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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These people thrive on challenges and draw energy from environments that allow them to learn. The early cohorts of digital natives are now graduating from schools where personalised learning has been integrated into the curriculum. They expect to be an active participant, not a passive observer.

The transformation in our schools is being played out in our workplaces. Technology is shifting both the means of work and the relationships that manage it. Knowledge-based processes are increasingly automated or outsourced. Hierarchies are being routed by networks.

According to a 2013 paper by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, two Oxford University researchers, 47% of all jobs are likely to be replaced by a computer – not just factory work, but any process governed by an algorithm of rules where best practices can be identified.

What’s left for us humans is arguably the more interesting stuff that relies on higher-order thinking, collaboration, innovation and relationships. These are the qualities that people bring that robots aren’t so good at – interactivity, emotional intelligence, flexibility, quirkiness.

They’re all qualities found in the growing companies that we most admire.

In Australia, the poster child for such progressive, human-led but technology-enabled companies is software development company Atlassian – a company that is on the verge of an IPO that would see the two 34-year-old co-CEOs valued at over A$1b each. The success of this company is founded on a set of values targeted squarely at the new world of work:

1. Open Company, No Bullshit
2. Build with Heart and Balance
3. Don’t #@!% the Customer
4. Play, as a Team
5. Be the Change you Seek

Both Deloitte’s passionate people and many prospective Atlassian staffers “may struggle with clearly defined roles, organisational silos, and predictability”. Seely Brown and Hagel argue that organisations need to redesign their work environments – both physical and virtual environments – and management systems to attract and retain passionate people.

The changes in the physical workplace are well underway. Andrew Laing’s 2013 paper on the ITC sector in New York sets out a comprehensive survey of the shifts both in demand and supply for workspace. The conventions of the relentlessly efficient single-use office tower, the long commercial lease, the privately owned work point are all crumbling. Many of our clients are already using less space and looking for new ways to share the space they have. Work is leaving the building, and looking for new toeholds across the city – the new hubs and third places, and the old libraries, cafes and public spaces.

The spaces in between will be the real attractor for the Googles, the Atlassians and the Kulgans. Curating these spaces will be the next challenge for precinct planners and city strategists who have long understood the place-making contributions of landscape and art. The next generation of installations will be playful hybrids of virtual and physical worlds – not just for the tech sector, but for every human with a super computer in her or his pocket. Urban gaming will be serious play.

Play offers the freedom to invent, to improvise and experiment. To do things that would look like failure in other contexts. Over the past five years a whole new ecology of games has emerged with the saturation of the smart phone and GPS technologies.

“Gaming is play across media, time, social spaces, and networks of meaning. It requires players to be fluent in a series of connected literacies that are multi-modal, performative, productive, and participatory in nature.” pvi collective

Serious urban games now exist for training for change, for health and for social cohesion. They range from covert individual experiences through to gleeful group quests. Here are four examples of the rapidly growing field.

1. Soulfill

Soulfill is a mobile assisted role-playing game for public transport. It wants you to focus on the people in the environment around you, not on the screen in your hand. The game prompts are minimal. You listen to a narrator who challenges you to move past the awkwardness of initiating eye contact. You score points by initiating and maintaining eye contact with strangers – and you lose points by making eye contact with those already looking at you.

Multi-player games are more carefully programmed in time and space – and this orchestration accounts for the influence of performance arts groups in urban gaming.

2. Deviator

Perth-based pvi collective’s game known as Deviator recently took over the inner Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst. Deviator is an immersive, outdoor game played in teams with smart phones. Audience members are charged with the mission of temporarily transforming their city into a playground by engaging with a number of not-so-serious challenges.

I’m still not sure how pole dancing in Oxford Street qualified, but the gleeful fun of sack races on cross walks, “kiss chasey” in Taylor Square, and blowing up balloons until they burst resonated – most of them were straight out of the school yard. Other locations asked for more subversive play – (follow someone without their knowledge until they turn into a doorway) – or regenerative (here are some seeds you might want to plant) or declarative (what message would you like to leave on this blackboard). But the need to rack up as many points inside an hour made for an hilarious frenzied night of fun. Watch here.

