Jabra

Next Steps

Office spaces need redesigns that consider an axis of informal to formal collaboration that facilitates informal social moments to formal collaboration. Organizations should consider flexible infrastructures that allow for individual focus or group collaboration.These should have complementary personal technology such as noise cancelling headsets that can facilitate greater concentration in open spaces as well as intelligent audio and video collaboration solutions that bring groups together across distributed locations.

Location > Location Trends > Younger generations want office spaces more than those who have longstanding careers.

05 Younger generations want office spaces more than those who have longstanding careers

Many reasons have been discussed for varying preferences in the workforce regarding location preferences. Mid- to senior management have often built up the social capital they need to work remotely with strong networks already established, and many have bigger family commitments to balance.Conversely, younger employees have stronger preferences for office-based work. This is mostly attributed to lacking dedicated home-office setups, or stronger preferences for socializing at work, as well as networking and learning company culture.

Our research revealed two new trends in this area.

84%

agree that 'technology can help all employees have equal access to opportunities at work'

80%

agree they ‘would rather work for a company that invests in technology to better connect the workforce in a hybrid working future’

Self-motivation appears to increase with age, with Gen Z and Millennials finding it far more challenging to stay motivated while working from home than Gen X or Boomers. This trend is reflected in each generation’s ideal hybrid working balance, with younger generations preferring more days back in office than their more senior counterparts.

Location > Location Trends > Younger generations want office spaces more than those who have longstanding careers

Challenges with remote motivation reduce significantly with age, correlating with a trend for reduced days back in office. Hybrid working is also causing anxiety for career development.Gen Z and Millennials have much greater concerns around their expectations with a return to the office and the impact this has on perceived opportunity. As such, there is a more significant fear of missing out on office opportunities for socializing or networking that might advance their careers and provide access to new projects.

This trend also reflects in how much employees believe their careers would suffer long term from unequal hybrid working practices and not being in the office to access opportunities. Younger generations would prefer to work from home more, but will return to the office so as not to impact their career prospects.

Next Steps

Transparent practices - with leadership examples of hybrid working best practices - will demonstrate to teams that whatever choice they make for working will not disadvantage them. By measuring employee outputs and their impact on the team and organization, leaders can decouple performance from physical presence.

Knowledge workers also value an emphasis on output over hours at a desk, with 69%saying they would prefer managers to focus on employee output compared to 31% who would rather have their performance evaluated on time spent in the office. Leaders should also focus on the levers driving return to office behaviors, and enable the entire workforce to access the spaces in which they can be most productive