Examine the roles that your employees have, and the tasks they undertake. Which roles can work remotely, and which cannot? Your model will centre around this forensic analysis of work done within your organisation.
The questions to be asking are what our organisational goals are, and can we meet them whilst providing employees with the working preferences they have requested. If you can and you know employee preferences for days in the office and days from home, you can change the question from “how much space will be needed?” to “how much space do we need?” Where preferences do not support the delivery of organisational goals, adjustments will have to be made in consultation with the workforce.
There must be oversight during this rethink, to ensure that leaders biases and preferences are not driving decisions and that it is fair and equitable across the organisation. Employee flexibility and choice must be maintained.
When this examination is complete, you can start to rethink your operating model.
This is the time to rethink employee access to resources, to perform at their best, regardless of location; maintaining cohesion;
including HR, IT, security, operations, communications, business continuity and property. Employees must be engaged to determine their desires, needs, and preferences.
Many organisations will be keen to establish as sense of normalcy as soon as possible, and this can result in trying to find the answers to some simple logistical questions, which provide a sense of control.
These questions include how many days employees will be in the office, which days will these be, how much space will we need; and what technologies do we need to invest in.
These are the wrong questions to be asking at this time. This is putting the cart before the horse. You cannot answer these questions until you have done the rethink. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to new ways of working. You must determine the approach that will work best for your employees and your organisation.