3. Black market

The group behind deviator has another project in development titled black market. Part game, part social experiment, black market takes place on city streets and locates the players inside a world of economic collapse. Inspired by the core philosophies of the ‘occupy’ movement and the financial bankruptcies in Europe, players need to survive in a world where money and material wealth have collapsed. Bartering and bargaining come to the fore.

4. Massively Multiplayer soba

Massively Multiplayer Soba is a large scale collaborative urban game focused on culture, food and language that culminates in a meal. Points are awarded on the basis of complexity and the depth of interactions, rather than a scavenger hunt. The game is designed to encourage people to mix and interact with residents in meaningful ways that challenge preconceptions of race and language.

Where to next? The next generation of urban gaming might see more pervasive games that leave traces of activity in spaces for future visitors. Or games that create more open-ended stories. Even games that connect people more intensely over time. The one thing we can be sure about is that the growth will be extraordinary, and with the mobile phone at the centre.

“The phone takes the processing power of yesterday’s supercomputers – even the most basic model has access to more number-crunching capacity than NASA had when it put men on the moon in 1969 – and applies it to ordinary human interactions”.

Ordinary human interactions are the stuff of our cities. Watch out for the rise of serious play.

Sue Wittenoom (sue.wittenoom@archtam.com) is a director of ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Australia. She’s presenting at GreenCities 2015 in Melbourne on March 18. Follow her on twitter @swittenoom

More urban gaming links:

https://www.ingress.com/: a mobile, geolocation-based game that calls on players to travel to real-world locations such as landmarks and public art, where they use their phones to open and close portals that can help or hinder an invading alien race

http://www.rottenapple.us/: random hacks of citizenry

http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/conference14/: A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories.

References:

The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. Hector Rodrigeuz the international journal of computer game research volume 6 issue 1 December 2006

The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2014

The Implications of a Networked Urban Landscape for Architectural Programming. Andrew Laing Volume Art & Science of Real Estate Volume 42 2014 #4

Work and workplaces and the digital city, Andrew Laing, Columbia University Centre for Urban Real Estate, 2013

Propositions for Sydney. Andrew Laing and Sue Wittenoom, 2014

The Power of Immersive Media Frank Rose, strategy+business February 9, 2015

The Play Report. Protein Journal Issue 13

Serious Urban Games. From play in the city to play for the city Gabriele Ferri and Patrick Coppock, February 2012

The future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, 2013

Unlocking the passion of the Explorer. Report 1 of the 2013 Shift Index series. Deloitte Center for the Edge

The truly personal computer The Economist February 28^th 2015

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When I graduated in 2010, I didn’t have a clue about my future except for one thing:

Don’t spend the next four years drawing bathroom details.

I landed a job with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice (then DEGW) shortly after graduating, and a whole new world of workplace research, change management and executive summaries lay before me. I was on my way to becoming a “strategic consultant,” whatever that meant…

Four years later, I’m a little bit older, I’ve got a better idea of what a Strategic Consultant is, and I still haven’t drawn a single bathroom detail. It’s been a formative four years, with a lot of accomplishments and just as many mistakes. I learned many invaluable lessons that will undoubtedly stay with me, and it makes it that much harder to say that these are my last few weeks at Strategy Plus before embarking on my next challenge. It’s true; all good things come to an end.

Looking back on my time with Strategy Plus, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with really great people on all sorts of projects, each challenging me to think differently, explore further, and no matter how difficult, produce results. The following are the top four things I’ve learned as a strategic consultant (and how I’ve applied them to my life).

Don’t expect everyone to listen

It’s easy to get invested and attached to a project. I could spend months doing research and developing recommendations that will help my client be successful, but unforeseen factors could prevent the recommendations from being implemented. It can be a huge blow to the ego, because it feels as if all that time was invested and the client spent their money for nothing. It took me some time to realize that this wasn’t the case – the client paid for expertise and advice, and what I have done is to provide the best recommendations for their success. It may eventually get implemented, but that’s all that the client asked for. Like opinions, people may ask you for them but they don’t necessarily have to listen to you.

