The office of the future, meeting purges, toxic work relationships
Here are 5 things to know about work this week.
Hello, and welcome to WorkLife’s 5 Things newsletter. In this weekly newsletter, we will spotlight five things to know about the latest issues affecting modern workplaces.?
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1. Does a meeting purge actually help?
Some companies – among them work management platform Asana – doubled down on efforts it was already making around streamlining meetings. In early 2022 Asana conducted a “meeting doomsday” exercise. Employees were asked to identify recurring meetings that they found lacked value and then remove all of the standing meetings with fewer than five attendees from their calendar for 48 hours.?
The results: a few months later meeting lengths had shrunk. Most 30-minute meetings were converted to 15 minutes, some weekly meetings were moved to every other week or month, and others were deleted entirely. That meant each person saved an average of 11 hours per month, totaling about 3.5 workweeks per year.?
“Following our Meetings Doomsday and Meeting Reset interventions, the biggest change we’ve seen is a more thoughtful approach to both scheduling and structuring meetings, such as moving meetings to async or delegating attendance at the meeting to one or two team members,” said Rebecca Hinds, PhD , Asana’s head of the Work Innovation Lab.
2. Gensler sets a new standard for office design
Since Gensler建筑设计事务所 opened the doors to its new San Francisco office at the end of September, employee attendance has steadily increased.
The architecture and design firm has dubbed the new 45,000-square-foot space its “office of the future,” having meticulously planned the workspaces to meet the productivity needs of a modern, hybrid workforce. The company hopes the layout will serve as a useful blueprint for other employers and hammer home the important role workspaces play in employees’ desire to be in the office more.
Design is a crucial element for those who are mandating a return to the office, but it can often still be overlooked, experts say. “The power of place has an influence on people’s behavior in being able to bring people together and to think outside of your normal being,” said Kelly Dubisar, IIDA , principal, design director and regional design experience leader at Gensler.
3. Improv skills are helping people be more successful in the office
Corporate workplaces are increasingly borrowing techniques from the performing arts industry, as leaders and their staff look to brush up on their social and presentation skills as they go back to in-person work.
Theatrical improvisation is a tactic of lightning-quick creative thinking and has long been a foundation skill cultivated by stand-up comedians. To adapt it to the corporate world, it has been relabelled “applied improvisation.” Major companies including Google, McKinsey, and PepsiCo have all invested in this form of training for several years. It’s now gaining more traction in the corporate world, according to Theodore Klein, managing partner at Boston Strategy Group, which delivers organizational development programs to companies.
Learning these skills on the job is also helping foster deeper connections and strengthening company culture — two key reasons for returning to the office in the first place, and comes as more in-person interactions lead to disagreements and conflicts in the workplace that are expected to continue. As such, more companies are putting their workers through improv and stand-up comedy training.
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4. Are microcultures helpful or harmful?
Large corporations with hundreds or thousands of employees, multiple levels, departments, and operations spanning across regions might be missing the point when trying to foster one single cohesive, company-wide culture. Recent research published by Deloitte found that companies should instead embrace microcultures that pop up when a cohort of employees at a larger organization develop their own standards, values and way of doing things.
As hybrid work takes over as the most popular working arrangement, microcultures and granting more autonomy for certain groups based on functions and geographies are essential for effective transitions to new ways of working, experts say.
But what does a successful microculture look like in action?
5. When toxic work relationships feel never-ending
Your relationships at work are a huge part of your life — so what happens when you get stuck in a toxic relationship with someone you work with? Most people feel they have few options for addressing this behavior, especially when it comes from higher-ups.
“Unfortunately we live in a world where office politics, toxic relationships are happening, and they will always be happening in every workplace,” said Renata Junkova , a career and executive coach.
When faced with toxic behaviors or situations, almost half (49%) of workers at tech companies said they don’t do or say anything, according to a survey of over 1,000 respondents from Talent MLS and Culture Amp. They have little faith that things will change, with nearly the same amount believing their companies will remain toxic in the future. But why? We spoke to the experts to find out.
This article is one of a six-part editorial series that will examine the importance of work relationships and how social dynamics are evolving between coworkers, peers, bosses, families, and clients, in the hybrid era, and amid the rise of artificial intelligence.
Elsewhere in Digiday Media
Check out some of Digiday Media’s other stories on the future of work over the past week:
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This newsletter was curated by Cloey Callahan , senior reporter at WorkLife. Let us know what you think, or what you hope to see more of, by dropping us a note at [email protected].