We’ve been talking about inclusive workplaces and universal design for some time at Workplace Trends, even as far back as 2014 with Steve Maslin, and more recently with Kay Sargent and many others. So we’re grateful to see it being discussed more widely now.
In the session following Josh we’ll also hear from Tree Hall, CEO of Charity IT Leaders, who was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 47. She’ll be exploring what autism means to her, and how it has shaped the way and places she can best work.
Josh has recently been featured on the Workplace Geeks podcast with Chris Moriarty and Ian Ellison. Have a listen to the episode here.
Tree has also been active in the media with a recent interview with the Starts At The Top podcast and you can listen to her being interviewed here.
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.
Is hybrid working the solution for the organisational commitment of your introverted colleagues?
The work environment has undergone significant change in recent years. Individuals and organisations have experienced the benefits of fully remote working, causing many people to shift to partly working from home as a definite. So exactly what is the relationship between hybrid working and employee engagement?
This major evolution in the way we work causes ambiguity in organisational policymaking. Unfortunately, academic literature on hybrid working about the organisational phenomenon is not readily available. Yet it is evident to say that hybrid working is here to stay and will have an enormous effect on organisations in the following years.
This study focused on analysing the perceived impact of hybrid working on affective commitment and employee engagement. This relationship was further explored by concentrating on the moderation effect of the high amount of introverted employees in the organisation.
The research was completed with a large set of respondents from the Eindhoven University of Technology, NL. The outcomes of the study were determinants for the policy on hybrid working for the university, more specifically the supporting staff and workplace conditions.
Statements from the original Meyer and Allen self-administered questionnaire were used to measure individual levels of affective commitment. To address personality traits, the original Big Five Inventory extraversion scale of John et al. (1991) was used. Hybrid working was measured by using a validated scale on flexible work and a self-developed vignette scale.
Find out the outcomes and recommendations from this project at the Workplace Trends Research Summit #WTRS23 on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Esmeé Bechtold, Policy maker, Eindhoven University of Technology
My name is Esmeé. Most people know me as always positive and creative in coming up with solutions. I get energy from challenges and function best when I am surrounded by many inspiring people and processes. Everywhere I go I try to see the bigger picture, challenging myself to find the improvements.
My greatest strength? That’s my high sensitivity. As a result, I always have an eye for detail, I am more than motivated to learn, and empathy is ensured. 😉
Do you feel that I have inspired you? Do not hesitate to contact me!
Four Day Work Week Pilot 2022: UK Results and Learnings
Four Day Work Week Pilot 2022: UK Workplace Results and Learnings, with Kyle Lewis, Autonomy Research Limited
The world’s largest national four day work week pilot took place in the United Kingdom for six months during 2022, with over 60 companies taking part.
We’re delighted that Kyle Lewis of Autonomy, the pilot’s research coordinator, will present the results and key learnings in this session at our Workplace Trends Research Summit, with a focus on its implications for the workplace. This presentation will provide valuable insight on the impact a four-day week can have in making teams and workspaces positive places to be. The four-day week is a rising trend across many sectors, and understanding its strengths, practical requirements and risks is vital for all workplace professionals.
An overview of the trials:
Between June and December 2022, around 3000 workers based throughout the UK and representing more than thirty sectors, received 100 per cent of their pay for 80 per cent of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain at least 100 per cent productivity.
The pilot has been coordinated by 4 Day Week Global, in partnership with us – leading think tank Autonomy – the UK’s 4 Day Week Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.
This experiment has gained national and international media coverage, drawing interest from the Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Times, the BBC and many others. It led to a bill on the four-day week being tabled in parliament, and enquiries for our workplace consultancy services have risen dramatically.
The pilot has collected qualitative and quantitative data on the impact of a four-day week on the participating organisations. This has covered (though not been limited to):
• Employee wellbeing and stress
• Employee work satisfaction and experience
• Recruitment and retention
• Productivity and output
• Family and personal life
• Energy use
The UK programme has run alongside similar pilots in Ireland, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Israel, and is accompanied by many firms commencing trials or implementing a shorter working week independently. What stands out in particular about the UK programme concerns its size and scope.
