Need for new approach to offices – possibly ‘far fetched’

Even though the post-pandemic return to the office took place faster in the Nordics than elsewhere, there has still been a shift in attitude to the workplace according to Deas Group CEO Rikke Lykke.
“What we have seen is our biggest office space now is not really the office, but it’s the home office, so our residential buildings are coming into play in a totally different way,” Lykke said.
But she points out that employers in most countries are obliged to take responsibility for employee welfare wherever they put in a day’s work.
“Whether they work in a coffee shop, they work at home or they work in the office, are they sitting correctly? Do they have the right air? You’re still in charge of them for those eight or whatever hours they work a day.”
Furthermore, she added, studies show that when employees work more than three days a week at home their loyalty levels start to fall.
“So how do you keep them engaged and how do you make sure that they feel valued?” she added.
Lykke said it is important that employees are included in different services, but this soon becomes a large management burden and neither owners nor tenants want to take on the provision of a wide range of amenities to a dispersed workforce.
But Lykke said that the future of property management could be to become a platform for a multitude of partners in order to wrap this level of provision up as a single service, paid for on a single invoice.
“For some, it is a little bit far-fetched, but I think that is where we’re going to be in five years time.”

Click on the video to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.