Post Pandemic Plans

What are companies planning to do?

Google, Adobe, and Dropbox all have one thing in common. They want their employees to return to work. Each company has come up with a different strategy, there is no longer a planned and tested procedure of how to act. Covid-19 took the liberty to throw those out the window. Each company has attempted to solve different issues of returning.

Google Builds a Post-Pandemic Workspace

Having employees on campus is a priority for google. They do understand that it is an adjustment to get back to campus, however, so they are trying to redesign what office life means for their employees. They are using the pandemic to rebuild their campus and use the new skills that the pandemic taught us to rethink office life. Currently they are operating on a hybrid model with employees returning to campus on a schedule to make sure their immediate desk neighbors aren’t there. The chief executive of their parent company, Alphabet, is considering the opportunity of hybrid work as a way to employ more employees without having to build more offices.

For covid safety, google has changed some of their signature benefits. Their shuttle busses are not currently running and the cafeteria and snacks have changed from buffet to individually packaged. They have also made an effort to create more sensor based equipment and turned small conference rooms to reservable work spaces.

Gen Z Team Pods

Google is trying out the idea of team pods inspired by their gen z employees. The small movable rooms have whiteboards, desks, and chairs and can be easily arranged to fit the team.

Outdoor Spaces

For some of their campuses, like their Mountain View, California campus, Google has converted parking lots with face grass and wooden decks to create an outside work space. It is fully equipped with open air tents, wifi, and chairs.

Flexible Office

Google wants to make an office that they can rearrange within a weekend. They would have fabric air ducts attached with zippers, movable walls, and personal air diffusers so employees can set the amount and direction air is flowing at them.

Adobe's Hybrid System

Adobe has put all their effort into researching an effective way to implement the hybrid method. Their goal is to permanently shift to the hybrid method. Again, they also want to re-imagine the employee experience and are attempting to implement the best of virtual and impersion office life.

For their artist employees, they have rethought their workflow to better accommodate their remote artists. They are dividing their bigger deliverables into smaller ones that they offer to the artists. Adobe has found that they get better work when they broke down their projects and let the artists choose which part they can do best. They have had to rethink their briefs for the artists, creating “bulletproof briefs”, attempting to answer any question the artist may have so they can get right to work on the project.

Dropbox Wants Collaboration

Dropbox is focussing on getting their employees to collaborate more efficiently. They foresaw that communication after being isolated so long would be harder, so they set up studio spaces for teams to collaborate. The spaces are separated sections with comfortable chairs in a circular pattern so teams can face each other. In order to further facilitate collaboration, but also keep the ability for employees to have freedom over their schedule, Dropbox is trying out central collaboration hours. They want their employees to be able to choose when to start and end their workday, but also to have them all on campus for a portion of the day.