Exploring the meaning of ‘workplace’ in a post-pandemic world : The future of corporate real estate in delivering ‘place’

At the heart of corporate real estate (CRE) is workplace: a hybrid word bringing together the ideas of ‘work’ and ‘place’. This connection between work and place has been necessary since the beginning of time: to hunt, we had to go to the prey; to farm, we had to locate and tend to the land; to trade in goods, we needed markets and shops and storage. It was not until ‘administration’ became a job, and ‘offices’ were conceived, that the need for physical proximity really began to change in nature from the need for access to tools and resources into a need to communicate and collaborate in ever more complex processes. At a stroke, the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has resulted in countries around the world encouraging or compelling people to work from home. This sudden, external force acting on how we can work has resulted in rapid, and for many uncomfortable, change. Working from home will, and possibly for many already has, become the new normal. Is it even possible to go back to how things were before? In this paper, we look at this unintended ‘grand experiment’ in occupant experience — considering the interplay of corporate objectives, workplace strategy, and organisational psychology — to explore some of the likely challenges and opportunities of some of the possible new definitions of ‘workplace’.