Home Property Australia Omnichannel workers reinvent the office

Omnichannel workers reinvent the office

  • August 04, 2020

The rise of the “omnichannel worker” signals an exciting new era for the office, and Australia’s property industry is well-placed to pivot, says Mirvac’s Paul Edwards.

 

  Three key takeaways:

  • The office is “absolutely fundamental” to the workplace of the future, says Mirvac’s Paul Edwards
  • Digital disruption was already reimagining job roles and repositioning the office before the COVID-19 crisis
  • Mirvac’s deep dives into staff and customer sentiment underscore the central role of the office for community building, osmosis learning and networking.

 

As Mirvac’s general manager of workplace experiences, Edwards has spent the last four years thinking deeply about the future of work and the evolution of the office.

050820 - Story 4 - Paul Edwards Mirvac“A shift in the world of work is underway – but don’t panic. The office is absolutely fundamental to the workplace of the future but how we use it will change,” Edwards says.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents the property industry with new opportunities to create experiences, elevate health and wellness, and redefine value to customers, Edwards explains.

Edwards sees the transformation ahead as an acceleration of an existing trend. Well before COVID-19 upended economies, digital transformation was disrupting workplaces. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, published in 2018, predicted that 42 per cent of tasks would be undertaken by machines or algorithms by 2022.

“A lot of process-oriented, repetitive tasks were set to disappear regardless of COVID-19. But that leaves a lot of the human-centred work requiring critical thinking, creative problem solving and collaboration – the work done when people are together. COVID-19 has seen task-oriented jobs retreat to the home, but we’ll need the office for the human-centred work.”

Mirvac has recently undertaken “deep dives” into the sentiment of staff and customers, with detailed interviews uncovering several now-familiar themes: the power of technology, the importance of inspirational leadership and the value of a strong workplace culture.

“The most important theme is that both our staff and customers say they miss the sense of community and the incidental interactions of the office.” What people don’t miss is the commute, he says.

“We heard a lot about the importance of new workplace strategies that accommodates greater choice and redefine where tasks are undertaken –whether that’s home, near home or the office.”

Edwards says this emerging “omnichannel worker” echoes the shift to omnichannel retail.

“If you think back to the 2000s, there were claims that online shopping would be the end of bricks and mortar. But the retail sector worked out its point of difference – experiences – and pivoted towards that. We’re seeing a similar moment in time now for offices.”

Edwards says the work-from-home experiment has also emphasised the office as the centre of learning and networking, especially in the early stages of an employee’s career.

050820 - Story 4 - Mirvac EY Centre“Learning by osmosis has disappeared with a distributed workforce and building relationships has become more difficult.”

Creating a culture of continuous learning is a key pillar of digital transformation, he adds, “so a critical question is how our workplaces can act as a catalyst for learning”.

Edwards expects to see offices reconfigured to reduce desk space and expand areas for learning, collaboration and events. The number of people in the office at any one time may shrink, but when balanced with social distancing requirements, the bricks and mortar footprint is likely to stay much the same.

The biggest challenge for the property industry is to look beyond the dollar-per-square metre measure of a building’s value.

“We were already starting to think about new ways to measure the value created in the workplace, but COVID-19 has brought this issue to the fore,” he says. Now is the time to become “more sophisticated and scientific”.

Last year Mirvac undertook several space utilisation studies to understand how people interact with spaces. Concurrently, an experiment with Boston-based Humanyze “scraped” data from email, Skype and calendars to learn how reorganising space could enhance collaboration and productivity.

“We already have great insights into how a physical space enhances productivity and performance. Now we need to understand the benefits of bricks and mortar to a digital company.”

Gain more insights from Paul Edwards and other property industry experts in the Property Council Academy’s On Demand Video Library. Download now.