Breather Insights

The 4 biggest workplace trends for the 2020s

With 2020, we welcome a new year and a new decade. The 2010s brought major innovations into the workplace like lightweight, portable laptops, which enabled remote work to happen from just about anywhere, at any time. Of course, smartphones and ubiquitous, high-speed internet  revolutionized seamless communication and put the world at the palm of our hands. 

As the way we work changed, so did the spaces in which we worked. In the later part of the 2010s, open floor plan office spaces became the norm. Coworking and flexible workspaces have become the go-to for startups and rapidly expanding businesses that need nimble space without restrictive terms. And when it comes to design, offices must be suitable for focused work, meetings, presentations, and more. Looking at the intersection of real estate and tech, we've highlighted key trends — and turned to industry thought leaders — to predict what's to come in 2020 and beyond.

Flexible office is here to stay

We started here at Breather, sitting down with our CEO Bryan Murphy to get his take on what’s ahead for the commercial real estate category. For Murphy, flex office and coworking were top of mind, following WeWork's challenged IPO in late 2019.

"2020 will be another record-setting year as awareness of flexible workspace continues to increase and become accepted by the mainstream. Flex office is continuing to drive an industry-wide transformation," Murphy said. "The value proposition of a flexible office is so powerful to both growth stage and enterprise companies. Every company that expects to have dynamic head count should be considering it. Traditional leases sit on your balance sheet and require capital and resources for furnishing, IT, and electrical — this is simply not an efficient use of capital."

Murphy thinks this shift from long-term leases to flexible workspaces will have a significant effect on the industry as awareness grows. 

"I think we'll see a lot more collaboration between flexible workspace providers and landlords as flexible workspace increases from 2% to 30% of the multi-trillion dollar real estate industry," he said.

And as the flexible office trend ramps up, other trends that were prominent through the 2010s will see a decline.

Emphasis on productivity over office "perks"

People come to work to get a job done. It sounds simple, blunt perhaps, but it's true. Anja Jamrozik, Ph.D. and behavior scientist with a focus on workplace trends, predicts that in 2020, office culture will abandon the lavish "perks" that have previously been leveraged as a recruitment tactic.

"Socializing and bonding with coworkers are important parts of the job, but office workers are often too busy to use those 'fun' amenities — like nap pods, beer on top, or ping pong tables. More often than not, these 'perks' become noisy distractions that keep people at work for longer than they need to be," Jamrozik explained. "That time spent socializing in the office could be better spent elsewhere — recharging with friends and family, preparing for the next day at home, or pursuing non-work related hobbies."

And with literal flashing lights on their way out, a major workplace trend in 2020 will be the "employee experience," as author and futurist Jacob Morgan wrote for Inc. While Morgan writes that the "employee experience" can be broken down into the three pillars of culture, tech, and environment. Going further, he explained that it means "creating an organization where people want to show up."

Using space and tech as a workplace solution

With a rededicated focus on work during the 9-5, Jamrozik suggested that space as a vehicle for productivity will become popular in the new decade.

Amenities that Jamrozik said were previously considered luxuries — think: big window panes that allow for lots of natural light, ergonomic furniture, and built-in tech capabilities — are becoming givens in a working environment.

Of these new fundamentals, Jamrozik predicted that the biggest productivity-focused trend to take precedent in 2020 will be the technology that eliminates distractions. She considers the biggest distraction of all multitasking, which cuts focus and efficiency by as much as 40%.

"Technology solutions and environmental nudges could help workers combat distractions, allowing them to unitask without using valuable energy to exercise self-control," she said. "Imagine being in a 'focus room' where the light, sound, and temperature automatically adjusts to your liking when you enter it, with a large computer display and desk that adjusts itself to your height, and that shuts off all digital notifications and distractions when you enter."

Indeed, environment can play a big role in a workday — and productivity. Maybe you're immersing yourself in a distraction-free zone or perhaps you've found that you do your best brainstorming among the ambient sound at your local coffee shop. But one thing's for sure: In 2020, employees and workforces will deviate from traditional offices.

Workforces will be distributed 

Using an environment as a tool for focus was previously seen as a luxury reserved for the likes of billionaires like Bill Gates, who would take annual solo retreats called "think weeks" during which he would travel to a remote cabin and brainstorm.

While jetting off to a remote location isn't the most accessible tool, distributed teams will become more normalized in 2020 and they'll need to use their space wisely, Jamrozik predicted. About 5.2% of Americans work from home, according to 2017 data released from the US Census.

Jamrozik said that companies will take distributed workforces into account, placing emphasis on making the home office feel like the traditional office. 

"As more people are part of distributed teams working from home, home office design will become more important," Jamrozik said. "It's likely that the environmental solutions proposed for traditional office spaces applied to home offices as well."

And while regular communication with messaging apps and video chats certainly helps keep remote workers aligned and on-task, Jamrozik noted there's no substitute for in-person collaboration.

Instead, she predicted that companies will take a cue from Bill Gates — on a budget that is. The way Jamrozik sees it, distributed teams might regroup for a few days out of the year for a team retreat at a third-party location.

In between meetings, Jamrozik proposed that team members will also have access to a network of workspaces, like Breathers, for events like client meetings when traveling, or to gather smaller subsets of coworkers who live closer together.

After all, screen-sharing on a monitor from miles away isn't the same as working through a problem together on a whiteboard.

Photo Credits: Breather x Nobl / Featured Breather offsite location: 1 Dufferin Street in London