ServiceNow CEO stated that the company office will need to make changes at critical moments

In the age of mixed work, companies need to fundamentally rethink the way they work in the corporate office. As ServiceNow’s CEO Bill McDermott told a group of analysts and reporters at the Knowledge 2021 corporate event, “No one wants to go to the office anymore.”

Since its establishment, the company’s office building has been a place where employees handle daily tasks and managers ensure that these tasks are completed. Whether it is a small suburban office or a huge company park, whether the building is composed of independent offices or an open plan, or there are engineers everywhere in the office, these two basic goals are established, accountants and graphic designers. However, as Bob Dylan immortalized in a song, “They are changing times.” Now is the time.

Digital transformation meets Covid-19

With cloud services, online collaboration tools, IT consumerization, and many other digital transformation technologies, companies no longer need to place employees in a central location to perform basic tasks. The shift to nearly 100% remote work brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has proven this.

Every business executive I have spoken to hopes that hybrid and remote work will be part of our new normal. Therefore, the first purpose of the office I described above, which is to provide a physical place for the completion of tasks, is no longer relevant.

The second goal is to enable managers to ensure that workers perform their tasks? Again, technology solves this problem. Whether it’s software development or public relations activities, today’s project management tools, office productivity applications, and enterprise software enable managers and business leaders to gain a deeper understanding of employee productivity than ever before.

Research from Salesforce shows that most remote workers are actually more efficient and better at communicating. Similarly, a report released by the Prodoscore Research Council (PRC) in March 2021 found that even if the number of people working from home increases significantly, employee productivity will actually increase in 2020.

Therefore, we can judge that the second traditional goal of an office building is also achieved in a completely different way.

Reshape our office around collaboration

This leads to the next question: Will there be physical offices in the future? The answer is yes, at least for the foreseeable future. A survey conducted by Zoom and Survey Monkey in February found that 65% of remote workers prefer to divide their time between working at home and working in the office.

However, our concept of office functions needs to be completely changed.

McDermott pointed out in his speech that by 2024, 75% of the workforce will be millennials or younger generations. These people want to “work in a way that makes them most efficient” and “hope to have the flexibility of a great experience.”

“I think of office buildings as computers or smartphones”

“I think of office buildings as computers or smartphones,” McDermott added. “This is a tool. If this tool allows you and your colleagues to get together and collaborate and innovate… that’s great. But they don’t want to waste time being trapped in the office and point out that they are busy.”

Mr. McDermott’s views are supported by multiple studies conducted during the pandemic.

According to a survey conducted by Morning Consult and Verizon in March 2021, seven in ten Americans expect to work remotely at least one to two days a week during the year. A study released by Salesforce in May found that 59% of respondents believe that mixed work “will improve their mental health” and 54% believe it “will improve their physical health.” A survey conducted by LiveCareer in January found that if remote work is no longer allowed, nearly one-third (29%) of employees will resign.

“If you want to attract the best talent, you need to build flexibility in the way you run these businesses.”

Mr. McDermott described companies that do not adopt a flexible and mixed work model as a double hazard.

First, they risk damaging the customer experience. As McDermott said, without the experience of a 3-Michelin-star employee, it is impossible for a company to have a 3-Michelin-star customer experience.

Second, they risk losing or not hiring the best talent.

“If you want to attract the best talent, you have to build flexibility in the way you run these businesses,” McDermott said. “We want to attract a new generation of IT industry, especially ServiceNow. Not everyone can move to Hyderabad, San Diego or Santa Clara. They may be in Chicago. They may be in Atlanta… they may be in Miami. They may In Houston. They may be in Austin and many other places in the world.”

Source: “ZDNet.com”