This presentation will provide an exclusive in depth exploration of the data collected over the course of the programme and provide expert analysis on what the research indicates about the future of working time and its reduction within the UK and beyond.
One of the key learnings the presentation will focus on concerns the growing interest in the four-day week shown from non desk-based sectors. Switching to a four-day week is evidently a growing trend, particularly among desk-based work settings. However, the UK pilot programme demonstrated that the take up of the idea is starting to be implemented within sectors typically thought of as being ‘non-compatible’ with four-day week practices (manufacturing, logistics and hospitality). The presentation will focus on these particular case studies from the pilot in order to provide new learnings on what the data reveals about the non-typical four-day week work environments.
Find out the outcomes and recommendations from this project at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Kyle Lewis, Director and Head of Consultancy, Autonomy Research Limited
Kyle co-founded Autonomy and leads on our shorter working week consultancy and research. With Will Stronge, he is the co-author of Overtime (Verso, 2021) and managed the research branch of the UK’s four-day week pilot in 2022.
Kyle has project managed the majority of our consultancy projects, leading client interaction, drafting reports and guiding our interview, workshop and survey processes. He is currently completing a PhD in Political Theory and Sociology at the University of West London.
We know people sit too much, particularly while at work. But how do you encourage an active workplace and people to ‘sit less and move more’ and is there a link between the lack of movement and the office itself? Indoor Positioning Systems (GPS for inside buildings) may be a useful tool to investigate the relationship between peoples’ movement and the physical environment of the office. However, there are questions around the accuracy of these systems, how much data is needed, and whether the data can be combined with other workplace data.
This session at the upcoming Workplace Trends Research Summit with Dr Brett Pollard of Hassell, presents the results of a 4-year research project, undertaken in a real-world office, that investigated whether Indoor Positioning Systems can be used to capture office workers’ movement behaviour and if there is a relationship between these behaviours and features of their office. Brett will show best practice techniques for using high resolution data streams to evaluate workplaces and promising opportunities to help people move more at work and be part of an active workplace.
Many people, especially office workers, sit for much of the day, with potentially serious consequences for their heath. This lack of movement was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially amongst those working from home and continues even after returning to the office. In response, the message from health authorities around the world is clear; ‘sit less and move more’. However, the effects of many interventions aimed at helping office workers to move more and sit less, quickly fade, or result in sitting being replaced with prolonged standing, which also has serious health impacts. A crucial step in the development of more effective, longer tasting interventions could be to locate where in the office movement behaviours occur and investigate the influence the office environment has on these behaviours. However, commonly used devices such as accelerometers provide limited, if any, location information, while surveys and observations only provide brief glimpses of location and are open to recall, observer and other biases.
In cities across the world, Global Positioning System (GPS), Wi-Fi and mobile phone data are increasing being used to study utilisation, travel patterns, movement behaviour and their relationship with the urban environment. However, GPS doesn’t work well inside buildings, Wi-Fi lacks the required accuracy and people don’t always carry their mobile phones while in the office.
Research from various disciplines suggests that Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) may be useful for investigating movement behaviours in the office environment. Yet little is known about the use of IPS in offices, including their accuracy, how they compare to accelerometers, data collection periods, and whether IPS data can be combined with spatial and environmental data.
Using data collected in a real-world office, this 4-year research project sought to answer two interrelated research questions: 1) Can IPS data be used to measure, analyse, and describe the movement behaviours of office workers in an open-plan office? and 2) Is there a relationship between these behaviours and the physical environment of the office?
The methods and results of this project provide much needed guidance for those considering the use of IPS and other high-resolution data to evaluate office workplaces and other indoor environments. The findings also show some unexpected links between office workers’ movement and features of their office. Links that could be harnessed to create offices that help people to move more while at work, creating an active workplace.
