2021: A Return to Office Spaces?

The pandemic has created a reality that will strengthen the trends which have existed in the industry for years. In 2021, however, developers will prepare a new offer for their customers. It will aim at responding to the hybrid working model that has emerged during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Arkadiusz Rudzki, Executive Vice President of Leasing & Sales at Skanska commercial development business unit in CEE, "safety has always been the keyword for us. We either build safely or not at all. However, this also applies to the projects we develop, offering safe working environments for our tenants. Both in 2020 and 2021, we have been as focused as possible on ensuring that our office buildings meet the stricter requirements of the sanitation regime and that employees can return to office spaces in this new reality." As an example, he mentions their 'Connected by Skanska' app that allows to access a building using virtual cards, guests use electronic registration, whereas drivers have a smart parking lot that they can enter thanks to the automatic recognition of their license plates. “These are solutions that increase safety in the difficult time of the pandemic."

Recognition for health and safety
Skanska is the first developer in Central and Eastern Europe to be awarded the WELL Health-Safety Rating in multiple project applications for eight projects (including four in Poland). The rating is awarded to the office spaces with the highest safety parameters that reduce disease transmission risk related to the ongoing pandemic. Distinctions like these are proof to employees that they can feel comfortable at work.

Office work: a new form of benefit
A statement by Skanska says that after the initial exhilaration of working at home, successive months of the pandemic have shown that offices are still necessary (or even essential) for teams and entire companies to operate. The lack of face-to-face interactions with colleagues negatively affects both employees and employers. Offices have significant social, cultural, and formal roles to play.
"I would like to emphasize that there has been a shift in the approach to office spaces that the pandemic has only considerably accelerated. Companies will increasingly move away from the 'you must come to the office' approach in favor of 'I would like you to want to come to the office," Arkadiusz Rudzki explains. "This change will strongly affect office spaces in the future. You will need to provide employees with more space and proper sanitation measures and convince them that their office is safe. Above all, however, offices will have to offer something more than what the employee has at home: in a nutshell, offices should be better, nicer, more comfortable and more interesting than home. Solutions that will help employees save time (e.g., concierge services) are sure to gain in importance. I think that the way we use offices will become increasingly similar to what we need hotels for: we will spend there the time necessary for teamwork, building relationships with other employees and using the infrastructure of office buildings, which will satisfy our needs related to performing the tasks that we cannot do while working from home."