2020 has transformed the processes and day-to-day business operations of almost every business in Australia, swiftly moving millions of teams online and into makeshift home offices.
For many, the office has become a glowing memory, with nostalgic views of conversations around the coffee machine, team lunches, and office banter with teammates. For those who have struggled with enforced work-from-home situations especially, the return to the office has been a beacon of hope.
As COVID numbers continue to decrease across Australia and businesses start looking to the future, many employees are desperate for a return to the normalcy and community offered in their office.
Flexibility is Key
Many businesses have found ways to shift their operations online, allowing for remote work to become the norm for their teams.
This is ultimately a positive shift, creating more accessible roles, work-life balance, and fewer location-driven limitations, but has also come at a cost.
Many teams and employees are eager to return to the office, but not necessarily on a full-time basis. This time at home has helped many reassess their priorities, showing that the long commute times to journey into the city office were unproductive and kept them away from their families and personal lives.
For businesses looking to accommodate these emerging needs, a long-term space may no longer be ideal – flexible workspaces like Hub Australia provide spaces that let teams of all sizes work collaboratively and economically, with diverse arrangements and agreements designed to factor in your needs.
Community Thrives Face-to-Face
Workspaces offer a sense of community and simplify many processes, with in-person interactions able to communicate more effectively and achieve more.
Work culture plays an essential role in attracting new team members and retaining your current team, and an office serves as far more than just a place to work. Having positive and communal experiences with your team can bring you closer together, and alleviates the isolation that full-time remote workers may feel from their workmates.
Hub operates a number of community events and activations to help our members remain connected to our wider community, with opportunities to learn, network, and socialise.
Collaboration Hurdles
Globally, many professionals can attest to the difficulty of successfully collaborating when everyone is working remotely.
Although there are hundreds of products and tools available, sometimes nothing beats sitting in a meeting room and working as a team to fill a whiteboard with ideas.
Many organisations are planning to continue their work-from-home arrangements, but want an environment to facilitate team collaboration when needed. To bring a team together sporadically, it can be ideal to source an event space to let your ideas and planning flow without tech interruptions or home-based distractions.
Hub Australia’s serviced meeting spaces are ideal for this – open to members and the public, each space is centrally located and offers flexibility, connectivity, catering, and barista-made coffee to help your team focus and release their creativity.
For teams who are less process-driven and required to be more creative, such as marketing and design, face-to-face collaboration can be necessary more frequently – there is only so much in-depth campaign planning that can happen over a Zoom call!
Productive Spaces
Many businesses have seen their output and productivity shift dramatically this year. Although this is also impacted by the wider events and anxieties caused by COVID-19, the majority of employees didn’t select their homes or apartments with full-time working from home in mind.
Designing spaces for productivity and different workstyles is a very specific skillset, mastered by organisations like Hub Australia who ensure each location fulfills the needs of a diverse range of members.
With breakout spaces, standing desks, phone booths, media studios, and flexible areas available, each member can work productively when in the space, even with a dedicated desk or office.
For most at home, there is only one space that can be suitably converted into a “workspace”, with increased difficulty if there is more than one person working from home. Additional to this is the ongoing OH&S concerns raised by makeshift work areas and the high demand for ergonomic furniture.
There are hundreds of considerations to bear in mind when planning for your business’s future workspace – although flexible work may be here to stay, spaces like Hub Australia’s are designed to offer your team a base to connect, collaborate, and love where they work each day.
