Organizations around the world are now navigating a new, somewhat daunting task – how to bring employees back to the in-person workplace in ways that are safe, effective and accommodating. While it may not look the same everywhere, leading organizations are leaning into this transition by building in more flexibility and people-centric design into their workplaces. This focus is readying them to remain agile and resilient, no matter what the future brings.

Our global workplace advisory practice lead, Kelly Bacon, and workplace advisory design strategist, Nick Busalacchi, share four key points that every employer must consider in the months ahead.

Purpose-driven spaces

Changes to corporate culture and strategic investments in worker mobility have provided more flexibility for employees to work when and where they want, with many major organizations embracing hybrid work models in which employees can spend part or most of their time untethered from the physical office. This has generated a need to design diverse spaces that are better tailored to the activities workers need to perform. This means incorporating workstations and mobile technologies into the office setting that support workers’ ability to “plug-and-play”; workplaces that optimize collaboration and interaction; and regions that enable workers to move more freely among the spaces outside of the office where they can work, live and play most effectively. In our Sydney office, which is currently undergoing a major refurbishment, an entire floor will be dedicated to fostering collaboration and connection with our clients and each other — all anchored by technology. What’s more, we are aligning the office with our ESG commitments by using recycled furniture and selling excess office equipment, proving that creating purpose-driven spaces does not mean creating unnecessary waste.  

Driving social and environmental value

An indicator of a well-performing workplace is more than just the cost of space per person. Organizations that create truly successful workplaces focus on putting their employees’ needs first to generate positive returns for their company and the community. They are designing workplaces and organizational cultures with wellness in mind, including promoting greater worker flexibility, delivering workplaces that rank high in environmental quality, and extending investments into surrounding communities. The emergence of certification programs such as WELL, more comprehensive knowledge about human behavior, and tech solutions that monitor workplace performance in real-time have made wellness a central component of leading organizations’ workplace strategies.

In addition, investments in “smarter” buildings have made it easier than ever to track performance on factors such as interior environmental quality, workplace utilization, and facility sustainability. Leaders in this space are pairing this data with a sophisticated understanding of their occupants’ needs, enabling them to drive triple bottom line returns.

Organizational resilience

Smart organizations are re-orienting their cultures and their spaces to be more adaptable and resilient toward predicted or unforeseen challenges that the future may bring. These organizations are examining the way they function, working to incorporate agility into their day to day and year over year operations. Nearly 28 percent of large employers are targeting significant footprint changes in the next five years, with another 43 percent undecided.* They are doing so by encouraging greater flexibility for when and where their employees work; re-balancing their real estate portfolios to be more agile to social and economic change; and investing in spaces and systems that drive their missions, while shedding or re-purposing any excess. There is not a one-size-fits-all method or solution—leading organizations are making themselves ‘fit for the future’ by better aligning their businesses with new opportunities for agility.

Enabling systems

The way we work is not only tied to our workplaces, but also to the complex ecosystem of infrastructure networks and cultures that enable and support work and the work environment. Our evolving work structure has driven new demand in areas like transportation and utility systems, which both require a stronger focus on being more robust and adaptable. For example, the re-distribution of commuters across space and time has put new stresses on transit networks, and secure, high-speed telecommunications infrastructure has become an essential component of our increasingly mobile workforce. Regions and organizations that excel in these areas are making strategic investments in enabling infrastructure to support these demands, preparing themselves for future changes and responsibly enhancing experiences in the built environment.

In our increasingly unpredictable world, staying agile in the face of uncertainty will be the key to business success and longevity. This agility begins with a people-centered approach to workplace design and portfolio rebalancing. Organizations that embrace this approach will drive value across profit, people and planet, and create workplace investments that are fit for the future.

Read more about ArchTam’s Future of Work initiative here.

*Mercer LLC.

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Wu writes: “Imagine that two people are carving a six-foot slab of wood at the same time. One is using a hand-chisel, the other, a chainsaw. If you are interested in the future of that slab, whom would you watch?”

The above scenario suggests that biological evolution (the chisel) is replaced by technological evolution (the chainsaw) as the main driver of redefining what it means to be human (the slab of wood). The reason for this being, “the devices we use change the way we live much faster than any contest among genes.” Using the Oji-Cree, an indigenous people of North America, as an example, Wu’s article illustrates how technology can redefine a population.  

The Oji-Cree traditionally led a relatively simple life that was full of exercise, rivalling that of professional athletes. A lot of this was just to survive; from sleeping in tents/cabins, using dog sleds/canoes for transport and hunting for food.

