Rebecca Kent (host)
Businesses across Australia are slowly reopening their offices as stay-at-home-orders ease up. But with coronavirus still posing a risk, the workplace is a whole new ballgame.
Are Perspex screens and tape on every other chair in the office the answer to enforcing safe distancing? And if workers can opt to cycle, or walk or run to work, can showers and change rooms still be available to them safely?
And is Blu-ray the secret to germ-free air conditioning?
That and more with Andrew Borger, head of office developments at Charter Hall, and JLL corporate solutions leader Tony Wyllie.
I’m Rebecca Kent, your host, and this is JLL’s Perspectives Podcast.
Rebecca Kent
Hello, Tony Wyllie, from JLL and Andrew Borger, from Charter Hall. Thank you so much for your time.
Tony, what has been the prevailing approach by organisations in making their workplaces ready and safe and compliant?
Tony Wyllie
Yes, thanks, Rebecca. My role with JLL is I look after Asia Pacific. So, drawing on a bit about what we're seeing happening in countries like China, and in Hong Kong that have already done a lot of re-entry, and also what we're seeing organisations prepare for in Australia, I'll just share some insights on that.
We're seeing three main approaches to re-entry. The first one is probably the minimalist approach, where organisations are probably not doing much other than staggering or splitting their workforce into shifts so they can lower densities to meet social distancing requirements. And then really letting people, with their own behaviour, come into the office and spread out themselves without being too concerned and saying where and what you can and can't sit, and just making sure they bring in the extra cleaning.
The second approach is what I'm referring to as the tape and Perspex approach. We're seeing a lot of tape being put down to ensure social distancing, Perspex screens being put up, or 'sneeze screen's being put up. This is I guess, highlighting where you can move - the one-way pass through offices, which desks are blocked that you can't sit in. How many people can be in meeting rooms. This appears to be the most common approach being taken by most organisations.
The third approach is a minor reconfiguration repurposing of space. We're seeing some people feel that putting tape and Perspex up is not going to make it a very productive space for their people, and will create the concern over whether it is safe or not. So redoing some minor reconfigurations - maybe putting up some walls where you're closing off more open plans areas so you're putting a new corridor, or a new wall in. Large spaces like meeting rooms and breakout areas that may not be used for some time are being repurposed with some additional desks. And just looking at reconfiguring the existing furniture rather than using the existing and then blocking it out. So they're the three approaches that we're seeing.
But there is a fourth, and the fourth is really something that all organisations should be doing. And that's concurrently looking at what their new normal is or what the next normal is for their organisation. Because all of those first three approaches are very much, you can sense, interim approaches. And the question is, why are we being interim?
Rebecca Kent
Yeah, interesting. And no doubt the immediate return to work will be crucial for organisations in developing trust among their workers and that they're doing the right things. And there'll be a barrage of questions from workers that are concerned about their health and how compliant their workplaces are. Maybe you can pre-empt what some of the more frequently asked questions organisations can expect to receive from workers.
Tony Wyllie
The common questions might be 'what extra screening do I need to go through when I arrive?'. 'How are the lifts going to work? Is it going to take me a long time to get to my floor?'. And more importantly, once you're moving through the space and getting to your desk, 'how do I know when the desk was last cleaned and cleaned to an appropriate standard?'. 'And when I'm in a meeting room, do I need to wipe things down when I leave the meeting room or is that left to somebody else?'. 'If I go to the bathroom, how many people are allowed in there and what's the etiquette in there and will I feel awkward about that?'. So how people should behave and what the new behaviour rules are need to be clearly communicated.
Andrew Borger
I think part of the conversation is going to be we're in that pre-return-to-work phase and most of the Australian workforce and organisations are getting ready. What they're doing at the moment is they're assessing their own workspaces to understand how social distancing guidelines will apply. And that varies differently from organisations, especially those that are very much focused on at activity-based working (ABW) as their start point. I think there'll be a lot more challenges for those organisations because they've got a different type of density to deal with versus organisations that have a higher level of either fixed work points or even offices, so there’s a challenge through that.
