Translating Research to Practice: Evidence-Based Design for Workplaces and Offices of the Future.

Guest post by University of Leeds Business School and Atkins. 

The world of work has recently faced numerous challenges, following the introduction of new and alternative ways of working in response to post-pandemic working patterns and pressures to address wider changes related to contemporary work cultures. In this context, the use of evidence-based approaches is becoming increasingly prevalent as designers strive to make more informed choices that support health and improve experience.

This article discusses the importance of integrating applied research into design and evaluation processes, through the ongoing collaboration between the Atkins Building Design Research and Innovation team, and the University of Leeds Business School.

What is Evidence-based Design, and what does it mean for us?

Evidence-based design is described by The Centre for Health Design (2022) as the “process of basing decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes”. This approach is often associated with healthcare facility design and can be traced back to Roger Ulrich’s (1984) seminal research, and one of the most cited papers in architectural psychology, investigating the effect of window views on patient recovery. In recent years, the approach has continued to gain popularity for the design of other building types, as it provides a way to evidence design decisions through a growing body of research on the impacts of physical environments on stress, productivity, comfort, and more.

An evidence-based approach, enhanced by further collaboration with academic partners, can improve the way design options are evaluated, inform design decisions, and improve engagement with stakeholders; aspects that are central to Atkins’ approach to design.

In the context of workplace design, the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, affected the way people work, how offices are occupied, and the overall future of commercial real estate. In turn, this multifaceted shift created uncertainties and complexities around the spatial, technological, and management requirements of contemporary, post-pandemic offices. As clients face the challenge of adapting their workspaces in response to this shift towards hybrid and alternative ways of working, they reconsider the utilisation of their premises, a process that requires structured information that can highlight workforce priorities and challenges as a basis for decision-making. Adopting an evidence-based approach provides support in addressing these uncertainties, particularly around employees’ return to work, by utilising a range of evidence from both individual organisations, and original academic research on the response of the wider corporate world.

Adapting Offices for the Future of Work

An important element of an evidence-based approach is to ensure the most relevant and recent research is incorporated into the decision-making process. As a result, academic collaborations and partnerships can play an important role in this.

In 2021 the University of Leeds launched a significant research project, ‘Adapting Offices for the Future of Work’ to explore this challenge, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) rapid response to Covid-19. It is undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Leeds, with backgrounds in management and organisational psychology, workplace design, architectural engineering, and information systems. Collaborating with several public and private sector organisations, including Atkins (member of SNC-Lavalin), this research investigates how workplaces have been adapted since the emergence of Covid-19 to support hybrid or new ways of working.

Adopting a Socio-Technical Systems perspective, the research aims to explore the requirements and relationships of physical design solutions, supporting technologies, behavioural changes and management practices, required to ensure office environments support productive and employee-centred working. Multiple social science research methods were utilised in the context of this research project, including organisational stakeholder interviews, diary studies, employee surveys, Social Network Analysis and industry workshops, to develop insights for partner organisations that help inform their office and hybrid strategies, with particular focus placed on understanding the impact of different work arrangements and use of space for various groups of workers (e.g. new starters, different roles).

Understanding Hybrid Working

The research highlights the popularity of hybrid working amongst employees as a permanent work arrangement, but also the importance of the physical workplace and divergent needs across employees. The representative cross-industry UK longitudinal surveys of office workers, conducted in August and December 2021, demonstrated that 48% of employees sought a hybrid work pattern, 24% wanted to work solely from an office and 28% to work exclusively from home (down from 33% in August 2021). While much of the discussion in the press focuses on how to encourage employees back to the office, this research demonstrates that the majority of staff want to spend at least part of their time back in an office, highlighting the continued impact of designing high quality and functional office spaces. The survey findings also challenge the popular assumption that the hybrid office should be primarily geared around collaboration and interaction. 29% of workers surveyed would like to use the office for low concentration solo tasks (e.g., emails, data processing), and 32% want to undertake high concentration individual tasks in the office, the type of work typically assumed to be least suited to office working under hybrid arrangements.

