Office spaces: What next?

While companies favour enhancing the robustness of the Work From Home / Work From Anywhere model, developers are striving to elevate their properties to meet the newer health, safety and wellness benchmarks. A recent study of a major Asian IT/ITES company revealed a reduction in productivity of around 20%, though the required productivity level was met through extended work hours. Select other findings included: an increase in time spent on co-ordination activities and meetings, and a shrinking of uninterrupted work hours.

Hence, it is not surprising that companies, despite meeting their current performance standards, are mindful of the limitations of remote working and want employees to get back to the office, soon. In parallel, developers are betting on new buildings with advanced amenities. COVID-19 has accelerated the demand for newer buildings with better facilities. This shift is happening alongside another disruption: a tilt towards greener workspaces. Energy efficiency and air-filtration systems are now seen as essential. The tilt towards wellness and sustainability is visible.

What Next?
At Brigade, our fundamentals are strong and so is our competitive position. This clearly is a result of shared proficiencies and a sustained operating history. The pandemic is bound to bring in significant fundamental changes in the commercial business necessitating newer spaces, interior designs and commercial terms, occupancy-related flexibility, increased focus on health, wellness and safety, opening up of new geographies and many others.

Therefore, what I want to impress upon is: we should harness our internal collective strength along with focus on our core values, systems, processes and inter-department collaboration. We must endeavour to gain real-time, meaningful and actionable market insights. We must introspect, innovate and evolve rapidly.

Let us remain inspired for the Next!

SUBRATA K C SHARMA
COO - Commercial, Brigade Group