The conference room meetings have moved to virtual meetings, the long driving hours have moved to relentless staring at the laptop screens and the post office eating out to home-cooked food.

The coronavirus has shaken up the future of work. Looks like our lives have been paused for a while. The daily life of a city office goer, synonymous with bumper to bumper traffic, back to back meetings, and waiting for the weekend seems to have changed for good. The conference room meetings have moved to virtual meetings, the long driving hours have moved to relentless staring at the laptop screens and the post office eating out to home-cooked food.

It is no more a secret that Covid has stretched and pushed the modern professionals into an uncomfortable zone. With mental and physical disruptions to everyday life and we have been propelled into a new paradigm of work from which we may never return. Ability to work from any location, no more commuting, the abolishment of traditional 9-5 work parameters which people initially started enjoying is becoming a challenge to cope with. The top challenge faced by remote workers is ‘unplugging’ from work. Without the clear-cut change of location and defined office hours, many are having a tough time bifurcating their personal and professional space.

Another extremely challenging aspect of WFH for parents with young children is managing them; Along with the regular office work managing the kids’ online schools and the household chores becomes an added stress for both partners. Also, the lack of in-person communication became a pain point for many wherein the verbal and non-verbal behaviors are vital to successful understanding and collaboration among team members. For many businesses, the very nature of work does not allow for remote working; there are many jobs, that cannot be adequately completed in a domestic environment. Also, WFH also leads to bandwidth, network, and data security issues along with the inadequacy of space where there are multiple people working together.

With all these disadvantages of WFH, looks like a major section of the workforce cannot wait to get back to work but are skeptical about safety. They are looking for workplaces that can provide them with the peace of mind about their health and safety. Organizations across sectors with the active support of real estate developers are learning and implementing new technologies and processes to make the workplace safer.

Maintaining the highest level of hygiene, modification in seating arrangements to ensure the adequate social distance between employees, prompt medical assistance for employees are certain things organizations are making adequate arrangements for.

For the real estate sector, observing and meeting a company's own concern for the highest standards of safety and design is a requisite to invite the professional workforce back to commercial workspaces. This will require foresight on part of the sector to always meet and often exceed on demands like social distancing and crowd management practices to provide a safe and comfortable working environment to their tenants/customers.

Recognizing the positive impact that design can have towards purposeful development by keeping in the center the environment and people, will reap multiple benefits for the real estate industry. Therefore, at this juncture of a Covid-19 afflicted environment, all developments need to be complemented with meticulous landscaping to create less density and naturally bringing in the concept of social distancing, which is the need of the hour and will remain so for a very long time in the coming future.

To adhere to social distancing rules, office buildings should be equipped to offer facilities for virtual meetings, advanced touch-free visitor management systems, online checklists and many more such innovations to minimize touch. Also, equipping developments with HVAC systems with advanced filtration process to remove fine dust particles from the air to ensure a dust and virus free environment at workplaces is a must.

Safety being the top-most priority, it is imperative for 21st Century developments to constantly innovate to provide a pleasant experience to existing and prospective partners.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house