In this research project, six studies were conducted in a 1,220 m2 open-plan floor of a commercial office tower using multiple sources of high-resolution participant and environmental data. Data was collected from multiple groups of participants using an Indoor Positioning System and accelerometers while the environmental data were collected using Indoor Environment Quality sensors and a Spatial Metrics Calculator. The millions of individual data points were processed, analysed, and visualised using R, the Tidyverse and other R packages.
Find out the outcomes and recommendations from this project at the Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023 in London and online.
Dr Brett Pollard, Senior Researcher, Hassell
Brett Pollard is a Senior Researcher at the multidisciplinary design practice, Hassell. He is passionate about creating healthy places that have a positive impact for people and the planet. Brett also believes in the power of research and collaboration to create innovative solutions for complex problems.
He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine and Heath at the University of Sydney, a Master of Design Science and is a registered Architect and Landscape Architect. Brett also promotes the social and environmental benefits of cycling, and has clocked up over 30,000km riding to and from work.
Reclaiming Privacy in a Transparent World: Making Dens at Work
This innovative research, which will be presented at our upcoming Workplace Trends Research Summit on 19 April 2023, is based on a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) study of the Bristol Business School building – a flagship, largely open plan, space that aims to attract students, facilitate links with businesses and foster a collaborative space for staff to work together. The strategic aim of the building was that it should be ‘generative’ and was designed to link with the strategic vision: a building to support a community that is professionally engaged, vocationally relevant, internationally connected and academically strong.
Both core funders of this POE research project, ISG plc (construction) and Stride Treglown (architects) identified a need to undertake an original POE of the building in order to explore the user experience and use of the new space using a creative and innovative approach. Whilst more traditional POE approaches focus predominantly on the technical and functional performance of a building, they rarely gather detailed, subjective, in-depth data based on the user experience of the building. This POE research project fills this gap.
The project provides a nuanced, personal, emotional and sensory exploration of a flagship building, using modern visual methods: through the use of Instagram and participant-led photography.
The findings in this presentation emerge from an in-depth, user-centred, qualitative, sensory post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of a flagship building – Bristol Business School. The aim of the research was to investigate how the ethos of the building has impacted on user experiences of working, studying, and visiting it. Architecturally, the building provides considerable open, shared space not formally designated for particular activities. Walls and partitions are largely glass, with space arranged around a full height atrium, and central staircase affording expansive views through the building and the activities going on within it. This led us to question: How does a transparent, collaborative, flexible and open building affect working and studying practices? What influence does it have on users’ and is the building operating as predicted? (for example, has it been differently understood and/or experienced by users?). Traditional POE instruments do not gather this kind of information and so a secondary aim of the research was to experiment with visual and qualitative methodologies as effective vehicles for POE: What can we learn from this research that can help us develop and design buildings in the future? Only about 10% of our findings replicate areas covered by traditional POE, suggesting there is great utility in employing more qualitative approaches to POE guides.
Using innovative visual methods including Instagram, participant-led and participant-directed photography, alongside image-led discussion groups, data was collected over a full year cycle with over 250 participants contributing to the study; 30% staff, 60% students and 10% visitors. Building users were asked to submit photographs and captions of their spatial experiences in the building that addressed two simple questions:
How are you using the building?
How do you feel about the building?
The majority of users submitted their photographs and captions to the project team individually. Over 740 photographs were received in total.
In this presentation, I will be exploring how visual methods can tell us more about users’ lived experiences of a largely open plan workplace and will focus on findings from this research that centre, specifically, around visibility and transparency. Key findings highlight how open and expansive views afforded by glass are sometimes welcomed, but there is a need to balance visibility against individuals’ privacy when designing buildings of this kind. There are unintended effects of making work visible, and psychological and cultural implications arise from having bodies on display.
