VScompany managers and HRD will pull their hair out to convince employees to go back to work. A few days before the start of the school year in September, they realize that organizing themselves overnight to get everyone to telecommute at the whistle of spring 2020 will have been the easy part compared to the efforts to be made now to bring everyone back.
Because some have managed to telecommute effectively, one can hear phrases like: “No, I am not coming to the office today, I have too much work. “
Rather than rearrangements and teleworking agreements, the first eighteen months of the health crisis mainly generated waves of employee consultations on “Back to work”. Employers, real estate developers, office manufacturers, etc., all now have in stock a number of studies on “Employee priorities” to find their job “Face to face”.
Since these large surveys are thought to be appropriate to respond with rational arguments, their summaries traditionally begin with a paragraph on health priority. At the start of the school year, expect to continue to see Plexiglas plates, white and red adhesive tape arrows to indicate the directions of movement, ostentatious cards indicating the dates of surface cleaning, all of this will be as visible as ‘unnecessary in the face of the main risk, that of aerosol contamination. “It’s a bit like the security guard next to a bottle of gel at the entrance to department stores, it doesn’t help much but it says ‘we are careful'”, observes Mickael Locoh, Managing Director of Steelcase France, an office furniture specialist.
Themes such as the need to socialize or reconnect with nature also emerge from these reports. The future, if we are to believe the expressed wishes, looks like a luxury coworking. We predict high-end catering, coaching programs on Monday on site and yoga on Tuesday, breakfasts offered to those who arrive before 9:30 am …
The emergence of the “employee experience”
Reading these summaries, the major office lessors like Icade will transform into event agencies. They will not only sell square meters, but “An employee experience” (As a reminder, we started to talk about “customer experience” when it became catastrophic).
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