Purpose

Triggered by public concerns over office workplace safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study sheds light on the office workplace environment and aims to investigate how organisations respond to forces from the external environment (impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic) and how they modify their office workplace management strategically and operationally to suit the stakeholders’ needs and future development in the post COVID-19 period.

Design/methodology/approach

A desktop study was conducted to provide the framework for the in-depth interviews with five corporate real estate (CRE) managers and three workplace consultants. Thematic analysis including coding technique was adopted to analyse the qualitative data.

Findings

The findings show that during the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the intended and implemented office workplace modifications are mainly related to two types of risk control: administrative control and personal protection. At a strategic level, organisations react to the external forces by re-modelling their businesses and working towards re-orienting their CRE strategies, such as portfolio transformation, agile portfolio strategies and redesign of the office workplace, etc.

Originality/value

This is a topical and timely study that presents the general practice of office workplace modification during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the related CRE management (CREM) strategies developed for the new normal. The findings obtained through in-depth interviews have well supported the CREM strategic alignment theory. It is foreseen that office workplace management will encounter other challenges due to uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study provide a practical lens to look at the future changes of office workplace environment.

中文翻译：

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荷兰 COVID-19 大流行期间办公室工作场所改造的研究

目的

由公众对 COVID-19 大流行期间办公室工作场所安全的担忧引发，本研究阐明了办公室工作场所环境，旨在调查组织如何应对来自外部环境（受 COVID-19 大流行影响）的力量以及它们如何改变他们的办公室工作场所管理战略和运营，以满足利益相关者的需求和 COVID-19 后时期的未来发展。

设计/方法/方法

进行了一项桌面研究，为与五位企业房地产 (CRE) 经理和三位工作场所顾问的深入访谈提供框架。采用包括编码技术的专题分析来分析定性数据。

发现

调查结果表明，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，大部分有意和已实施的办公场所改造主要与两类风险控制有关：行政控制和个人保护。在战略层面，组织通过重塑业务和努力重新定位其 CRE 战略来应对外部力量，例如投资组合转型、敏捷投资组合战略和办公场所的重新设计等。

原创性/价值

这是一项及时的专题研究，介绍了 COVID-19 大流行期间办公室工作场所改造的一般做法，以及为新常态制定的相关 CRE 管理 (CREM) 策略。通过深度访谈获得的调查结果很好地支持了 CREM 战略调整理论。可以预见，由于 COVID-19 大流行的不确定性，办公场所管理将面临其他挑战。这项研究的结果提供了一个实用的视角来观察办公室工作环境的未来变化。