In order to unpack these findings, I will draw on research that examines the ‘glass cages and glass palaces’ of work (Gabriel, 2005), where open plan buildings such as these are so representative of present-day workplaces. The wider design narrative here is that openness and glass facades and huge atria speak of collaboration and togetherness and celebrating all that we do by putting it on display. Indeed, in the post-covid era, spaces for collaboration in the office are now considered by many a ‘must have’. Yet, the findings in this research suggest a different experience for users, where continuous visibility and transparency can evoke feelings of exposure and insecurity.
So, what is the response to this unforgiving gaze and continuous exposure? What do people do in response to these open spaces? Here, our data highlights how users feel, but what happens next? Interestingly in our data, we see subtle forms of resistance in the face of all this. Our findings point towards matters concerning power, privacy, and personalisation, and specifically how users of the building seek refuge in corners, nooks, and crannies, and how these rather unorthodox hiding places take on a den-like quality, providing important sites for learning, reflection, and seclusion.
I explore this idea of seeking refuge and hiding places using previous research on privacy at work (Shortt, 2015), as well as Sobel’s work on den-making behaviour (2020), as a way of understanding users’ response to continuous exposure in open plan and the ongoing intimate relations that organisations insist on encouraging though their narratives of collaboration and transparency. This is presented through three key themes; secrecy, placemaking, and security, and questions – is den-making part of contemporary workplace spatial practice? and what does this mean for creating inclusive workplaces for the future?
Dr Harriet Shortt Associate Professor in Organisation Studies, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England and
Head of Visual Engagement, Bibo Studios
Harriet is an academic, researcher, and workplace consultant in the field of spatial change and user experience. She has 17 years’ experience in researching and working with organisations exploring space, place, and the material world of work. She has expertise in qualitative research methods including visual, arts-based approaches to understanding user experiences of placemaking. She is often invited to comment on spatial change and working practices in the media and her research has been published in international journals and won awards for research excellence.
Harriet is passionate about user experiences of buildings, places, and facilities and believes that successful placemaking encompasses an awareness of cultural shifts, diverse needs, innovative communications, and a sympathetic understanding of people and their everyday lives.
“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.
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:
‘People’: Characteristics and requirements of a diverse and multi-generational workforce, the choices of which affect spatial and organisational provision requirements.
‘Activities’: Range of roles, tasks and focus areas within contemporary workplaces that outline an operational approach that best responds to the requirements of organisations.
‘Place’: Aspects of geography, and dimensions of buildings and sites, directly related to the physical workspace which highlight opportunities and challenges for design.
‘Technology’: Technological requirements and digital transformation.
‘Travel’: The future of commuting to and from work.
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.
Dr Matthew Davis
Dr Linhao Fang
Archontia Manolakelli
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.
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.
Workplace Design – Recollection not Revolution
Guest post by Nigel Oseland, Workplace Unlimited
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his rather ambiguous announcement last Sunday on his Covid-19 exit strategy. There have been plenty of previous posts from the workplace industry anticipating the announcement and how redesigning the office is the solution. But I firmly believe that we already have the answers, and have had them for some time, but have repeatedly chosen to ignore them. I recommend we start by recollecting and (re)introducing tried and tested best practice in the workplace before we push a design revolution.
Let us just remind ourselves of those long forgotten best practice design principles which workplace strategists have been recommending for at least two decades:
1. Occupational density
For years in the UK we have been chasing density, the space provision per person in the office, in the name of space and cost efficiency. For example, the BCO’s Occupier Density Study published in 2009 found an average of 11.8m2 per desk, across the whole building NIA, compared to 9.6m2 per desk in the 2018 study. The 2.2m2 difference may not seem like a lot but it is equivalent to losing almost one workstation with associated circulation per occupant (or two industry standard desk surfaces). Sadly, UK legislation on workspace requirements does not help – the minimum is approximately 4.6m2 per person (assuming the 11m3 minimum and a standard 2.4m floor to ceiling height). These low standards allow densities to be chased and best practice ignored. It is well documented that in the animal kingdom, overpopulation often leads to disease – nature’s way of addressing the balance. High density impacts temperature, air quality and noise along with accessibility and egress. A return to lower density offices which support performance and health is long overdue.