As a vaccine gets closer, I think people will start assessing things on a more long-term basis.
Definitely, I think one of the positives from COVID-19, from a workplace point of view, is it's demonstrated that organisations who have a poor technology platform have definitely had to come very quickly into the future. And I think people are realising that they don't need to physically be somewhere to always collaborate. So I think there's a positive understanding of how technology can be used.
So it may well be potentially, we see a higher density per person for the workforce that's in the office.
When I first started back in this great industry in 1987 we had work densities in of over one person per 25 square metres. And we've gone through the last 33 years various iterations of new workplace designs and as densities have changed, there's been a continual prediction over that three decades that that's the end of the office. So at Charter Hall we’re not predicting the end of the office, but definitely at the moment, we are seeing some significant changes. We don't believe people can jump to the end game just yet on what life will be like.
Once the vaccine is created we're definitely going to need to create a medium-term horizon of working with our tenants, both in terms of our base building, how their fit outs change, how our fit outs change, and we'll use our own operating procedures as benchmarks and test cases. But in this in this interim period, it will be one of assessing what is and isn’t working and how end-of-trips are being brought back.
Potentially, I think at the moment end-of-trips are very much being designed on the basis thatpeople are doing their exercise - whether they're cycling or running to or from work. I think what we're going to see going forward is that bicycles will be a way of getting to work, not necessarily trying to make the Olympics and the Extreme 2021 with doing 30 km/h, but people may be happy to go at a more leisurely pace just to go from home to work. We're coming into the winter months. So potentially you might have bikes without an end-of-trip component, as an example.
Tony Wyllie
I think we've already seen the landlord-tenant relationship come closer in the past number of years. And I think we're going to see that go even further as a result of COVID-19. Agreeing and discussing around how the lobbies and lifts and things work between the building owners and the tenants, there is the talk of ‘are we going to have a more distributed workforce? Are there going to be hubs that that emerge? ’It may work for some organisations. But if you have a landlord who has a good spread of an own portfolio, discussions with that landlord about seeing whether there's the ability to utilise spaces in some of their other locations so that your employees don't have to travel to the central core of a city, are the discussions that people should be exploring in that partnered arrangement with the occupier and the owner.
Andrew Borger
I agree 100 percent. I think we see - using Sydney as an example – that Parramatta really is going to become that significant spoke for organisations that have a large proportion of their workforce in Sydney CBD. We think Parramatta will become, in a very short term, a really good alternative. As we know, it's a geographic centre of the population for Sydney. And I think what it also does, it provides for organisations that can only fit about 50 percent in their main HQ. I think also using underutilised space for organisations with large portfolios of buildings is one way of working with their tenant customers.
Rebecca Kent
I hear there are something like 40 different touch points for staff on the way to work and in the office over the course of the day. And I'm interested to know how contactless technology might be used not just mitigate contact but to monitor distancing and contact as well.
Tony Wyllie
There's no doubt that entry doors and doors in your tenancy, security gates, lift buttons, in the restrooms - there's so many surfaces that we currently touch. I don't see a massive turnaround on that overnight. I think we'll just see enhanced cleaning going on. But certainly there are some measures people are taking like putting clear film over lift buttons that can either be replaced more frequently or cleaned more easily. A number of measures like that have been taken.
There's a there's a lot of people that are looking at this - even if you go to simple things like printing - looking at implementing more 'follow me' printing where you scan your pass rather than touching buttons.
And there's a lot of research already done on materials. Some of the harder metal materials are easier to clean, but they let the virus survive longer. So, we're getting a lot of questions about, 'should I replace soft furnishing materials with harder metal furnishing materials?'. It's really a balance between how regularly you clean and not, so a tricky one, but I think we will definitely see that trend happening. Again, working between the tenant and landlords about retrofitting the buildings with touchless technology is a key thing.