Decisions made by organizations regarding their hybrid working policies have significant implications for the types and amount of office space required (e.g., mandating set days in the office, allowing free choice over when and how often employees return, operating rota systems for teams). However, most organizations have yet to formalise future work arrangements. Only 34% of employees surveyed in December 2021 were aware of a formal hybrid working policy and only 18% reported that their offices had been redesigned to support hybrid working. This raises an important question, of what is meant by hybrid working.

 

In this context, hybrid working was generally understood as a mix of office and remote working, however, this captures a myriad of alternative ways of working. As shown in the figure above, hybrid working can be classified by the degree of control organizations provide employees over where and when they work. While we may think of hybrid as providing choice and flexibility (with no formal restrictions on where or when they work, i.e. free hybrid) it can be highly prescribed and controlled (shifts and allocated office and home schedules with no employee choice over these, i.e., fixed hybrid). While organizational policies set-out what is possible in theory, employees’ demographics, life circumstances, job types, colleagues’ workplace decisions, personalities, neurodiversity needs, and networks all influence the decisions that individuals make over where and when they work. It is therefore difficult to capture these requirements, that may vary widely from one organisation to another, and design for them in a way that accurately responds to the preferences of a dynamic and diverse workforce at a time of wider change and reconsideration of priorities and approaches.

Adapting offices to support hybrid working is a truly socio-technical challenge, one where the design of the office space cannot be separated from the design of job roles, ways of working, employee rewards and performance management, or the multitude of other factors that may require redesign to deliver a functional, inclusive and attractive hybrid workplace. Evidence from the research currently being undertaken by the University of Leeds has highlighted how different office designs and configurations, technologies and hybrid working policies all influence the social interactions between team members and across organisations. This shows how decisions over hybrid policy can support or undermine design aspirations (e.g., features to promote interaction, chance encounters etc.), and further highlights the need for an evidence-based approach, that can consider the socio-technical requirements of workplaces.

The Workplace Index

This complexity emphasises the importance for an in-depth understanding of how people work, to allow designers to better respond to the demands of contemporary working arrangements as they continue to be driven by fundamental shifts.

Atkins’ Workplace Index was developed in response to this challenge, to support designers in following an evidence-based approach that incorporates the understanding of employee characteristics and work preferences, the type and frequency of activities they undertake, and other factors adapted from a socio-technical perspective. The team identified common challenges during the briefing stages of workplace design projects, which led to the development of this framework following an action research approach (Zuber-Skerritt et al., 2002). This included workshops, high level reviews of literature and industry trends, engagement with existing clients who were interested in testing this methodology on their projects, and collaborations with university partners.

The Workplace Index includes five areas that can be used to identify project priorities and subsequent research to be acquired with the aim to support the development and evaluation of appropriate design solutions:

Within each theme are several metrics and recommendations which are mapped to different outcomes, allowing the direct and structured incorporation of findings from wider academic studies, and collaborations with academic partners into the design process. As new information is published, the Workplace Index continues to undergo iterative development as we continue to work with and alongside clients to address various challenges, ensuring that design solutions are always informed, up-to-date and in tune with current trends and contemporary requirements.

Conclusions

The Workplace Index is an ongoing project, which enables designers to address the complexities of working in a post-pandemic world and highlights the benefits of active collaboration between academia and practice. As an industry partner in this collaboration, Atkins contributed their current experience of designing in a rapidly changing sector, and had more direct and timely access to evidence from leading research from the University of Leeds to inform and evaluate subsequent design decisions. As the Workplace Index continues to develop, the impact of varied factors on different outcomes will be considered further, drawing on evidence from the University of Leeds research, on factors such as employee satisfaction and wellbeing, or social networks and social cohesion in the workplace. Moving forward, evidence-based design tools like the Atkins Workplace Index can help inform spatial configuration, technological provisions, and provide ways to better understand client requirements during early design stages. As we continue to learn more about the ways space can be adapted to suit our new ways of working, and ongoing uncertainties in the workplace sector, evidence-based design will continue to grow in relevance and importance.


