Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi and Alexis Christoforous discuss what how the typical office space could change due to COVID-19 with Meredith Essery, Co-founder of had.collective.
Video Transcript
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: We have been broadcasting to you from our homes for a little over a month now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But like many of you, sooner or later, we're going to have to step back into the office. But just what is that office going to look like?
Joining us now to discuss is Meredith Essery co-founder of had.collective, which designs office spaces. Meredith it's so good to have you here. We've all been talking about this offline to, you know, when are we going to go back. And then when we do, what's our life going to be like? Give us an idea as to what those plans might look like.
MEREDITH ESSERY: Absolutely. So good morning first of all. Thank you for having me. The topic of what the office landscape is going to look like has been coming up in quite a bit of news and also just conversations through my-- my industry really through these last few months. So the space of business that we work in is we help decision makers, kind of guide them through the best workplace design practices for their businesses when they're in growth and transition. And it's a really unique time for companies like mine because there's a little bit of an unanticipated need for our services.
So some of the things that I think that are important to focus on is that it's going to change in three different stages, right? So we're going to have the immediate need and the now we'll call that. And then we'll have, you know, the next step, which will be maybe the near. And we'll describe that. And then the far changes that we can expect, which will be further down the line--
So some of the first ones that we can anticipate in terms of the now are working with existing products that we have, so our existing layouts. When we return to the office, if we had previously been in an open floor plan, obviously employees-- that's not the kind of environment they're going to feel comfortable returning to. So there's ways that we can work around existing products to stagger employees for the first stage. Obviously, there'll be phased introductions of employees coming back into the office and then the addition of products like plexiglass divider screens, sneeze guards, reconfiguration of these existing workstations, and obviously a stop use of the collaborative areas and the conference room.
BRIAN SOZZI: So Meredith, in your opinion, what you're hearing from folks, do you think the 8-foot tall office cubicle will be back in force?