Andrew Borger
We've been working for about 12 months now on a project to ensure all our new developments provide a new level of design in relation to toilets and amenities in terms of touchless facilities. At the moment, on average, there are nine touch points using a cubicle within a toilet at the moment. We're looking at design now to get that down to three. And we think also with further technology we can get that down to zero. So I think we're looking to fast track that into our new developments as a starting point.
At Charter Hall, we've been really investing into that frictionless access, getting into the office, for both staff and their visitors as well. So we're currently using an app on many of our own tenancies, and on many projects where you can use your phone as a way of entering the buildings. You're not actually touching anything at all.
We're also looking at putting Blu-ray into our HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) systems where we can actually kill up to 99 percent of any bacteria that comes into the HVAC system. So I think, again, you're going to see increased focus on how particularly within our mechanical systems, we can use technology to further decrease any bacterial build-up in in the workplace. And I think HVAC in particular, and lifts, are going to be a big focus.
Rebecca Kent
Tony, what about things like sustainability, wellness, efficiency, all those things that are conducive to worker productivity?
Tony Wyllie
Think it's definitely going to become a focus for a lot of organisations. The whole sustainability push.
Previously, a lot of organisations used their workplace and their approach to work with their employees as a way to attract and retain staff. Giving people flexibility, empowering them, making them feel engaged, are all key aspects of what the workplace was about.
I think as we move now towards this - flexible is a real key word - but this more flexible work from home, work remote, work anywhere, there’s a need to make sure that the brand of your organisation and what they're focused on – is not just for the fact of attracting and retaining employees, but for the betterment of the planet - it will be a key differentiator for firms that truly live that.
Andrew Borger
I think one of the reasons that end-of-trips became a really strong point was that tenants really grappled with ‘what does having a sustainability rating mean in terms of the building?’ And whilst there are many metrics that go up to that, the reason end-of-trip jumped out was that people understood it.
But when people are going to be resistant to getting public transport now into the office - and then that could begin to be a longer term trend -we think that end-of-trips need to be significantly revisited in terms of potential size - both in terms of the number of bike racks and locker rooms and change rooms - we think that's going to be a big change.
And we're now starting to see in our older cities that road networks probably can't cope with the potentially higher densities of cycles.
Interestingly, in Germany there are now test cases where some of the car parking lanes are being converted quickly into additional cycle facilities. So I think end-of-trip is going to be a really good example of where the sustainability is really going to drive a further change.
Rebecca Kent
Just one last question for you both. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on one thing that you think this pandemic will spell the end of and one new thing that we may see emerge with respect to the way people interact with their workplaces or the way buildings are developed.
Tony Wyllie
Well, I think there's no doubt it will see the end of the view that working from home is not productive.
The second part that we will see I think, is around technology. We've seen organisations take five to 10-year programs of technology rollout and roll that out in weeks, if not months.
And I think the executive leaderships of firms are going to have this expectation on the speed of how the technology departments can react.
Andrew Borger
I think in terms of one area that's going to change significantly is from a workplace point of view is that people are going to want to have set points of where they work every day when they're coming into work. I agree we are going to see a large proportion of working from home. At Charter Hall we are not predicting the end of the workplace. I think we're going to see a change in workplace densities. And the need to have set work points, I think is really going to become a priority.
Rebecca Kent
And that takes us to the end of our podcast. Andrew Borger from Charter Hall, and Tony Wyllie, from JLL, thank you very much, some great insights there.
Andrew Borger
Thanks Bec
Tony Wyllie
Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks, Andrew.
Rebecca Kent
That was another JLL Perspectives Podcast – a snapshot of the trends and insights shaping real estate and the broader built environment sector.
If you like what you heard, subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google or any other podcast app.
You can also visit jll.com.au/perspectives-podcast for more episodes, guest biographies, or simply to ask JLL or our guest speakers, any questions you might have.
I’m Rebecca Kent.
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