Maybe barista bars and pickleball courts aren’t that important to workers after all.
Since the waning days of the pandemic, employers have tried just about everything to lasso workers back to the office. Some have swapped out aging desks and chairs for newer models. Others have switched to hybrid work schedules.
The tactics seem to be working, as office use has slowly risen across the country, though it remains lower than before the pandemic. Some employers and office owners spent millions of dollars adding amenities, including bars designed with Mad Men-style motifs from the 1960s, indoor gardens, arcade games and even beekeeping workshops. But interviews with design professionals and a new survey show that maybe what companies should have focused on was giving staff what they really want — a place to be left alone and get work done.
About 48% of respondents in the United States said focus on work was the most important reason for them to go to their office, according to Gensler's 2023 workplace survey in a finding backed up by executives involved in workplace design. Of the 14 choices offered in the survey, “access to amenities” ranked dead last, at 24%.
“There are people who want to go back to the office because of" distractions from kids or pets at home, James Woolum, an interior designer at ZGF Architects in Los Angeles, told CoStar News.
When broken down by age group, Gen Z, millennials and Gen X respondents in the U.S. all chose focus on their work as the most important reason to go into the workplace, while baby boomers chose access to technology as the No. 1 reason, according to Gensler, the largest architecture firm in the U.S. by revenue. Also in the mix: Workers want to have some opportunity to talk to colleagues.
Some employers seem to be getting the message. Architects and interior designers say corporate clients are increasingly requesting private workspaces in office renovation projects. These spaces take the form of phone booth-style cubbies, libraries where silence is required or small conference rooms suitable for just a handful of people.
“If two or three team members need to have a conversation, they can jump into these empty rooms,” Woolum said. “These are often non-reservable spaces designed for spontaneous meetings and collaboration.”
Still, about two-thirds of employers worldwide haven’t redesigned their offices in the past three years, meaning workers are going to office spaces of a different era that don't give them the choices they need to do their job, according to Gensler's survey.
Quiet, Please
Staff members also want spaces where they can just be left alone, too.
A workplace needs spaces “where you can have privacy for some heads-down work, or to decompress and reflect on a meeting that just occurred and to prep for the next meeting,” Janet Pogue McLaurin, global director of workplace research at Gensler, told CoStar News.
While phone booth-style offices are not a new concept for workplaces, they remain quite popular. In a recent renovation for TreviPay, architecture firm Clockwork added phone booth-style offices to the payments technology company’s Overland Park, Kansas, headquarters.
“We typically include those for all our clients because they get used so frequently,” said Lara Schneider, a principal with Clockwork.
It’s a place where an individual can sit down, close the folding door and get work done without someone tapping them on the shoulder and breaking their concentration. But the doors have vertical windows so it doesn’t feel like you’re trapped in a cell.
It’s much less common for office renovation clients to ask for trendy amenities like treadmill desks, Schneider told CoStar News. Those offerings are expensive and many employers can’t afford them. Access to an ergonomic work setting ranked second to last on Gensler's survey of reasons U.S. employees want to go to the office.
Face to Face
While many workers may want a place at the office that’s free from interruptions, others want to see their colleagues in person.
In the Gensler survey, the No. 3 reason U.S. workers said they want to return to the office is “scheduled, in-person meetings with team members." The fifth-highest reason was “to sit with my team.” Gensler surveyed thousands of U.S. full-time workers at companies with at least 100 employees who are required to work from the office at least some of the time.
“You don’t just want to work alone, but also work with other people throughout the day,” Gensler's McLaurin said.
The best approach is to provide several arrangements in the same office to meet the full spectrum of work styles, added Woolum.
“There are probably a million and one reasons why people want to come back to the office and it’s hard to meet all of those,” Woolum said. “So we want to give people a range of experiences.”
Open collaborative spaces have proven to be popular, Woolum said. Some staff members work well when other people are around, provided they’re not constantly interrupted.
These are “library spaces where 10 to 20 people can work in the same room, but there’s the expectation that there’s not phone or video calls,” he said.
ZGF included libraries in its office renovations for Expensify in Portland, Oregon, and the Publishers’ Clearing House headquarters in Jericho, New York. ZGF renovated its own offices in New York and Washington, D.C., to provide a variety of work setups for individuals, small groups and large gatherings. Partly because of their designs, those locations have nearly 100% in-person daily attendance, Woolum said.
Amenities like bocce ball courts are still important, especially to employers looking for so-called creative office space, said Brooke Gothard, a managing director at JLL who represents tenants on office space leasing.
“Gone are the days when you could check the box with a building café, conference center and fitness center,” Gothard said.
The espresso stand and sushi bar don’t necessarily need to be in the actual office, Gothard said. The most desirable offices are those located in mixed-use properties with varied retail offerings or in walkable neighborhoods with a plethora of restaurants and shops.
Splashy, photogenic amenities aren’t going away, even if they’re less important than employers thought. ZGF has found that climbing walls, cornhole boards and Aeropress coffee are more important to certain types of tenants, Woolum said. Some of ZGF's technology clients have offered those types of amenities for so long that they’ve become a part of the corporate culture.
“Some tech clients, if we told them they could save a bunch of money by not having a barista or food choices,” Woolum said, “I can’t see them agreeing to that.”