After the 1960s, modern technologies (e.g. internal combustion engine, electricity) were introduced as trucks began making the trip north, and “the Oji–Cree eagerly embraced these new tools. In our lingo, we might say that they went through a rapid evolution, advancing through hundreds of years of technology in just a few decades.” Life became more comfortable as food was easily imported and stored, travelling became less laborious, using motor boats and snow mobiles, and sweets, alcohol and TV were increasingly enjoyed.

“The problem with technological evolution is that it is under our control and, unfortunately, we don’t always make the best decisions,” writes Wu.

With the good came the bad – in just a short time from the arrival of new technologies, massive increases in health and social problems occurred, ranging from morbid obesity and heart disease to idleness and suicide.

Biological evolution is driven by what is needed for the survival and reproduction of a species. Technological evolution, however, is driven by what we want and how easily it comes, and technological evolution is faster than biological evolution at changing the way people live, just as the chainsaw is faster than the chisel at carving a slab wood. The Oji-Cree way of living changed at a rate quicker than their ability to effectively adapt.

Wu wonders: “Will that type of evolution take us in desirable directions, as we usually assume biological evolution does?”

Technology has allowed the world to connect – it has allowed for more efficiency and a greater outreach onto the global market as the world becomes more accessible. For employees, technology gives the possibility of a more flexible working environment, allowing people to work anywhere but still be connected to colleagues. For us designers, it has allowed for more streamlined workflows, through software such as AutoCAD and Revit, which improve project delivery and allow us to work together more effectively.

However, just as with the Oji-Cree, technology can allow things to change quickly, easily and without being questioned. For instance, in the world of social media, applications like Facebook and Instagram can be useful platforms to become digitally connected to the world, enabling connections with old friends, finding out about new things and places, and keeping up to date with current affairs; all from the comfort of your chair.

The problem is that as the world becomes more connected digitally, it may become more disconnected physically. People have become more and more fascinated with updating their Facebook status and following the lives of C-list celebrities getting paid to stay in a house or a jungle. The real/personal experience of being somewhere, being with people, trying new things, is somewhat displaced by the fantasy/distant experience provided by technology. Without that personal input, all you are interacting with is a screen.

I have experienced the tense atmosphere of a title-defining premier league match; the deeply affecting feeling of walking through the Jewish Museum in Berlin; the frenzy of seeing The Prodigy play live. Would you get the same feeling/experience using a screen? I think not.

In the office, instant messaging (such as Lync or Jabber) can be a useful tool to connect instantly with colleagues, particularly when you’re not sure if they want to be disturbed. However, when the person you are contacting is sat very near you, this can add a feeling of distance to your communications. It is easy to let it make you increasingly reluctant to bother with a face-to-face conversation, and I believe we are all, at least occasionally, guilty of this (myself included).

And don’t get me started with Pokemon Go – I must save that for another post.

Wu concludes: “The technology industry, which does so much to define us, has a duty to cater to our more complete selves rather than just our narrow interests. It has both the opportunity and the means to reach for something higher. And, as consumers, we should remember that our collective demands drive our destiny as a species, and define the posthuman condition.”

Reflecting on this in relation to the workplace, the technology available to us should be the means to push the boundaries of what can be achieved. But perhaps it is up to us, the users, to question the current thinking of what is and use the technology to define what could be.

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There are various reasons for the current interest in these areas: the increasing number of people losing work days to mental illness, demographic change, and the lack of exercise for people with desk jobs, to name a few. The discussion is all over the place – every week there are new articles and surveys published. Independent of location, there is one thing that people strongly agree on: the issue of wellbeing must be addressed in order to stay competitive and survive the war for talent.

Considering the possible effects of this, one could easily imagine workplace environments starting to look like wellness clinics – oases of relaxation and calmness. But the truth is, aside from all the talking, not much has happened so far in general. There are a few ideas that have been implemented, but we saw many of them fail in reaching their goal to change employees’ behavior in the long run (for example: free gym contracts, which tend, especially when flexible working is not an option, to be taken up mainly by people who were already using the gym anyway). Where is the big game changer everybody is waiting for?

In recent projects, my team and I have been asked several times by employees’ and workers’ councils about the possibilities to increase health and wellbeing in modern workplace environments. From these discussions, the idea arose of working more closely with the client’s health management department – adding someone responsible for health issues to the project team at an early stage in the project. This practice has already become standard with experts from the IT and HR departments. This action would provide a great chance to implement health and wellbeing measures early on in the change process.

