The end of the office as we know it? - The Mail & Guardian | PARAGON GROUP : The Architecture Company - Architects & Interiors
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Publisher: 
Head Topics

 

Call Centres, Capitec

The end of the office as we know it? - The Mail & Guardian

As more people continue to work from home, a decreased demand for commercial property is expected to continue as long as South Africa’s growth levels remain low

FNB’s Commercial Property Finance 2021 Property Market Outlook report is forecasting that commercial property values will decline by 7% this year and it projects a further decrease of 9% in 2021.

As more people continue to work from home , a decreased demand for commercial property is expected to continue as long as South Africa’s growth levels remain low

Business Insiderreported that Capitechad seen a decline in its employees asking for sick days, especially among call centre workers.  While working from the office is not prohibited, as long as the company follows Covid-19 health protocols, some companies have chosen to let their employees continue to work remotely. 

ActionSA’s new Covid-19 multiparty platform excludes EFF | CitypressI’m not here to make friends with anyone – Mashaba explains EFF exclusion from multi-party meetingNtshavheni appointed as acting Minister in the Presidency

John Loos, FNB’s property strategist, said 2021 may start to provide greater clarity on the impact of the “Zoom boom or work-from-home trend. Office space already has high vacancy rates and requires some thought around repurposing.” “Office space repurposing into high-density residential property on the affordable end has been tried and tested in the CBDs”, said Loos. 

But he said that FNB did not expect the remote working trend to accelerate rapidly, with many corporates still holding onto their offices and keeping office infrastructure in place for the time being.However, it does look as if companies are moving away from pricey rentals in Rosebank and Sandton.   headtopics.com

Anton Jaffe, commercial director for OPH Properties, which mainly operates in the Johannesburg CBD, said that he had seen an increase in commercial rentals in this area. He said this was different to other suburban areas, where most employees were still working from home. OPH Properties’ clients in the CBD were still occupying their office space. 

“Our market is different. Our client wants to see their staff,” said Jaffe. He said OPH Properties had small and medium enterprises in its premises, as well as consulting firms, financial services companies and government departments. He said many people were still looking for space, and that it helped that OPH has small offices that were affordable, especially for startups. 

Estelle Meiring, a director at Paragon Architects, said the emphasis of office space in the future would shift away from “a place to sit and work to a place to communicate, collaborate and build company culture.”She said that the need for human interaction would keep the office alive, albeit in a different setting than we know now. 

Meiring added that although the numbers of employees in companies occupying office space would decrease, other health measures may well increase the amount of space required per employee.  Meiring expected to see a move away from open-plan layouts, with wider corridors and doorways, more partitions between departments and more staircases.  headtopics.com

Wine makers taking govt to courtSA Lockdown: Police arrest over 7,000 people in KZNCOVID-19: Health Dept to reveal phase one inoculation details

Furniture may change too — office desks have shrunk over the years, from 1.8m to now 1.4m and less, but this might reverse again as people needed to sit further apart, she said. Helen Kruger, managing director at Troye, an information technology service provider, said: “I do not think the office will be shifted away completely. I do believe that it will reduce in size.” 

Kruger said she had been contemplating whether she needed an office space for her employees, adding that it had become tricky to justify the need for office space. However, she still felt the need for some form of “corporate presence”. She said her team had to be able to get together and collaborate on the projects they were working on together. 

However, she does contemplate downsizing their office space. She mentioned there were other costs involved in having employees work from home while keeping office space. Kruger said some businesses incurred extra costs when their employees work from home, such as printers and work cellphones, while they are also paying rent. 

 

If businesses were to get rid of their offices completely, she conceded, this would drive down costs. Tshegofatso Mathe is an Adamela Trust business reporter at theMail & GuardianAll our essential coronavirus coverage is free for all readers. To see more, visit our hub headtopics.com

Subscribe to the M&GThese are unprecedented times, and the role of media to tell and record the story of South Africa as it develops is more important than ever.TheMail & Guardian