Authors

Dr Matthew Davis (https://business.leeds.ac.uk/staff/291/dr-matthew-davis) is an Associate Professor in Organisational Psychology at Leeds University Business School. Matthew has worked on a range of applied research projects with corporate partners including Rolls-Royce, Marks and Spencer, Next, Atkins, Arup and British Gas. Matthew is currently leading a ESRC funded multi-disciplinary project examining office adaptations in response to COVID-19 and how office design and ways of working impact employee social networks, workflow and performance. You can find out more about the research and access podcasts, videos, infographics and more at: www.bitly.com/adaptingoffices

Dr Linhao Fang is a Researcher in Information Systems at Leeds University Business School. Linhao has a background in Information Systems, with academic interests around technology-enabled self-regulation, Design Science Research, Educational Technology, Educational Psychology, Learning Theories, Information Technology use in organisations, Digital Workplaces and Socio-Technical Systems. He has over 10 years of research experience through various multi-disciplinary projects.

Archontia Manolakelli is an ARB-chartered Architect and interdisciplinary Design Researcher at Atkins, with a master’s degree in Psychology. She has 5+ years of practice-based experience working as a designer and member of the Atkins Building Design Research and Innovation team. Her work takes place in the intersection between human experience, architectural design, digital technology, and environmental sustainability, where she utilises quantitative and mixed-method approaches from social science towards evidence-based design. Her research to date has explored personality and spatial selection in university workspaces, interpersonal distancing preferences and personal space in corporate offices, and neurodiversity requirements for post-pandemic workplaces.


References

Centre for Health Design (2022) About EBD. The Center for Health Design. [Online] [Accessed on 14 January 2022] https://www.healthdesign.org/certification-outreach/edac/about-ebd.

Davis, M. (2022) Adapting Offices for the Future of Work Stage 1 Report. Sway.office.com. [Online] [Accessed on 14 January 2022] https://sway.office.com/xvmFPc0I9RoEZXs2?ref=Link.

Ulrich, R. (1984) ‘View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery’. Science, 224(4647) pp.420-421.

Zuber-Skerritt, O. et al. (2002) ‘The concept of action research’, The Learning Organization, 9(3), pp. 125–131. doi: 10.1108/09696470210428840.

In Pictures – Workplace Trends Research Summit 2022

150+ attendees, virtual and in person, had an informative and sociable day discovering how the latest workplace research can be applied for practical benefit. at last week’s Research Summit.

Huge thanks to Vanessa Champion, Journal of Biophilic Design, for these images.

Are we enjoying our 4 day week so far?

Workers across the UK and USA are largely currently enjoying a well-earned four day week after Monday’s May and Memorial Day bank holidays.

How does that feel? Our guess is most employees are fans of the concept and would love to see it rolled out permanently.

At our recent Workplace Trends Research Summit we were delighted to have Andrew Barnes, the founder of 4 Day Week Global, speaking – all the way from New Zealand.

Andrew took us through the mechanism by which he introduced a 4 Day Week to his company, and the hugely successful results thereof. Andrew outlines his 100-80-100 rule and the impact that it has on business, employees’ health and wellbeing, overall productivity, and the environment.

Generally we don’t make our event recordings too widely available but this is too good to keep a secret. Take a coffee and enjoy the 23 minutes below.

You can find out more about the 4 Day Week at https://4dayweek.com/

Key Points

“When we talk about the 4 Day Week we mean at its heart it’s a reduced hours working week on normal weekly pay but which maintains or enhances current levels of productivity.”

“British workers are actually only productive for about three hours a day.” (Economist Magazine).

“What we found when we implemented the 4 Day Week is that productivity in the company improved about 25% and this has been sustained since we implemented the policy full time in late 2018.”

Health & Safety Law – Duties to Protect Staff & Visitors from Covid-19 in their Workplaces

At last October’s Workplace Trends Conference we were delighted to welcome Simon Joyston-Bechal of Turnstone Law to our virtual stage.  

Simon has over 25 years’ experience as a solicitor. Specialising in regulatory defence, he is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading health & safety lawyers. Having previously qualified as a doctor, he is in a unique position to advise employers on liability issues and planning in relation to Covid-19. He defends health and safety criminal prosecutions; and regularly lectures and provides training on health and safety duties for executive teams.