As we know from experience, change in the workplace has a huge impact on the users – whenever we change the environment we also change the way people work. To guide them through the process, we conduct various change management activities with the employees, change agents and leadership, potentially including interviews, focus groups, surveys, workshops and trainings. We focus on the company’s culture and we work with people on the way they think, feel and behave in regard to change – to make the concept work long-term. A change management process this wide-reaching could be something most health/wellbeing implementations are missing. And that is where we see the potential.

To share these ideas with clients and friends we conducted a Think & Drink event in our Munich office in August. Getting the discussion started was guest speaker Wolfgang Pauck, CEO of Healthcare One, who talked about the implementation of their Health Lounge: a combination of measures for social interaction, relaxation and exercise as part of a workplace environment. I really like the idea of the lounge, and whilst I don’t think it will, on its own, solve all the issues at hand, I can easily imagine it as part of future office concepts. It makes health and wellbeing more accessible to people who are not very “sporty” (which is probably the majority of us!) and also represents a very visible, hands-on step by an organisation to prioritise health and wellbeing. Our guests at the event were fascinated with the idea, and how it would be implemented, even more so with the lounge itself – some even tested out the “plate one” unit then and there!

Mr. Pauck’s experience of the implementation of the Health Lounge echoed themes we know well – that the most important factors for a long-lasting change of the employee’s behaviour are to generate enthusiasm at the beginning and to personally involve people in the process over time.

What is your opinion? Do we need workplaces to work harder to foster health and wellbeing? And what can we do to make things last?

Matthias Kollmer (Matthias.kollmer@archtam.com) is a consultant with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Munich.

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I recently wrote a soon-to-be-published article for iCroner that outlined the “Journey of Leadership in the Workplace”, defining the skills a leader would need in 10 years to lead and manage in a more consumer-type workplace, as defined by the ArchTam workplace research. I argued that leaders would need to be able to redefine boundaries and rules, and ensure that they are established throughout the social context. They will need to have a high level of emotional intelligence, demonstrate benevolence towards others, have the intellectual capability to get the job done, and the ability to communicate messages consistently and frequently, so that staff are fully aware of what is expected of them, including the requirement to interact with, and be an active member of the organisation in a consumer-like manner.

With these ideas fresh in my head, I then went to the ballet to see “Cubania” with Carlos Acosta. You may think what does this have to do with leadership and the workplace?,  but I saw pushing, challenging and working within boundaries. Metal bars signified a box on stage and, one by one, each dancer would enter the box, dance, then step out of the box and watch the others do the same, until eventually they all danced in the box: sometimes in sync with one another, sometimes complementing one another, and sometimes dancing their own dance whilst still in the box with the others.

Inspiration struck, and I started to think that, just like in this dance, in the workplace leaders and teams watch each other, are sometimes in sync, sometimes complementary and sometimes doing their own task. For the future workplace, I started to think that leaders and managers may not only need to look to define boundaries from a task perspective, but also in a behavioural and personality arena.

Most leaders, managers and staff members have a “work face” that they put on. When they go home, they put on their “home face”. Cynically, this is thought of as people being two-faced; in a business arena, as being professional, or rather showing professionalism at work. In the future, if (as I argue in my article) we will need a more holistic leadership style, then we will need to interact with the whole person – more than just the “work face”.

So what does that mean? Expectations will change and we will need to accept that we are interacting not just with part of a person, but the whole person – and that means that leaders will need to lead and manage the whole person. A person cannot always be professional, so this will mean we need to be able to manage emotion. I don’t mean our own emotion, in the sense that we hide it – exactly the opposite. We will need to learn how to cope when someone is emotional. What will we do when someone cries? Will we pretend it is not happening, which tends to happen now? What happens when someone shouts? Will we run away and hide? Bury our head? Or face it head on?

How we deal with emotion in our personal lives now will transpire into the workplace as both places meld into one. The expectation of “professional” will actually disappear, as no one person will always be professional.

And so back to that dance – sometimes we will be in sync with one another, sometimes we will complement each other and sometimes we will be doing our own dance. Whatever the case may be, we will need to accept, adapt and cope with these new emotional boundaries.

Jennifer Bryan (jennifer.bryan@archtam.com) is head of organisational development within ArchTam’s Consultancy practice.

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How much do most of us move at work? In some offices, you can get the impression of being surrounded by zombies! The average adult can sit for up to 11.5 hours a day, with most of this time in the office – back bent, perhaps chair not set properly – and the only reason to move to go to the printer – if we do not have one beside our desk. Not to mention our uncomfortable office clothes, in which we must be careful not to be too active.

