Knoll CEO: The workspace is ‘on the brink of transformative change’

Andrew Cogan, Knoll CEO, joins Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous to discuss the future of the post-pandemic workplace.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: The pandemic has certainly changed the way we all think about the workplace. The design firm Knoll is out with a new survey that finds the traditional office is on the brink of transformative change. Joining me now to discuss those findings is Knoll CEO, Andrew Cogan. Andrew, good to see you here. So are the days of those open floor plans in the office long gone?

ANDREW COGAN: Well, listen, I think we are on, as we said, on the brink of transformative change. And we sense a very strong desire on our client's behalf and on their employees' to get back into the office. But I think the office we're going to go back to will not be the office that we left a little over a year ago. And I think that office, we believe, will have a lot more focus on collaboration and communication and less on the individual areas.

And when you think about it, you know, we've now gotten this habit-- into this habit of working from home. And so the office is really going to have to work harder to bring people back in and to attract employees back into the workplace. And we think that, long term, is great for our business, which is all about creating inspiring offices where people want to come to and be in.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I know you have some large blue chip clients. You've got Microsoft-- I believe Apple, Chase among them. What are they telling you? How are they planning the return to the office? And I mean, I would imagine a portion of their workforce is going to be hybrid or some, perhaps, all remote. So what are they telling you?

ANDREW COGAN: Yeah, well, I mean, we think the workplace ecosystem-- and it is going to be an ecosystem that will consist of both a portion of work that will happen at home. And maybe that's 10% to 20% of work now stays at home, or one to two days a week, a portion of your workforce is at home. But we think the bulk of the work will happen in office, and really, in-office collaboration. And that's what we're focused on. That's what we're hearing our clients want to do. There's no way to replicate the communication, collaboration, acculturation that happens in an office remotely. It's just not possible.

And while Zoom and everything has been wonderful to kind of get us through that-- the pandemic, I think it's really people are getting tired of working in this mode and are craving the collaboration that comes from being together. The challenge of onboarding employees in a virtual environment is meaningful and significant.

And so those headwinds are going to drive people back. And our sense is, as the vaccine is more broadly distributed over the course of the year, particularly as we kind of move from the summer into the fall of 2021, we'll see people come back. And then it will be one of those things where more people being in than being out will also drive, I think, further acceleration of the return to work curve. And what we're focusing on with our clients is, how do they design their workplaces now?

And change is always good for our business, such that they're ready for that return to work. And it started initially with screens and partitions and plexiglass, but now they're really getting into the meat of the problem, which is how do we design a space that facilitates collaboration, that allows people that are virtual and physical to work together, that gives maybe less individual space and more group space, all the things we really miss in an office. It's not the individual work. We can do that at home. We've proven that. It's the work we do together. And so, that's what we're increasingly working with some of these large tech and financial services, and really, a broad swath of clients, solving that problem.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to talk more about the idea of shared space. Because there was a time when I really wondered if we were going to have those areas in the office where you would congregate naturally for lunch around sort of the-- I don't know how many offices have water coolers anymore, but the idea that there are places where people can come together within the office, away from their workspace and their desk. What are your clients telling you about those spaces in their offices? And how are they going to build those out, going forward?

ANDREW COGAN: Well, I think those are going to be actually more important, not less important, going forward. And that, again, the reason you come to the office is to be together. It's not to sit in your pod or your cubicle and do your own thing. And so, I think what we're seeing in those areas is they may be a little more spacious. You know, we went through this period when office design was densifying. And you were just trying to jam more and more people.

And now, if you have one in five workers working from home-- and by the way, we have a wonderful digital, online e-commerce work-from-home business. So we've been able to meet that need as part of the ecosystem. But you'll have more space inside because you won't be jamming so many people in. And you'll create more spacious meeting rooms.

One of the things we're seeing is as opposed to being in a glass box that's all covered or a fixed conference room, we're seeing the desire for rooms that have more open air flow. We have a product called Rockwell workspaces, which is an architectural framework with an open ceiling and open sides that allows, really, for healthy airflow. We've got a series of partitions and screens that users can control to shape their space, create a kind of a digital, a background for virtual and in-person collaboration.

And so I think those areas, we think those areas are going to be more important. We're doing more in terms of outdoor furniture, so areas outdoor for people to hold meetings. Think about restaurants. Think about how restaurants have created areas like kind of pods inside a restaurant or outside on the street. That's very much the mentality. And actually, David Rockwell, who we work with, is a restaurant designer. So we're bringing some of that thinking into the workplace.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So, I guess, that's great news for companies that can do the outdoor space. In a dense city like New York, though, I'd imagine that that-- that they have to get a little more creative when it comes to making sure that air quality is good, that there is enough space for everybody who wants to come back physically to work.

ANDREW COGAN: Well, I think it's a little bit like 9/11. You know, after 9/11, we went through a whole series of protocols of what it was to come into an office building and the security and all that. And I think it will be the same measure with health checks and temperature checks and all that, with higher quality air circulating systems and things of that nature, more cleaning and sterilizing. But at the end of the day, when people are vaccinated, we'll be safe to collaborate.

And I think you're just not going to want to sit in an enclosed box or meeting room. And that's why this idea of taking these open plans, not filling them with individual cubicles per se, but filling them with free flowing open air areas for collaboration, you have some acoustic protection. We've got wonderful felt acoustic products you can drop into these areas. And so that allows you to be together and collaborate without, you know, the stuffy air that many people associate with an office.

So we think it's going to be, again, this mixture of areas. There will be individual areas that people will be able to come in and plop down at. But at the same time, I think it's going to be much more about what we crave in the office, which is our colleagues and our collaboration and our being together, and not being isolated at home like we've been for the past year.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, I think we can all relate to that, as we here at Yahoo Finance have been doing this remotely. Quite a feat, but we've been doing it remotely now--

ANDREW COGAN: Yeah, it's incredible.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: --for just about a year. We'd all like to get back to it. Andrew Cogan, we're all anxious to see what the workspace of the future holds. CEO of Knoll, thanks for being with us.