The Power of Place - Offices after COVID-19

For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has defined our work and actions. One of the most important developments for our day-to-day work at ISG is the home office, which has now established itself as a permanent alternative to the fixed office workplace. Nevertheless, we will continue to dedicate the majority of our projects to office use. We believe that modern, user-oriented office space in good locations will continue to be in high demand. In our webinar series, "Offices after COVID-19", as part of our "The Power of Place" campaign, we will explore with our panel of experts the questions of what impact the pandemic will have on office design and market development, and how we will continue to manage to develop office space in a user-oriented way.

In the first part of the webinar series in March 2021, we discussed the results of our study "The Power of Place - Impact of the Corona Crisis on the World of Work" with industry experts, coming to the conclusion: employees want to return to the office. Offices as places for creative exchange are essential for identification with the company and promote creativity, productivity, and personal wellbeing. This was followed in May by the second webinar instalment, in which we were joined by a new panel of experts to address what offices need to look like so that employees are happy to return there after the pandemic.

Key learnings from the first two parts of the webinar series:

• The office lives on and experiences an evolutionary leap in the wake of the pandemic.
• Employees and young talent in particular need the office as a place for creative exchange and identification with the companym.
• Space conversion instead of downsizing: Investment in optimised office space is urgently needed.
• Offices are increasingly losing their purely functional character and are becoming corporate design worlds.
• A healthy atmosphere, efficient use of space and sustainable construction are just some of the requirements that will be placed on the workplace of the future.

The third and final part of the series, which takes place in September, we will explore how current developments will change our office landscapes in the long term. Entitled "New locations, new tenants? - Office landscapes 2030", we will take a look at possible changes in the geographical distribution of office space, and discuss the development of future tenant structures as well as the technical standard of an office property in 2030.

If you’d like to learn more about our webinar series and the first two parts – "Home office as competition - office spaces of the future" on March 31, 2021, and "Workplaces for the future - requirements for the post-Corona office" on May 19, 2021 – as well as our research, "The Power of Place", please click here.