2. Desk Size
To meet the higher densities, desk sizes have reduced. I recall my 2 x 1m desk at my first architectural practice, providing me with a clear 2m between those sitting adjacent to or opposite me. The current UK industry norm is 1400mm wide desks, and I have worked with efficiency-zealous clients insisting that 1m wide desks provide sufficient space! These smaller desks result in more noise distraction, infringement of personal space (see Hall’s Proxemic Framework) and higher likelihood of cross-infection. Simply put, stop manufacturing and installing smaller and smaller desks.
3. Partitioning
There are some similarities in designing workspaces to prevent noise distraction and cross-infection. Distance helps reduce noise, and infection. Semi-partitioning (not necessarily walls) also helps, as do desk screens that are sufficiently high enough to cover the mouth but not reduce the line of sight (approximately 1300-1400mm), but there has been an ongoing trend for low or no desk screens and minimal partitions. I am neither an advocate of private offices nor fully open plan workspaces. Office layout is not a simple dichotomy of open versus closed but a scale with an optimal layout that I refer to as the landscaped office, borrowed from Bürolandschaft. The landscaped office is predominantly open plan but with zoned and semi-partitioned spaces broken up by storage, bookshelves, planting, acoustic screens and alternative work-settings such as quiet pods, focus rooms, meeting areas and social spaces. Reintroduce zoning and partitioning in the workspace.
4. Indoor air quality (IAQ)
From a design perspective, temperature, noise and air quality are the most common causes of dissatisfaction and loss of performance in the office. In the past, the level of fresh air intake in mechanically ventilated offices was reduced, and the stale air recirculated, to minimise energy costs – outdoor air will need filtering and heating or cooling thus using more energy. This practice was partly responsible for Sick Building Syndrome and the transmission of other diseases. Fresh air rates and treatment will need readdressing in the post Covid-19 workplace.
5. Agile Working
Many workplace strategists are advocates of agile/flexible/smart/ remote/activity-based working and have been promoting the benefits since the early 90s, see one of my early reports. Benefits have been proven to include: increased performance, reduced absenteeism, enhanced cross-selling, increased attraction and reduced attrition, and business continuity as less disruptions due to travel issues or viruses. Empower people to work when and where they are most productive, including occasionally working from home.
– Home Working
UK Government’s guidance recommends working from home, a very sensible approach that is fundamental to a good agile working environment. Now that most office workers, and their managers, have experienced working from home, the uptake is likely to be higher than previously.
If the workforce are allowed to work from home for say two days per week and the time in and out the office is well managed, then the number of desks required will reduce by up to 40%.
However, do remember it is the employers’ responsibility to provide a safe workplace for their employees, so there will be additional costs in providing the workforce with the right technology, equipment and furniture to work effectively from home. I have already spotted unscrupulous “no win, no fee” law firms offering to represent those who have had a fall when working from home.
The new office is likely to be a more blended environment mixing the physical with the virtual, so that those in or out of the office can seamlessly work together.
– Desk-Sharing
Using agile working to help reduce the density and number of desks is likely to mean that desk-sharing (hot-desking) in some form is required. It is unlikely that hot-desking will be carried out the way it currently is with people grabbing desks as they become vacant. It is more likely that a shared desk is obtained and used throughout the duration of the day followed by a deep clean overnight that allows the desk to be used safely by a colleague the next day. The service level agreements of cleaning contracts will need to be revisited with more regular desk cleaning.
Also worth considering in the short-term, if 40% of the desk chairs in an office are simply removed, perhaps every other desk chair, then the overall workspace density will be reduced, and the occupants will have more buffer space. Alternatively, alternate desks could be marked or coloured up to indicate days that they may be used.
