Ownership

15. Have desk numbers changed post pandemic?

16. Are there defined workplace neighbourhoods?

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One of the defining ideas of Smarter Working is the move from owned to shared space. An extreme case of Smarter Working is that all desks, regardless of their open plan location, are bookable. For some organisations (e.g., the Registers of Scotland office in Glasgow, designed before the pandemic) this model works and supports a greater mixing of disciplines.

For others, encouraging people back into the workplace (if that is the desire) is assisted by having some defined area to return to, where local storage may be located, or where privacy may be more controllable. SPACE’s recent project with the Scottish Prison Service was built around flexible neighbourhoods for each team.

One of the ‘other’ responses talks of areas set aside for quiet working but with all desks being bookable. A recent layout SPACE proposed for a client echoes this idea, having a small, quieter area (but still open plan) and a larger area where there is less of an expectation of silence.

As the picture continues to evolve, many clients are waiting for things to settle down a little more and, for this reason, the highest response is that there are no changes to the number of desks.

This is not surprising.

The challenge will be that, if utilisation remains low, how long asset managers will allow spacing to remain unchallenged.