We thought his presentation was just too valuable not to share more widely, so here’s the recording of that session where Simon covers many very relevant issues, including: 

 

Ensuring Employees Are Happy When Returning to Work

It’s been a tough year for businesses across the globe, with the number of people working from home rising from 21% to 25% in October, and tighter lockdowns only strengthening this trend. By the same token, the news that Pfizer’s vaccine is 90% effective has given the stock market a major boost, indicating that the world may well be in the very initial stages of the return to ‘normalcy’. For many workers, the end of the pandemic will involve returning to their respective offices after many months. How can employers ensure that the happiness factor is high so that teams can give their all to achieve company goals together?

The Effect Of Cleanliness On Mood

There is an inexorable link between interior design and mood, with researchers at DePaul University finding that clutter can be “so overwhelming that it chips away at your well-being, relationships, and more.” Cleanliness and happiness are closely linked, with numerous studies showing that clean and tidy spaces boost concentration, are more inviting and attractive to both internal and external clients, and have a positive impact on morale and productivity. A clean office can also boost the feeling of safety. All offices should be professionally cleaned, with special attention being paid to bathrooms, shared kitchens, and other spaces that can have a higher germ quotient.

Training Staff On Respectful Communication

Leaders and employees alike can benefit from the completion of courses on skills such as conflict resolution, communication, stress management, and self-care. Even offices that “return to normal” will have employees who may continue to be stressed for various reasons – including having to accept lower workloads or salaries, mental conditions triggered by collective worry in recent months, the difficulty of adapting once again to in-office work, and, in some cases, grief from friends or family members being affected by the pandemic. Supervisors should be trained to be patient and to understand changes in employee behaviour, taking an assistive rather than a disciplinary approach. They should also ensure that employees experiencing stress know whom to turn to for support. 

Policy Changes

Companies can also consider reassessing policies, making changes that may be beneficial to both the company and its employees. For instance, managers may decide to let part or the entirety of the team work remotely if goals are being achieved, and this means greater flexibility and reduced transport costs for employees and lower office rental costs for employers. The company could set aside dedicated days for important meetings and social get-togethers to ensure communication flows and team spirit is kept intact. Managers and supervisors might also decide to allow employees to take mental health days off in addition to sick leave for a specific time period.

Embracing Stress Busting Activities At Work

There are many ways that employees can make daily life more fun and less stressful for employees. Just a few ideas include offering yoga or mindfulness meditation for teams at work, organising team building activities, and holding ‘self-care talks’ once a month or at regular intervals. Studies have shown that holistic activities such as yoga and mindfulness meditation have powerful effects on mood, and are able to lower stress levels almost immediately. Team building and social activities should be held outdoors in green areas on sunny days. Studies have shown that as little as 10 minutes in a natural area can make people feel happy and lower the effects of physical and mental stress.

When the era of new normality truly begins and many employees can begin to work in offices again, supervisors and managers will need to be aware of the mental health impact caused by the global health crisis. They can help to counter these impacts in many ways – including simple strategies such as cleanliness and tidiness. Staff training is also key; those who are struggling mentally should be free to discuss their issues openly and know who to turn to. Finally, companies can set up new policies that promote flexibility and happiness, and bring a little light into the office through fun activities that focus strongly on stress relief.

 

This is a guest post by freelance writer, Lucy Wyndham

5 Tech Giants Showing Confidence in the Office Space Market

You’ll have a difficult job browsing content platforms nowadays without coming across articles focusing on – or at least alluding in some way to – the working from home revolution. A whole host of companies, including Twitter, have announced that they will allow staff to continue WFH permanently if they wish, following its success throughout lockdown.

However, an increasing number of employees and employers alike are coming to the realisation that WFH isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Cramped and uncomfortable working conditions, distracting housemates and noisy neighbours, the rising cost of utilities; these are just a few of the things that make WFH an unviable long-term solution for many workers. It’s also an unsustainable option for businesses that thrive on innovation and creative thinking.

