A significant lesson learned by the commercial real estate landscape from the pandemic is that technology is a crucial and powerful tool enabling it to outshine in the contemporary digital age. The influx of baby boomers, millennials and Gen Z, who in a few years will make up a noteworthy percentile of the productive workforce, is proving to be yet another robust factor for the sector transformation. Hence, adopting futuristic and more agile ways of functioning supplemented by innovation has become a prerequisite.

As we gradually transit into the new normal, the below mentioned strategies for redefining the union between commercial set-up and end-user’s quality of life has become the need-of-the-hour:

The Future is Phygital - Physical and Digital

The conventional definition of a workplace has been altered since the acceleration of work digitalization. The outbreak has caused the line between physical and remote presence to become thinner than ever. This contemporary agile way of working necessitates a smart combination of virtual tools, enhanced skills acquisition and employee engagement. Phygital offices will thus prove to be an exceptional solution to the current organizational challenge of upholding the momentum of the new ways of working while remaining flexible and competitive. These omni-channel set-ups through their adaptable nature and capability to reconstruct a community among detached employees will help create a collaborative workplace experience. 

Two-way workspaces benefitting mixed presence teams

Hybrid teams often witness a gap in the contribution made by those in the physical workspace and those ‘calling in’.  The digital participants can feel excluded from the continuous workflow of the physical workplace, while those functioning in the office set-up may feel remote participants are less engaged. With a prime objective to fuse physical presence and remote work to form a unified organizational culture, Phygital spaces will define the user experience in the physical world by utilizing technology as an enabler. Through entailing a smart mishmash of digital tools, these inward-looking hybrid strategies have been premeditated keeping employee experience at the core. By offering a digital infrastructure, these spaces will congeal the organizations social and cultural fabric. Through the addition of a virtual layer to the build world, these hybrid spaces will offer forces with a new-age workplace experience. 

Technology emerging as a chief tool enabling the growth of phygital spaces

Technology has always been an interface that empowers us to plan for, network with, and improve services in a corporate space.  This might entail reducing touchpoints, monitoring usage, reducing uncertainty, upholding operations, or facilitating communications.  Switching to technical advancements like VR, AR, ML and AI will amplify organizations to acclimatize, develop and implement a phygital workplace strategy to build a smart and frictionless workforce. These spaces will further facilitate in creating a space-age and vibrant ‘work-live-play’ experience for the occupiers through exclusive amenities like unique QR entry code, face span detection, heat mapping for high-traffic areas, energy-saving features, smart sanitary wares, CCTV feed-based parking management, ample parking space with automatic number plate recognition, and advanced firefighting systems. In the upcoming years, these two-way spaces may well emerge as the only acceptable way to conduct much of our corporate life. 

Through cutting-edge office building technology, these new-age smart building ideas will come to life as a strategic differentiator for the overall commercial portfolio.