The consequences? Lower back pain, disc prolapse, gastro-intestinal problems, obesity and, ultimately, sick and absent employees. According to the Integrated Benefits Institute, US workforce illness costs $576bn annually, due to sickness absence and workers’ compensation. It seems reasonable to assume that a not inconsiderable percentage of these absences and illnesses could be linked to the consequences of sitting too much. Another study in the American Journal of Epidemiology even proved that the death rate among people who sit more than six hours a day is about 30% higher than those who sit for about three hours a day.

If we were not sitting so much, we would live longer and be healthier, and employers would benefit from reduced sickness and absence. So how can we get out of the habit of being stationery?

In one attempt to do just this, American journalist Dan Kois thought it would be better to stand all day instead of sitting, and tried completing all his office work standing for one month. His conclusion: “We are not used to standing anymore” – he did not feel better, but suffered new, different complaints – so standing all day seems to be no better than sitting.

What else can we do? Furniture suppliers have introduced plenty of products to the market, meant to prevent office workers from sitting in the same position all day, for example, the famous “Pezzi Ball” or the “Swopper”. One of the latest developments is the “Limbic Chair”, designed to encourage more movement. What remains to be seen is whether these products may enhance the possibility of accidents at work.

What we think, is that all this only fights the symptoms, not the causes, of us being Office Zombies. We need to change our entire attitude and behaviours. We need to reconsider physical movement at the workplace: away with printers at desks, away with lunch delivery services! We should change positions and spaces and stand up more often, ask ourselves if it’s really necessary to do all of our tasks sitting on a chair. What about a standing meeting, or a meeting while taking a walk? What about using the stairs instead of the elevator? After all, many offices have introduced Non-Territorial Working, where the nature of the task determines where you do it. If you have to focus on a difficult task, move and go to a quiet zone. If you have a creative meeting, move and go to an informal meeting area. Non-territorial working helps to hold us back from spending all day in the same position. This is a good start – but we can do more. How can we motivate people to use staircases – what does a staircase have to offer to make us go there? What new technologies might help us use the full potential of non-territorial working?

There is definitely a lot more we can do, and a long way to go. While I’m working right now (non-territorially) I am – what do you think? – sitting! What else? I am on a train, returning from meeting a client. It can seem as if the whole world is forcing us to sit all the time, whether we like it or not.

Did this make you jump up from your chair? Please tell us your story!

Anna Felkel (anna.felkel@archtam.com) and Jennifer Gunkel (jennifer.gunkel@archtam.com) are consultants with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Munich.

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What is the one thing you’d like to do before you die? Candy Chang – artist, designer and urban planner – lost an important person in her life, and her grief led her to ask this question of the public as part of an installation on an abandoned house in her hometown of New Orleans. The public response ranged from answers hand-written on the house, and feedback on photos shared by Chang online, to replica installations in cities all around the world. Chang recently shared her experience at the Sydney Vivid Festival of Ideas, one of a number of events attended by the Strategy Plus team.

Chang also spoke about how she had been guided into her field through what she called ‘creating your own discipline’, the bringing together of a person’s unique skills and interests to provide a distinctive offering. Chang’s work uniquely connects public spaces with her identity and sense of self, and unashamedly expresses personal aspects of her character and life experience. Chang frequently referred to Jung’s process of ‘individuation’, or discovering one’s true self, as a guiding factor in her work.

Personal identity is often suppressed in the workplace in favour of corporate brand, with work-specific clothing, focus on ‘objective’ interactions, and bland – and often sterile – office environments. Recent years, however, have seen our professional and personal lives increasingly blend together. In our Strategy Plus practice, we increasingly see people seeking opportunities to create their own disciplines through bringing personal interests into their work.

A common example of this blending is the rise in social media use – people are willing to publish personal and professional information on the same blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram account. Another is the prevalence of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), where people can use their chosen device for both business and personal use.

Organisations are increasingly recognising the benefits of having a workforce empowered to bring their authentic selves to work, illustrated by the rise of community managers in the workplace. A deliberate approach to community management in the workplace is becoming even more important with distributed and agile workforces.

The personal experience of work was a common theme in some of the other Vivid talks in Sydney. In Scoring in the Workplace: Curating the ultimate workspace experience, Gauri Bhalla from the UTS Business School spoke about how important it is for workplaces to promote personal authenticity and expression of identity through  providing increased flexibility.