Change is scary, but worthwhile

No matter how beneficial a recommendation may be, if it disrupts daily life in just the smallest way, prepare for resistance. Understandably – you work long enough doing something, you’ll start to understand how things work, you can predict outcomes, and eventually you develop a sense of control. Change is scary because it’s risky. Change asks you to abandon that control and do something different and foreign, something that may not have been done before so there is no precedent, no example to compare to. But what is life without risk? The thing with risks is this: there’s a chance that things may go poorly, or really, really well. And even if it isn’t what you’d hoped, you will have learned one way not to do things and you can bet the next attempt will be better.

Money doesn’t change ideas

Don’t get me wrong, money is a very real factor in consulting. It can either limit how much time you invest or offer you opportunities to try something different, or on a larger scale. However, I think that’s about all that money should affect: the scale of the work, not the quality. Whether the budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars, or just a few thousand, if I’m not giving it my all, I’m doing it wrong. Develop ideas and recommendations at the highest quality possible because at the end of the day, money doesn’t create ideas, you do.

Creativity is a choice

Let’s lay it out on the table. It’s clear that in this career (and in life), people may not listen to my valued opinion, people may resist and oppose me, and circumstances might prevent me from executing my ideas exactly how I envisioned, but none of this should stop me from creating great things and ideas. Why? Because, put simply, I don’t have control over those external factors. All I can control is how I adapt to situations, and what I choose to do from that point on. Not every project will be glamorous but there are always opportunities for creativity, even if you’re tackling the same issue on three different projects. I know it’s easier said than done, but I’ve learned, and truly believe, that creativity is only limited by how much you’re willing to do and how far you’re willing to explore.

–

Being a strategic consultant has shown me many new things and taught me a great deal about people as well as, even more so, about myself. As I prepare for an indefinite adventure exploring the country by myself, I can’t stop thinking about how foreign it will be and how this trip will completely force me out of my comfort zone. It’s exciting and intimidating, but after writing this, I realize I may be more prepared for it than I think.

Danny Tran is a consultant at ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in San Francisco.

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With devices becoming increasingly portable and fast, we can now access our work almost everywhere, seemingly only dependant on wifi connection. Technology’s greatest impacts in the way in which we work are often cited as the ability for greater precision, consistency and for easy communication – with one click we can connect with people across the globe at any time of day, making it far easier to do business with companies worldwide – but what about the impact on office culture?

The ease of sending emails is overriding the office worker’s impulse to pick up the phone or walk over to someone’s desk – many of our clients complain of “email culture”, with clogged inboxes and endless “reply-all”. This begs the question of whether new technology has influenced our business culture or business culture is influencing how we use new technology.

It seems to me that, because we have access to information instantaneously anytime, we also seek this from people as well as technology. There have probably been times when we can all admit to wondering why someone hasn’t responded to our email immediately!

Whilst it’s useful to stay connected, being able to access five different communication methods – from messaging to face time on our smart phones – also means we have to think harder about our work/life balance. To resist checking emails away from the office, when it’s so quick and easy to do so, is more difficult than it may seem. Has it become the norm for our working hours and own time to become blurred?

This blurring of boundaries can also work the other way, with many of the most popular workplaces bringing elements of home-life into their culture and design. In a recent list published on Glassdoor, based on both a survey of workers’ opinions on the pros and cons of holding a job at their company, as well as ratings on how satisfied they are there, the top three companies (Google, Bain & Co. and Nestle Purina) were all supported by employee comments citing things like “beautiful campus” and “excellent culture”, with employees at Nestle Purina even able to bring pets into the workplace. Employees clearly place high value on being able to bring elements of their home and social life into the workplace, and employers are increasingly finding ways to offer this.

So what does this mean for our clients and our workplace designs? How can we maximise the benefits to the merging of work and home life and what does this mean for the future of offices? For example, an approach of 50:50 workspace and social space could enable us to interact and work in a less formal manner, and as long as deadlines are met and the work is done, why should we not embrace a flexible workday?

Although it has both benefits and limitations, technology can only be what we make of it, and so it is imperative that we understand the best ways to make it work for us and for our clients

Amy Bourne (amy.bourne@archtam.com) is a designer at ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in London. 

