Workplace patterns entering an era of stability after years of disruption

A new report has revealed that after years of disruption, workplace trends are finally beginning to stabilise as workers continue to fall in love with flexibility and freedom.

The Big Calm – 2024 Workplace Futures Survey produced by Hassell highlighted that employees across the globe have fallen head over heels for flexibility. Across Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and the US, employees are increasingly seeking quieter workspaces and homelike comforts including greenery and good coffee suggesting a shift towards new working environments.

Despite this optimism, the survey displayed a clear gap between the preferences held by workers and the real configuration of modern-day workplaces. According to the data, fewer than one-quarter of Australians (23 per cent) feel they have enough space to focus without distraction, and only 35 per cent believe there is enough space for collaboration.

In pair with this data, employees who felt they had enough space to focus reported satisfaction scores 24 per cent higher than those without, while those with enough collaboration space experienced a 12 per cent increase in satisfaction.

This data is a clear-cut example of why Dr. Daniel Davis, Hassell head of research and author of The Big Calm report, believes this is the perfect opportunity to turn this stability into long-term practice for organisations.

“This period of stability is an exciting opportunity to make longer-term plans. Companies can now implement changes with the confidence that the foreseeable future will not bring radical shifts. Updating spaces to align with workers’ new preferences will allow them to perform at their best.”

“The results suggest many workplaces are not meeting workers’ new space preferences, and there’s a commercial imperative to listen, given how closely these metrics relate to workplace satisfaction.”

“Meeting rooms are often fully booked, and it’s not necessarily because workers are ‘in meetings all day’. Instead, they are becoming refuges for focused work or small group collaboration, supporting needs that open-plan offices are failing to meet,” Davis said.

Although these issues remain, some workplaces are beginning to address the needs of their workers as they’ve seen the benefits that it can have on productivity and business outcomes when workers are operating in a space where they are comfortable.

“This shift indicates that pre-pandemic office designs, which assumed workers would be present five days a week, are no longer suitable. Current trends show a preference for individual work to be done at home, with the workplace serving as a place for collaboration, with crucial access to quiet spaces for solitary work that mirror the calm spaces found at home,” Davis said.

Davis believes hybrid working arrangements are here to stay.

“We can be confident that hybrid is one aspect of the pandemic that’s sticking around.”

“People value flexibility and want the option to work from the home or office, with a strong preference for the freedom to choose.”

It’s a detail that is supported through the survey as on average 20 per cent of workers were more satisfied with their workplace policy than those mandated to come in on certain days (85 per cent versus 64 per cent), which drops to as low as 46 per cent among office workers mandated to be in five days a week.

AI implementation was also featured in the survey with it being both regularly used and increasingly a concern among office workers globally, particularly regarding its potential to increase workplace redundancies.

Concerns went industry-wide with one-third of workers in IT and software (32 per cent), design and creative (30 per cent) and media, sport and entertainment (27 per cent) all fearing increased AI implementation and how it could lead to redundancies.