GPT’s Sam Nickless, in The Big (SHIFT) to Smarter Working, articulated the value of internal social media as a key tool for building community in the workplace and breaking down hierarchies by democratising the flow of information. Workplace connections are now created through both business and social imperatives.

The divide between the personal and the professional elements of identity has been further disintegrated in a residential and mixed-use building recently designed for Antwerp by architects C.F. Møller & Brut. The concept is for a built environment which reinforces the blend between residential and office environments, and a key feature of the building is a rooftop terrace where both residents and workers can mingle.

Image: C.F. Møller & Brut

Rather than work crossing the boundary into personal life, there are more opportunities for people to bring their authentic selves into the workplace. Increased flexibility allows for customisation of the workplace to suit individual needs or desires, and environments where ad-hoc encounters and increased interactions are encouraged provides further opportunities for meaningful personal contributions.

Do you feel as though you are empowered to bring your authentic self to work, and if so, how do you do this?

Are you going to share this blog on your personal or professional social media accounts?

Monica McClure (monica.mclure@archtam.com) is a consultant with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Sydney, and makes friends at work by sharing her fancy tea collection. If you’re not close enough for a cup of tea, you can still connect with Monica on LinkedIn or by email.

This blog was co-written with Monica’s tea buddies Aurora Braddon and Charlotte Fliegner, also consultants with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Sydney.

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The Re-con Man is reconstituting (or perhaps more simply re-defining) what it means to be masculine and male. As “women get an even footing with men in terms of education and income, a generation will have to re-adjust,”believes David Autor, associate department head of MIT’s Department of Economics

Image courtesy of LS:N Global.

The Re-con Man is more comfortable with his home life and defines himself as much by his role as a father as by his career or job title. He embraces simplicity and back-to-basics values. He’s drawn to a more democratic, consensual workplace instead of traditional hierarchical male models. He responds less to celebrity hype, prioritising mate-ship and looking up to friends and local heroes thanks to social media and peer-to-peer culture.

The Athena Woman meanwhile is educated, confident, active and optimistic. She will rise to the top of her company, or start her own. She embraces community, both online and offline. She expects her partner to be her equal at home and work, and has more choice in how and when she starts a family. She wants to be spoken to not as a woman but as an individual. She keeps a busy lifestyle, and places increasing importance on fitness and wellbeing, with success increasingly meaning health and happiness.

Image courtesy of Adidas / LS:N Global.

So what can we learn from the Athena Woman and Re-con Man? They don’t really paint a picture of who people are or will be, but rather of what people across generations might aspire to be in the near future. This is useful in the context of understanding what might attract and inspire people to work, so our workplaces need to quickly respond to the concept of the Athena Woman and Re-con Man in the following ways:

• prioritising health, fitness and wellbeing at work;
• celebrating real-time and relatable success stories of peers (local heroes);
• de-coupling flexible working from motherhood;
• pulling the plug on gender stereotypes (as they’re becoming less relevant to both sexes).

As Chris Sanderson from The Future Laboratory started to describe Generation I (defined as being born after 2002) – potentially the offspring of our Athena Woman and Re-con Man – I started to see more of an insight into what the future workforce may be, and what it may demand from its various places of work.

As a generation born of “Sharents” (in Britain, 77 percent of parents upload photos of their children to social networks), the Generation I will crave experiences that allow them to be the stars of the show and curate how others see their lives. At work, how do we allow individual stories and personalities to be expressed physically and virtually? Do we provide the infrastructure, or just allow the flexibility for individuals to own and create this for themselves?

Image courtesy of LS:N Global.

Generation I won’t be passengers of the digital environment; they will want to get their digital hands dirty by messing around with the building blocks, so organisations need to allow them to code and hack. They are also used to accessing the latest technologies, and fast. What does this mean for corporate IT systems, or standard-issue technology kit? Balancing digital security and fast access to new technologies and applications will be the challenge here.

Personalised, non-linear experiences are the norm, so the employee experience at work should also be experimental, immersive and responsive to personal needs (using an ever-expanding base of data). And with this focus on personalisation and individuality, we need to stop designing environments that assume everyone functions the same way, and start creating those that let individual talents emerge and flourish.

As a member of Gen Y, I look forward to grappling with the challenges that will come with managing this next group of young upstarts! And importantly, I’m excited by the ways they expect to be able to work will influence the ways and places we work across the entire multi-generational workforce.

What do you think?

Allison Webb is a senior consultant in ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice.

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