Get used to seeing more of your colleagues at home in Lycra and expect a future office featuring collaboration hubs, yoga and a focus on culture and ideation sessions in an environment very different to the past.

“Widget counting” and other transactional tasks will be done at home and offices will be a place employees want to “come in and connect and thrive”.

That’s the message from an expert panel at a webinar moderated by Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) COO Kylie Macfarlane discussing "The Future of Workplace Experience in the Insurance Sector in Australia".

Panellist Bernadette Holloway, IAG’s Executive Manager of Property, revealed the insurer is now planning for post-COVID occupancy on a10/30/60 basis –10% of employees always in the office, 30% permanently at home and 60% adopting a hybrid office-home working lifestyle.

“That is our occupancy planning and from a corporate office block perspective, this represents a 40% drop in IAG‘s portfolio,” said Ms Holloway, who joined IAG three months before COVID struck and developed a property plan for the heavyweight general insurer which was abruptly “thrown in the bin” as events overtook it.

The IAG property team then undertook extensive staff workplace surveys to find out “what drives them, what annoys them,” and crunched data such as swipe card use to evaluate movement around offices.

It is now rolling out a “dynamic” working style which fosters “rituals and meaning” for those coming back to the office, giving genuine “purpose and intent” to office visits, not an auto pilot commute.

“Ultimately what the surveys spat out is that the way that the office functions today, the way that they are designed, does not work in a way that we want to work moving forward,” Ms Holloway said.

The panel agreed acceptance of a hybrid home-office work model, facilitated by technology, has for the first time dramatically levelled the playing field for regional residents outside city hubs, and for workers with a disability.

“Sometimes commuting into offices is really challenging so there are some exciting things that I hope will continue to evolve as we move through our new normal,” Ms Holloway said, adding the future workplace must always assume at least one remote participant, and consider how to best to support that within the office space.

AIA local CEO Damien Mu agreed a positive to come out of COVID was to open up a broader employment landscape for people around regional Australia.

Organisations now need to consider how to serve both in office and at-home employees at the same time, for example yoga and meditation workshops would need to cater to both groups.

“It really is a complex scenario around inclusivity because you are not going to have everyone coming in on the same days. We have now created that opportunity but we have also got to deal to that,” he said.

See Analysis.