Peaks and troughs; managing workplace demand across the week | How It Was...

Over the next two articles in our News and Insights series we look at how workplace demand and access to physical amenities has changed over the last few years. Through data led design we can vastly improve the user experience and management of those peaks and troughs we all experience across the typical week.

How it was...

Although we have all experienced first-hand from a qualitative perspective ‘how it was’; in order to better understand ‘how it could be’, quantitative data is key. This can help us to understand the change in workplace demand and how this could shape our future workplaces.

Pre-Covid, 60% of employees spent more than 4 hours a day in the office for 5 days of the week. This data is supported by Squaredot research, collated over a number of years from  more than 36 studies and then taking into account the responses of 32,500 employees. To broaden this picture, 81% of employees had an assigned desk and desk occupancy averaged at 50%, peaking at 72% on busier days.

Mixed Results

In March 2020 everything changed when 49.2% of employed adults were required to work from home. At first, for many but by no means all, the novelty produced ‘good results’, with 76% identifying that their work-life balance had improved. By the winter months however, (November 2020 to February 2021) the novelty and lustre had begun to fade with just 63% believing they still had a good, work-life balance. For those who had found the time, home DIY projects, language and musical instrument classes were exhausted while others were simply burnt out by the back-to-back calls and clunky collaboration.

However, out of this, we have all been exposed more broadly to various ways of working and a variety of locations and settings for undertaking specific tasks, depending on need and demand. Equally we have likely individually assessed the pros and cons of our own situation and selections with many ‘work from home’ settings comparable or better than workplace provision in terms of privacy, acoustic control and technology integration. For many this experiment has been in isolation with little consultation and support from senior partners and management.

Trying to Reconnect

This brings us to the model of ‘Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays’, coined early on as people started to return to the physical workplace, however the theme seems to have stuck in some form. Not to say this is the hard and fast rule for every business, far from it, however it is certainly detectable when visiting workplaces throughout a working week, trying to connect with colleagues or even within city CBD’s. Mondays and Fridays, visibly quieter and Thursday evening ‘the new Friday / the last days of Rome’

The data backs up real-life experience within the built environment whereby there are very much ‘peaks and troughs’ throughout the week. Can these peaks in demand be flattened; do they need to be?  In our next article, we will look to the future, how things are currently and how they could be.