Here are five successful tech brands that still see the value in offices and plan to embrace them in one form or another for the foreseeable future.

1. Netflix

Among the companies looking to increase their office footprint is Netflix. According to a Bloomberg report, the technology and production company is going to triple its office space in London and move into a new UK HQ.

Reportedly, the business is set to move into a new 87,000 sq ft commercial property on Berners Street in the West End, which is situated just off Oxford Street near Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road Underground Station.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to the U.K., we are excited to expand our operations in London,” a Netflix spokesperson told Bloomberg. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in September, Co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings said that not being able to meet with coworkers face-to-face is a ‘pure negative’.

2. Google

Also in September 2020, The Times reported that Google has decided to lease an additional 70,000 sq ft of workspace beside its new $1.2 billion headquarters in King’s Cross, London.

The tech giant will also be extending the lease on its 160,000 sq ft office space in the Central Saint Giles building located near Tottenham Court Road for a further ten years. The lease was due to expire in 2021.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview at the TIME100 Honorees’ Visions for the Future event:

“We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having a sense of community is super important when you have to solve hard problems and create something new so we don’t see that changing. But we do think we need to create more flexibility and more hybrid models.”

3. Amazon

Over in the US, Amazon recently acquired the Taylor flagship building in Midtown Manhattan from WeWork for an estimated $1 billion. It will eventually be home to 2,000 employees – which means the tech giant will be increasing its current workforce of 4,000 by half.

This brings the number of Amazon offices in New York City to eight. Most are located in Midtown Manhattan, however the business recently started leasing workspace on the Brooklyn waterfront to house its Amazon Music team.

4. Apple

Apple established its inaugural office space in New York City ten years ago, and after leasing 220,000 sq ft in the 11 Penn Plaza building, it’s set to expand. According to a Business Insider report, the company is aiming to take on an additional 60,000 sq ft in the building.

That said, Apple is apparently negotiating with its landlords and ‘nothing concrete’ is in place yet, so they may not end up expanding. Either way, the discussions can be seen as a demonstration of confidence in the office space market in NYC.

5. Facebook

Facebook is tripling its local workforce in NYC and has recently leased office space in one of the city’s iconic buildings – a 107-year-old former main post office complex near Pennsylvania Station – to accommodate its growth.

This year, Facebook, along with Amazon and Google, have increased their teams by over 2,600 employees, collectively bringing the number of people they employ to 22,000. Together, the three tech juggernauts have also acquired 1.6 million sq ft of workspace since the start of 2020.

Is the future of work really going to be ‘hybrid’?

Free Office Finder believe that the future of work will be hybrid and that flexible workspace will play an increasingly critical role when it comes to accommodating this approach. Covid-19 is acting as a catalyst for trends that were already emerging; there was a strong appetite for a flexible working way before the pandemic hit and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

 

Post by Freelance Writer, Chanelle McGarry
Photo credit: bennymarty – stock.adobe.com

The Attendee Experience With Our Hopin Virtual Conference

Ahead of our Workplace Trends: Success in Uncertain Times virtual conference (15 October 2020) on the Hopin Platform, one of our founders, Maggie Procopi, recorded this short orientation video as a show-round for attendees. 

Transcription

Hello, welcome to this orientation for Workplace Trends: Success in Uncertain Times, which takes place here on the Hopin virtual event platform, on Thursday 15 October.

I’m Maggie Procopi, one of the founders of Workplace Trends and I manage the conferences on a day to day basis.

We want all our delegates to get the most out of the conference day itself, so we thought it would be useful to have this opportunity for you to have a quick look around and to make sure your tech works with the system.

First off I need to tell you that Hopin is largely a brilliant platform, but it only works really well with Chrome or Firefox. Other browsers might give you problems. If you still have issues even using Chrome or Firefox, try logging out and back in again, or even restarting your computer (turn it off and on again).

A couple of times we’ve also noticed using Zoom earlier in the day might affect your computer’s settings so that the Hopin audio or video doesn’t work, but restarting a pc or laptop usually does the trick.

So moving on, Hopin is really laid out just like a conference venue, with a main stage, sessions (or break out rooms), expo booths, and a reception area.