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Isn’t this wonderful? They had fun in doing this just for its own sake. Not for a purpose, not for money, not for anything or anyone. I’d like to ask you to consider two questions, and be honest!

1) When did you last feel something like this?

2) Was it at work?

There’s a theoretical concept for the state I just described: flow. In my last blog entry, “The upward spiral”, I figured out that flow is a positive state that can make us more creative.

More precisely, flow is characterized by the following components:

• An optimal balance between your abilities and the requirements of the task. This match occurs at a high level of both, so that you perceive the task as challenging, but achievable.
• Whilst performing the task, you get immediate feedback, so you always know what to do next and keep momentum.
• Concentration occurs automatically, you do not have to force yourself.
• You forget about time – performing the task, you do not know how long you’ve been involved with it, hours can seem like minutes.
• You may even perceive yourself as “one” with the activity.

Because of these positive experiences, flow is not only good for you, but also for your performance and learning successes.

Flow is often reported for passionate leisure activities, just like the ice skating I saw. But the interesting thing for us is that in office work flow is also possible. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, intellectual father of the flow concept, studied flow at work in many professions, for example surgeons, engineers, architects, musicians, chemists, and authors. He found that people in all of these professions experience flow because they modify their jobs. They modify the meaning and the content so that they have the most opportunities to experience flow and thus, the most fun doing their jobs. You can always change little things in your job, like changing the order of tasks or deciding to ally with selected colleagues or clients for a specific purpose. Thus, flow should not only be possible if you are a surgeon etc., but in all professions.

I had the opportunity to interview a few colleagues about what they need to experience flow at work and what is detrimental to flow, and got the following feedback.

“Flow boosts creativity, provided you have expertise” A consultant told me that he experiences flow when he faces a new, challenging task and at the same time recognizes that he can use his experience from earlier jobs or projects to approach this task. The creativity and the knowledge transfer produce an extremely positive and motivated mood.

“Flow can easily be interrupted” An app programmer told me that flow requires a state of total concentration. In app programming, every interruption can lead to a break of thought that increases the risk for application failure, like in a “swiss cheese model”. To enable flow in highly concentrated individual work, the programmer uses the following strategies:

• Listening to music via headphones to set a positive mood and to prevent distraction (louder music if the background noise is high).
• Turning off email and instant messenger.
• Being available for requests in a much-frequented place before an important task.

“Flow can also emerge in teamwork” This occurs when colleagues perceive that they share the same “mental model”. This means they have the same understanding and the same knowledge background of a problem or task. Provided this is the case, collaboration can “flow”, but usually requires the following conditions:

• A clear goal, clear tasks, and clear roles and responsibilities.
• “Out of the box thinking” allowed.
• The opportunity for regular serendipitous encounters and thus exchange of ideas.

I’d like to thank my colleagues for these brilliant insights and ideas, which made this exploration of the subject a lot more vivid!

Finally, I’d like to repeat my questions from the beginning and add a third one – please let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

1) When did you last experience flow?

2) Was it at work?

3) How should space augment the possibility for flow?

 Jennifer Gunkel is a consultant with ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Munich.

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The conference explored Next Generation Activity Based Workplaces (ABW). I shared an extended case study of SBS’ Agile pilot space in its Artarmon headquarters.

With a background as Australia’s multicultural broadcaster, SBS has a special charter to provide multilingual, multicultural and Indigenous radio, television and digital media services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians, reflecting Australia’s diverse society.

ArchTam has been helping SBS to rethink its workspace to seize the opportunities of media convergence – staff need to be able to work flexibly across content areas and drive multiple platform delivery.

Our SBS client, Manager of Corporate Services Martin Wright, has been leading SBS’ vision of a more innovative and efficient working environment through a period of high-profile budget scrutiny from the Federal Government.

In November, an Australian Federal Government report on possible expenditure cuts at Australia’s two public broadcasters flagged the concept of “variabilising” fixed property costs, suggesting moves by employers to more flexible work practices – and a portfolio of space options that encourage more collaborative consumption of space – might become even more of a priority.

Flexible work practices should be taken up more broadly in the public sector in Australia, where we lag well behind the UK civil service and the US General Services Administration. It was good to see representatives from the Department of Finance and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet paying close attention at the ABW Conference.