6. Shift Working
The Government’s guidance also suggest shift working (technically a type of flexible working). This is a less popular alternative to home working. In theory, the workforce could work two or even three 8-hour shifts in one day and assuming they can travel to the office the density the number of occupants, and corresponding density, could be reduced by a half or two-thirds. Again, in the short-term alternate desk chairs could be removed or desk marked up to indicate the fays they may be used.
The issue of travel is fundamental and a tricky one that needs resolving. There is little point in designing for social distancing in the post Covid-19 office if staff are first travelling to work on crowded trains and the underground. Note, train carriages are approximately 60m2 thus accommodating just 15 people with 2m separation. Furthermore, many people work in high-rise buildings, where the wait times for lifts are already agonising at peak hours, so access to upper floors will be a challenge if there is only one or two people allowed per lift car. Maybe in the long-term we will see the rise of the low-rise building or perhaps the reintroduction of paternoster lifts. Travel to and from work is a priority but agile working, with home working, is the more obvious solution in the short-term.
The above design solutions will only work if the right behaviours are in place alongside good leadership.
Humans are creatures of habit and unless continuously reminded or rewarded will revert to previous behaviours. For example, consider how behaviours quickly returned to “normal” after similar, admittedly less contagious, viruses such as SARS and MERS.
Also, my personal observation, is that basic hygiene such as hand-washing and social distancing has not continued with the same vigour as at the start of the pandemic. As a psychologist, I draw on basic theory to explain why new behaviours are not sustained.
For example, Operant Conditioning helped clarify why behaviours that result in reward, or the avoidance of unpleasantness or punishment, are more likely to be repeated. One issue with Covid-19 is that the negative consequences are not immediate and so the “distance” from the required behaviour change makes it less sustainable. Consider the Stanford marshmallow experiment in which a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward (a marshmallow or pretzel), or two small rewards if they waited for 15 minutes. It was found that those with lower education were more likely to take the immediate reward rather than wait. Furthermore, in terms of everyday health threats, 60% of those suffering a heart attack return to smoking, despite the clear benefits of quitting.
Behaviour change requires continuous reinforcement, but Covid-19 is a more like a one-off incident, so repeat communications with reminders and short-term rewards will be required to sustain new behaviours. The design solutions above and recently proposed by the workplace community will at least act as reminder and nudge behaviours, but I am not convinced that the required behaviours will stick beyond a novelty period.
In terms of leadership, trusting and empowering staff to occasionally work from home is a clear pre-cursor to adopting agile working. In the majority of my projects, it is middle management that object the most to working from home. Many prefer their staff to be to hand and take the easy route of managing performance by time in the office rather than by agreed deliverables.
More importantly, right now we need to cease the practice of presenteeism, where staff feel obliged to turn up to the office even when ill, and actively discourage staff from returning until fully restored back to good health. Our new-found skills with on-line meetings, supported by an investment in technology, will help staff connected when not in the office. In the long-term blended physical/virtual working environments will help sustain such practice.
In Conclusion
Workplace design can help us overcome infection from viruses but, rather than reinvent the workplace, we need to first recollect and adopt those best practices that have been repeatedly ignored.
There are some relatively easy low-cost short-term solutions, such as continuing home working and reducing desk densities by removing seats up marking up desks. Long-term design solutions will help nudge and sustain the required behaviours going forward. There are likely to be associated up-costs due to new technology, increased cleaning regimes and reduced space density, but consider it a form of medical insurance.
Right now ongoing clear and sensible communication and leadership, based on the management and design principals listed above, is essential.
Guest post by Nigel Oseland, Workplace Unlimited Nigel is a workplace strategist, change manager, environmental psychologist, researcher, international speaker and author. He draws on his psychology background and his own research to advise occupiers on how to redefine their workstyles and rethink their workplace to create working environments that enhance individual and organisational performance and deliver maximum value. Nigel is a co-founder of Workplace Trends.