Main stage is where I am now, and where our speakers will present from. After each presentation we’ll all move to a Session, the link for everyone will pop up automatically, and this is where we’ll run our Q&As. Audience members can post questions either in the chat box to the right of the screen, or they can request for their video to be added to the session and they can speak direct to the speaker and the chair or moderator.

During breaks there’ll be a few different sessions for you to join as well, so you can meet and chat to other delegates. Attendees can also create their own sessions and invite colleagues and friends to join them there – a bit like a water cooler area.

There’s the option within all sessions to be a voyeur – to just watch and listen, or you can join in fully with your own video camera and microphone which are on your computers.

Expo Booths are like exhibition stands. Most of ours will be running a short into video about the organisation themselves and you can chat or leave messages for the company to get back to you. Some of them also have special offers on so they’re definitely worth a look.

There’s also a networking feature, the link’s towards the bottom of the menu on the left. This is a bit like speed dating, conference style. It randomly pairs you with another attendee for a short time, 3-5 minutes, so you can say hi, get to know each other a little, and connect with them on social channels or with your business details.

On the right of your screen you should be able to see another column with chat, polls and people links.

The chat function is great, everyone can post here, either about the event in general, or specific to whatever session, presentation or expo booth they’re in.

Polls is where we ask attendees to let us know their opinions – these will pop us at any time during the day, often during a presentation in response to a speaker’s particular question.

The People tab is really important and a great feature we were so pleased to find on Hopin – It’s where you can see who else is attending. You can view their profile (so it’s important you set yours up early on – you can do that before the event). You can also everyone’s social links and connect with them there, invite them to video call, or just leave a chat message for them.

So that’s a quick show-round of what you can expect at the conference. Please take a few minutes to explore the features now. There might not be much going on just at the moment but you’ll be able to get a feel for how things will be on the conference day.

All the programme details for the conference are on our website, workplace trends.co.uk – but we’re covering themes around home and agile working, health and safety law, case studies (in particular from HSBC who based in the East, have a wealth of experience in handling business during a pandemic crisis), the future of real estate and the office market, wellbeing and mental health in general, FM, and the role of managing change in our current environment.

This is all set against a backdrop of the challenges posed by Covid 19.

So I hope this introduction was useful.

If you don’t have your ticket for the conference yet just search ‘Workplace Trends Conference Hopin’ and the link should come up for you.

Thank you very much for watching, and myself and our speakers, sponsors and exhibitors are looking forward to seeing you soon!

Stay Safe and Well.

Biomimicry — Not all sharkskins and honeycombs

Over recent years at our Workplace Trends Conferences, we’ve been lucky enough to welcome leading lights Michael Pawlyn and later Richard James MacCowan to speak on biomimicry, as well as Bill Browning and Oliver Heath on biophilia.

They enthralled audiences with tales of how the natural world can solve human problems through design solutions (biomimicry) and by satisfying our innate need to connect with nature (biophilia).

But biomimicry is more than just the famous design solutions we hear about like the stability, aesthetics and economies of the Eden Project’s bubble raft shapes, or Sharklet Technologies printing sharkskin patterns onto adhesive film, which repels bacteria and so is ideal for installation in schools and hospitals, or harvesting water in the desert like the Stenocara Beetle.

Biomimicry casts its net wider than just design. The human race has only been here a fraction of the time that nature has. We can look to the wild world for tips and best practice on people management and leadership. Just Google and learn — from the hierarchies of wolf packs to how beehives operate and ant colonies manage themselves.

Most interestingly is that nature never throws anything away, unlike our largely linear econo my (make, use, dispose).

In a 2010 TED talk, ‘Using Nature’s Genius in Architecture’, Pawlyn illustrated a ‘close-looped system’ (circular economy) with the ‘Cardboard to Caviar Project’. Put simply, restaurant waste was turned into horse bedding, then fed to worms, which were fed to fish, whose caviar was then served at the same restaurant. Nothing is wasted, and the whole process is economically and environmentally profitable.

