How Hybrid Work Will Impact the Workplace, Our Cities, and Climate Action

How does the office fit into the new ecosystem of work? How can we build sustainable office spaces that meet new expectations? What is the wider implication of hybrid working on our cities?

Join our session at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023, where Kasia Maynard of the Gensler Research Institute reports on recent research and the ripple effect of hybrid working.

The latest research from the Gensler Research Institute explores how to best enable hybrid working, optimise the office environment, meet goals of NET zero, whilst also maximising employee experience and engagement. The research highlights innovative case studies for sustainable design, alongside cutting-edge data on 30 cities across the world, and new survey results from UK workplaces. As hybrid working develops in maturity, there is a greater opportunity to design workspaces that are sustainable, customisable, and effective.

The acceleration of hybrid working since the global pandemic has prompted a paradigm shift in the way we work. Professional workers have more autonomy and flexibility to choose where and how they conduct their work. As a result, a new scenario for work is emerging in the aftermath of the global pandemic that will change the way office buildings are used in the future.

Gensler has studied the UK workplace since 2005. We have mapped the trajectory of how employees work, the relationship they have with their office, and the effectiveness of space. Since the pandemic, we have seen a sudden shift. While the office remains a critical component, it is now part of a wider network of channels in which employees can access work. This has prompted a wide-scale re-evaluation of the role of the office to compete as a desirable place to work.

For the first time, the office has been challenged to rethink its approach to curating experiences amid a new context where employees expect more from their workplace. As hybrid working patterns become more established, employees will seek to customise their work experiences. They will choose workspaces based on their ability to facilitate the type of work they need to do.

Therefore, the office needs to be prepared for all eventualities. There is increasing pressure to create offices that cater for every need of the modern worker, whilst also being conscious about space and energy efficiency. Gensler’s research demonstrates practical case studies and applied research to indicate where the future workplace is heading based on more than 15 years of longitudinal data.

The shift to more flexible working has revealed a potential to make more sustainable decisions about the office. As an industry, we are witnessing universal momentum around addressing the urgent issue of climate change. This year will be marked by the passing of new legislation with the aim of reducing carbon emissions. This is reflected in the new position of the British Council for Office (BCO) to reduce office occupancy density and eliminate Cat A office fit outs. The momentum is propelled by new expectations of work and the office which has prompted more conscious decisions around how we use office space. The presentation will showcase case studies of Gensler’s pioneering climate action solutions that use creative, innovative design approaches in offices around the world.

This presentation will draw on data from Gensler’s latest research data including Climate Action – a catalogue of innovative sustainable case studies; City Pulse – a survey of urban residents in 30 cities around the world; and the UK 2023 Workplace Survey of 2,000 UK office workers. The research knits together the wider implications flexible working has on our workplaces, cities, and the world.

Find out all the details, the outcomes, recommendations from this research and the related case studies at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.


Kasia Maynard, Gensler Research Institute

Kasia Maynard is a researcher and writer with a background in the future of work and urban design. She holds an MA in Urban Design and Planning and has more than six years’ experience forecasting trends on the future of work. Kasia works across the global workplace surveys published by the Gensler Research Institute. Prior to this, she worked as an editor with the WORKTECH Academy – a global platform focusing exclusively on the future of work and workplace. She has presented research and insights on the future of work internationally, delivered workshops, and facilitated panels with prominent thought leaders across the industry.

Early bird rates for the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 are currently available for a limited time only. For full information on the event click here, or to go direct to our booking page click here.

Disruptive Sustainability – A Radical New Model for Corporate Climate Action

Our Net Zero Workplace Conference took place earlier this month. We were lucky enough to welcome Georgia Elliott-Smith of Element Four as our keynote speaker.

The synopsis she gave us ahead of the event –

“Despite our corporate sustainability policies, the planet is now at the point of climate and ecological crisis. It’s time to change, to adopt a new approach that delivers meaningful impact. Georgia proposes a model of disruptive sustainability that challenges the status quo and embraces activism.”

– was accurate and descriptive, but nothing could have prepared the audience for the power of her full presentation.

Georgia has very kindly agreed that we may share the video of her session in full.

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: 

 

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.

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

The Case for Active Travel

Guest post by Maggie Procopi, Workplace Trends

Yesterday (Saturday 9 May 2020) U.K. transport secretary Grant Shapps announced what he called a “once in a generation” £2 billion plan to boost cycling and walking both during and after the lockdown.

Upmost in his mind must be the need for workers to return to their offices amid an already crowded transport system.

It’s somewhat sad that it takes a global pandemic to force this level of investment, but I hope organisations will embrace the opportunities presented.

Workplace Trends covered Active Travel in a recent Climate Change and the Workplace event earlier this year. The session took the form of a panel discussion, with Q&A from the audience.

Many delegates, like myself, had reservations around, for example, cycling safety and travelling longer distances, all of which were reassuringly dealt with by our panel – Neil Webster, Cyclo Consulting, Megan Sharkey, University of Westminster, Ben Knowles, PedalMe and Andrew Brown, Just Ride the Bike (moderator).


Guest post by Maggie Procopi, Workplace Trends
Maggie is a co-founder of the Workplace Trends series of conferences. Based in the UK, Workplace Trends, along with their international partners, run ground-breaking events for workplace professionals who want be at the forefront of work and workplace new thinking. We examine up-coming trends and best practice which enable people and their places of work to be happy, healthy and productive.


"In the modern workplace, Friday is the happiest day of the week"

Way back in 2012 we were privileged to welcome Nic Marks to our stage to speak on “How (and why) happiness works as a business model”.

He has since become a TED speaker, and is one of the most sought after presenters in the arena of happiness and productivity at work.

Here’s our recording of his thought-provoking session, even more relevant given the current COVID-19 crisis.

Nic’s Friday Pulse platform measures how people are feeling and systematically collects feedback, providing real-time insights on individuals, teams and organizations as they adapt to new realities.

To help businesses through the crisis, Friday Pulse is now FREE for SMEs for 12 weeks. To find out more and register go to https://www.fridaypulse.com

Stay healthy and happy!

With all best wishes from the Workplace Trends team.

Design to Adapt: Future Offices within a Circular Economy

At our recent Climate Change and the Workplace event, David Cheshire, Regional Sustainability Director at AECOM, spoke about the hows and whys of design, construction and workplace management in the context of a Circular Economy.

 

 

David is also the author of Building Revolutions: Applying the Circular Economy to the Built Environment.