Adapt or die? Looking ahead to a post-COVID workplace

It didn't take a worldwide public health crisis to pique people's curiosity about what the workplace of the future will look like. Managers and frontline staff alike have always pondered the best designs for productivity, efficiency, and safety. But COVID-19 has changed everything. The workplaces that are reopening in many cases have a different look and feel than anyone expected prepandemic. Temperature checks at building entrances, plexiglass barriers, spaced-out desks, and occupancy limits for elevators are just a few of the changes now in place in many workplaces. Some of the modifications may be short-lived, but experts, including designers and futurists, expect others will be long-term or even permanent.

New mission for office buildings?

Who would have thought prepandemic that an office building might not be the place where people go to work at a desk in their own or in a common space? Of course, office buildings have always had conference rooms for meetings and gathering spaces for collaboration, but some forecasters expect the individual work function to take a backseat to group activities as the world adapts to the coronavirus.

Rather than companies having large central headquarters buildings teeming with employees working pretty much the same hours, the headquarters of the future may be in for a cultural shift.