DIRECTOR’S TAKE – TIM WADSWORTH SHARES HIS VIEWS ON RETURNING TO THE WORKPLACE

Tim Wadsworth, Chamber board director and managing director of Space, Inspiring Workspaces shares his views on returning to the workplace

The last two years have seen a ‘great experiment’ on how companies occupy their workspace. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were asked by our clients ‘what do we do with our office space?’ The best advice at the time was, to do nothing, the pandemic would be over by the summer, and we can all get back to normal.

But life, as we know, doesn’t pan out that way and we certainly are still far from ‘normal’. The majority of companies are however now expecting their people to return to the office in some form. But I hear time and time again that businesses are not allowing their workforce to work from home on a Monday or Friday, due to trust issues. Some employees are returning to a beautiful or funky new fitout where they have had no input and they may not have their own desk. But all will still have to reach the same or higher levels of productivity.

This to me doesn’t sound right.

Research

During 2020 and 2021 at Space we implemented several confidential questionnaires to our clients of which over 900 staff members completed. The first in June 2020 and the second in the summer of 2021 to establish changes in attitudes as working from home became the norm.

The headlines based on the most recent outputs:

62% of respondents desired a blend of WFH and the office environment.

18% of respondents wanted to work from the office.

20% of respondents strongly only wanted to WFH.

Regulated, previously deskbound employees have spent the last year writing many of their own workplace rules. They didn’t buy bean bags – instead they converted spare rooms, attics, or under-stair cupboards into micro-offices. And while business attire retailers went bust and razor blade sales halved, the lead time on treadmills, rowing machines, puppies and garden office pods stretched to six months.

This represents a major societal shift. It may not look that impactful, but 7% of employees who did not have a space they could use for work before the pandemic, have hewn out a new designated workspace in corners of their homes. Yet pre-COVID Leesman*(2) data tells us that 50% of employees had little to no experience of working from home before the pandemic – either because they had no desire to, their organisation didn’t want them to, infrastructures did not support them, or regulation prevented them. What are you planning for this group when it is safe to return them to offices? What if they prefer and want to retain their newfound alternative?

TED talk on the future of work:

Hybrid working

Many other surveys conducted during the lockdowns reveal that those working believe they are more productive but feel they are missing out on social interaction and collaboration with their colleagues. In-depth discussions with my clients indicate that perceived productivity is related to short-term goals, but some are concerned that long-term productivity gained through innovation, requiring creativity and brainstorming sessions, may be lost.

Furthermore, those who extensively work from home are more likely to suffer from loneliness. As most people prefer to return to the office for two to three days per week, there is a valid reason to implement desk sharing, reduce the number of desks, and utilise the released space to foster more social interaction, collaboration, and creativity. This, along with other facilities and services makes returning to the office more attractive.

Consequently, the term?‘hybrid working’?was introduced in acknowledgment that during working hours some team members who need to work together will be in the office whereas others will be at home or elsewhere.?Hybrid working reflects supporting simultaneous physical and virtual working through the design of meeting spaces and technology platforms along with revised management practices. However, much of the discussion on hybrid working has turned to when people should actually be in the office, with some organisations opting for rotas of fixed allocated days.

Flexibility over working time and place is one of the core benefits to the employees allowing them to manage personal commitments (such as medical appointments, home deliveries and school runs) more easily, thus providing a better work-life balance.

We avoid the words ‘Hot Desking”

The preceding flexible working strategies and most likely the new hybrid workplaces often include desk sharing solutions. If the staff are regularly working away from the office, then they do not need a desk every day therefore the number of desks can be reduced.

Some staff fear not finding a desk or not being able to sit at their preferred one.

As well as the anxiety of not finding a desk some people struggle with not having their own dedicated desk. This may be related to the desk representing recognition and a valued role within the organisation; such views tend to be expressed by those feeling less secure in their job or employed in a more subordinate role.

Losing your desk

Change managers involved in transitioning staff to a new working environment often refer to the?Kübler-Ross model. This originally referred to the typical five stages of grief after losing loved ones, but it is generalisable to other bereavements which appears to include losing a desk.

The successful implementation of desk sharing is undoubtedly dependent upon good communication, consultation, and change management to help overcome any concerns, barriers, and a rudimentary fear of the unknown.

A new opportunity

Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on home and work life. However, it does provide the opportunity to rethink the design and planning of office space. As most office workers are now familiar with flexible working, the balance of office space can be addressed with more thought given to the spaces that are truly required in the office, for the staff and for the success of the organisation, as well as making the office more attractive than staying at home.

Now more than ever is the time to invest in people, providing the best facilities rather than consider the office a cost burden. Well planned, implemented, and managed agile/flexible workplaces can meet occupant needs and provide an attractive working environment whilst being cost-effective.

It has given every office worker a totally new perspective on almost everything associated with working in offices; from the commute to the free coffee and the camaraderie, to a creeping sense of the gross inefficiency of much of it. So, if they have not already, you should be primed for any one of those internal and external stakeholders to start to ask why premises was for quite so long your second largest expenditure item, when at face value the ‘experiment’ has worked out well for the majority of employees and most organisations.

Office Design

Knight and Haslam’s 2010 the University of Exeter* (1) experiment concluded that overly organised, sterile, characterless ‘lean’ offices negatively impacted employee productivity. Instead, they found spaces that were ‘enriched’ with orchestrated, stage-managed character were better for employees and those spaces that were ‘empowered’, where employees were involved in personally co-creating their surroundings delivered significantly better operational outcomes.

The latter delivered a 30% improvement in output compared to the sterile ‘lean’ space. But creating a lean office isn’t about dehumanising it, it’s about aligning it with the processes it is accommodating. Efficiency and effectiveness in process design isn’t about driving more from less, it’s about removing wasteful steps that had to be inserted because the goals were not clearly defined and shared by all from the start of the process and throughout the process’ development thereafter.

That said, some 11 years after Knight and Haslam’s experiment, millions of employees worldwide were mobilised to create their own highly personalised home-based workplaces. And the results have been overwhelmingly good. Employees’ sense of personal productivity has increased. In fact, according to employees responding to Leesman’s global studies, the average home is supporting employees better than the average office. That’s good news when appraising your crisis response and business resilience, but a shocking indictment of the quality of the average office you were paying huge sums to operate prior.

References:

1. Knight and Haslam’s Research 2010., University of Exeter
2. Leesman Why-Workplace-Guide 2021., Tim Oldman, Leesman.
3. Other reading that has contributed to this article, The Human Centric Workplace by Simone Fenton-Jarvis. Beyond the Workplace Zoo by Nigel Oseland.