The office of the future (and present) is sort of like your home
Picture this, it’s 2008 and WeWork just opened its first coworking space in SoHo, New York. The free coffee is pouring and the ping pong tournament is heating up. People are lounging in bean bag chairs trying to focus. Teams meet in colorful pods to collaborate on projects and freelancers and their clients sit under massive skylights with green ivy cascading around them.
Now let’s fast-forward twelve years - you wake up 20 minutes before your 8am Zoom call and quickly make some coffee before hopping online. After the meeting wraps up you cook a healthy breakfast and sit at your kitchen nook while reading over emails. There’s a big company report that just launched so you get cozy in your reading chair to look it over. After a homemade lunch, you hop on a call with your manager for your one-on-one, you take the call from your back porch so you can get some Vitamin D (don’t worry your boss can’t tell you’re wearing shorts).
No matter your thoughts on WeWork, they did get something right. The relaxed atmosphere of their offices did invite a certain type of work style that encouraged collaboration and creativity. And we’ve seen this with other major players like Google, with their “third spaces” areas and casual atmosphere.
This type of atmosphere isn’t an accident — it’s very intentionally designed and created to maximize connections, collaboration, and creativity.
So why are top execs so obsessed with returning to the office and putting everyone back into a cubicle when there’s a host of other options out there to make teams more collaborative?
Harvard Business Review has some hypotheses on why companies have chosen not to downsize their office space and look for alternatives:
First, downsizing would potentially mean more people in less space; with Covid cases still high, this would make employees even more skeptical about returning to the office
Second, more and more companies are making the switch to hybrid; which means that the majority of the week you still need enough desk space for everyone at the same time
Third, “the office of the future must be more inviting” - meaning that cubicles and sterile spaces are out. Employees expect interesting and Instragrammable offices and employers are starting to meet this demand to attract and retain talent
And while these points ring true, what still doesn’t make sense is the fact that companies are still shelling out millions of dollars a year on inflexible fixed-cost real estate, and paying for the same amount of space when usage rates are way way down. Business leaders continue to think about the office in binary ways: home vs the office.
But forward-thinking execs are realizing that there are more opportunities to get their teams together in relaxed, inspiring, and cost-effective spaces. Such as utilizing Radious for team meetings and offsites.
And that’s the thing, remote work isn’t about never seeing colleagues again (in fact quite the opposite!). Employees want to ditch the commute, be in unique and relaxed spaces, and have the flexibility to fit meetings into their life.
Radious provides just that. Meeting and office space in residential homes. Bookable by the day and agile enough to fit a scaling team.
Download our one-sheet to learn more about what Radious can offer your business.
July 2022, Written by Cassidy Johnston