After nearly a year of remote working, the question is: is office life completely dead? What will happen to the office in the new normal?
My prediction is that it bounce back stronger than ever, but not in its pre-pandemic form. If you are to lure back your employees, you need to COVID-adapt your office. Here is my recipe that will not only bring your team back but will also give a much needed push to the economy:
The only way to get your team to the office is to make it into a super duper fun space. The place that you visit once or twice a week, where the employer will treat you to a fine meal (to support local restaurants) and to the tunes of some live music (to help out the entertainment industry). It’s an occasion, so you will want to dress up of course, and help the fashion industry stay afloat. Ditto with hair and nails.
As you will probably want to have a glass of wine to gulp down the fancy fare this week’s celeb chef has prepared, there will be plenty of work for taxi drivers too.
All of this should be affordable to companies since they’d be saving big bucks renting much smaller offices. In fact, you could sell all the desks and focus on just having a cool lounge area with a popcorn machine.
Once the weekly office party is over and done with, people will go home to recover and focus on actual work.
In big offices, teams would obviously take turns to decide who can join the office party and on which particular day. You could even create your own company currency: party slots employees can buy and sell to each other. The company incentive plan could also promise extra slots for super achievers.
Now the question is: where does this leave the boss? Well, the boss will simply have to reinvent herself as an entertainer. You won’t be going to an Ed Sheeran concert any time soon. But hey, you can spend time with your cool boss.