Serviced Office: The Middle Ground for Back-to-Office vs. Work-from-Home Dilemma

Since the world has stumbled into the pandemic mess, millions of people are forced to survive through the ongoing lockdowns. During this time, people had no choice but to adapt according to the situation. The virus had more than just the impact on our health and how we protect ourselves from it. It has also affected abruptly the way offices and organizations function. Converting office environment into a chain of work from the home saga, videoconferences, and webinars is essential.

For many people, the “working from home” style during the pandemic has turned out to be a boost in their productivity. With working remotely, these people were given an option that they never had before: extra time. These employees were able to utilize that extra time in creating what matters for them, resulting in a happy employee and better productivity. Yet, there were some who felt the pressure of working from home and felt their productivity reaching an all-time low during the pandemic.

Employees in serviced office
photo credit: Polina Zimmerman / Pexels

With the mass availability of COVID-19 vaccination, the cooperate sector is slowly starting to roll open and bring back the paused office experience with safety measures and along with social distancing, of course. For this return of normal office routine, a serviced office space can serve exactly what the cooperate sector demands. Before proceeding to what serviced offices offer, we must understand the current dilemma of coming to a normal office routine.

Work from Home Issues During Pandemic

Work from home was felt to be the perfect answer to corporations and organizations to keep their office related tasks in motion, even when the conference room and cubicles remained empty. Modern office work is largely digitized and computer based and that helped in firms to convert their operations to work from home model.

The biggest issue that people face with work from home is the diffusion of work and home time. While working from the comfort of your living room or bedroom, there are never-ending distractions around us. Even if we decide to focus, it takes a lot of dedication and motivation to set a schedule and dedicate our time to a specific task. On the other hand, the nerve-wracking stress can be difficult to separate since the work time itself becomes distributed and difficult to define what the working hours can be. This is one of the prime reasons why most employees avoid working from home.

It is extremely tough to hold a productivity ratio when you are surrounded by less supervision and more personal time. Working from home can create serious mental focus and commitment issues and can lead to miscommunication. Then there is the lack of physical meetings. Zoom meetings and conference calls surely serve mediums for us to interact but the value and charm of person-to-person interaction cannot be replaced so easily.

Office Environment Issues During Pandemic

While some firms saw a complete shutdown of business or took the work from home route, many still tried to keep the offices working by following the strict social distancing and hygiene requirements. Even with the most offices now open, the working environment is just not the same yet. This plays a huge part in bringing down the morale and productivity of employees.

After so many months of being cooped up at home, and for some more than a year, returning to a proper work environment is strange. People are just not used to that anymore. On top of this, there is still the stress of the virus and its variations.

Plus, shifting back to an office environment just isn’t the same now since there is lack of that personal touch.

Serviced office trends post pandemic

How Serviced Offices are Serving a Neutral Ground

These testing times demand something flexile for both cooperate sector and the employees. The word flexible is what describes a serviced office. With more businesses are looking for a hybrid setup for their companies, serviced offices serve highly flexible environments with high-end facilities and expert staff without the hassle of paying too much for lease.

There are multiple perks of a serviced office such as:

Flexibility

Small cubicles or proper offices, these offices are flexible with what space they offer, This can be ideal for both businesses and employees looking to remain agile and can be modified according to their needs.

Professional Aesthetics

A serviced office effortlessly offers companies with necessary office facilities to provide businesses a high-end professional edge. From handling phone calls and mail through office reception teams to offering top-notch conference rooms and spaces for interactions.

Access to all Facilities

Both employees and the company has the perk to enjoy facilities like fully-staffed reception desks, kitchens, lunch areas, cleaning and maintenance services, meeting rooms, and networking spaces. On top of this, there are always additional pay-as-you-use services and facilities for companies with no hidden costs and easy budgeting.

Networking and Engagement

When like-minded people get the opportunity to work and interact together ranging from different companies and markets, the productivity growth rate reaches new heights. Serviced offices are serving creativity growth to companies. These communal spaces provide opportunities for workers to interact and share with other workers during their downtime. For small companies that can be a bonus to expand their business, which could have been out of reach with traditional office spaces.

Exposure to New Markets

Serviced offices are available in several locations globally, giving businesses a variety of locations to open their offices and start their business.

Meeting at serviced office

The Best of Both Worlds

With serviced offices, both small and large enterprises get everything they look for in a proper office environment, yet still retain that personalized touch that their employees have become used to over the last year or so by working from home. In short, serviced offices meet at the middle, having all of the strengths of both working environments and mitigate their lacking.