SBS’ Agile pilot is an island of raw, experimental energy in its Artarmon building. It looks, feels and sounds like a creative community. All work points are shared, and a wide range of options beyond the desk give staff plenty of choice of where to focus or collaborate.

New laptops, headsets and the wireless presentation screens were all part of the IT upgrade to enable mobility. It’s just celebrated its first year in action, and ArchTam’s Strategy Plus team has completed a post occupancy review of the pilot to understand how it is performing and to build an evidence base that shapes how its workspace develops from here.

The review process included interviews, workshops and onsite observations. It also revisited the previously completed online survey and space utilisation study. The review calibrated the performance of different work settings; while the establishment of sit-stand desks was popular, the ‘grassy knoll’, in contrast, was seen as a design folly that failed to meet comfort basics for viewing content over extended periods. The feedback was clear on what worked, and the evidence we gathered on the ‘workarounds’ confirmed where the change process required more attention.

Images: Design by Hassell, Photos by Nicole England

As we were putting the presentation together, Martin commented that the pilot review process has given him a solid foundation for future development. In much the same way the initial strategic brief for the space framed the design and implementation process, the pilot findings are now setting up the next evolution of the Agile program.

One key change is the need to give work groups the security of a location, but not the ownership of a desk.

SBS wanted to promote collaboration and crosspollination between different work groups in the pilot, so no team neighbourhoods or home zones were put into place throughout it. However, the feedback from participants was that it was more important to be within ear-shot of your primary colleagues than to work alongside people in other teams.

For SBS, the point of the pilot was to take some risks. It needed to trial new settings and new behaviours and, most importantly, set up a feedback and learning loop for the next stage of the public broadcaster’s accommodation story. If you’re not scoring an epic fail in some part of the space or the process, then you’re probably not pushing hard enough beyond the frontier of the organisation’s comfort zone. Pilots let you test these risks before the size of the capex starts to rule them out. And the nature of a building project – long lead times and extended delivery – means that any major new accommodation project needs to position the organisation for where it needs to be, not where it is now.

Sue Wittenoom (sue.wittenoom@archtam.com) is a director of ArchTam’s Strategy Plus practice in Australia. Follow her on twitter @swittenoom

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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 was invited to speak at the International Facilities Management Association workplace strategy summit held near Reading, UK in June. This was hosted by Professor Alexi Marmot from University College London and was a followup to a previous summit held at Cornell University in 2012. The attendees were an interesting mix of workplace strategists from around the world (including several previous DEGWers), academics (such as Frank Becker and Wim Pullen), a few architects, as well as a smattering of corporate and government end users. The format was a mix of presentations and panel discussions as well as roundtable exercises. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. The scale was relatively small (around 100 people), which meant that the in-between conversations were often as valuable as the formal discussions.

The big theme seemed to be ‘where is workplace strategy going’? There were several propositions:

• Workplace is becoming consumerized: workplace as a service (WaaS) will replace workplace as designed space. We need to define the requirements for user experience rather than simply enumerate conventional programs of space.
• Workplace is an aspect of Human Resources and as such needs to be considered alongside other organizational rewards, costs, and benefits and in relation to organizational goals for employee behaviors.
• Workplace strategy must consider and ideally measure how the workplace is contributing to health and well-being. Examples would be minimizing the risks of sedentary work styles, and accommodating the different needs of multi-generations.
• Workplace is no longer merely the office but the wider world of co-working and third places. Our methods of briefing and programming need to be re-imagined to take this much more diverse and distributed network of spaces and places into account.
• Workplace strategy is in a sense becoming part of urban strategy: technology has enabled work to happen in less conventional workplace environments, blurring living, working and learning spaces in urban places. We need new approaches for briefing these multi-use and multi-scale environments.
• New responsibilities and managerial concerns arise as workplaces cross the boundaries of private and public spaces and become more like curated experiences or settings for different kinds of events and performances.
• New forms of ownership and procurement of space are emerging in the ‘sharing economy’ that will challenge the old supply chain of developers, landlords, and designers.

Andrew Laing (andrew.laing@archtam.com) leads ArchTam’s global Strategy Plus 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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