As well as pondering the budget sheet, we need to take a hard look at the contents of our bins at home and work. What things need never be in existence at all (over-packaging, I cry!), what might be reused, what might be properly recycled? Food for thought indeed.

Getting the best from our virtual events

Hopefully in 2021 Workplace Trends and other event organisers will be able to run physical conferences again. Most likely they will all be hybrid events, with a mix of virtual and real life experiences – something we’ve been particularly working towards for a few years now. Covid has just accelerated us in this direction.

This is how we found the Hopin virtual event platform. At the beginning of the year I suspect Hopin was jut another small Californian start up. But in the face of the global pandemic the founders were suddenly confronted with an enormous and hungry market, desperate for their product. All credit to them, they’ve done a fantastic job to bring the software forward in such a short space of time.

So both what should have been our spring Workplace Trends Research Summit (now scheduled for 10 September) and our main autumn London conference (taking place on 15 October 2020) are both happening on the Hopin platform.

Ahead of these events we want to make sure our delegates are comfortable with the platform and don’t spend the first half hour of the conferences finding their way around. To this end we’re running some short orientation events, plus I hope the following notes will help outline how the events will work.

In short, the programmers at Hopin have emulated a full conference venue as far as is possible, in an online environment.

After entering the event, attendees are taken to the Reception area – the information hub and equivalent of a venue’s lobby. The other areas in the venue are on the left sidepanel. These include Stage, Networking, Sessions, and Expo.

Which browsers work best?

The latest versions of Chrome or Firefox guarantee the best experience. Brave, Safari, and Microsoft IE or Edge don’t quite have the web tech that’s required.

Note: Sometimes, third-party extensions can affect the experience blocking some of the Hopin interface elements. If this happens Hopin advises to open the event in Incognito mode on Chrome or Private tab on Firefox.

The 5 areas of Hopin

There are five areas in a Hopin event. Each area is flexible and provides live interaction for attendees in different ways.

1. Reception

The Reception area is the welcome page or “lobby” of an event. Here you can quickly find out what’s happening at the event currently: the organizer’s welcome message, sponsors, the schedule, and speakers. The Reception area is also used for announcements, important links, messages, and event updates.

2. Stage

This is a one-to-many interaction area that supports up to 100,000 concurrent viewers. The Stage is great for keynotes, presentations, panels, performances, and fireside chats.

3. Sessions

The Sessions segment of Hopin delivers the best experience for group discussions. In Sessions, you will see virtual roundtables for speakers and attendees to interact. Up to 10 people can participate in a Session with their camera on, with up to 500 people who can watch off-camera and interact via the session chat. This will be where attendees ask questions to the speakers on camera if they wish, or through the chat function, whichever they are comfortable with.

Attendees can also create any number of their own sessions during the live event.

4. Networking

The Networking segment on Hopin is pure engagement and is similar to one-on-one meetings on a FaceTime call. This segment is designed to recreate the “coffee-in-the-lobby” conversations or watercooler chats. The Networking area automates the discovery of new connections. When an attendee participates in the Networking, they are matched with a random attendee and meet for a set time preset by the organizer.

Attendees can click the Connect button during a call to exchange contact information and after the event the newly made contacts will appear at https://hopin.to/account/connectionspage of their individual Profile.

5. Expo

The Expo area is the virtual exhibitor hall with vendor booths.

Every booth will either have a pre-recorded video in it, or a live video session with a vendor representative manning and moderating the booth.

Plus, you can leave your details with the click of a button for vendors to follow up with you later if you wish, and many will also be carrying an event special offer for delegates.

How do people get around at a Hopin event?

Similar to a physical event, the Hopin event experience is self-directed but with wayfinding tools and signs to help people easily get around. Attendees ultimately choose where they want to go.

Chats for everyone

There are multiple chat channels in a Hopin event. Each one serves a different purpose.

I hope you like the sound of this platform. I certainly did, having spent many days in early lockdown searching for an online model that would get us this close to an in-person conference experience.

Check out our Workplace Trends Research Summit if you haven’t already got your ticket. Full details are on our website and on Hopin of course as well.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and well.

Best wishes, Maggie