TRANSFORMATIVE WORKPLACES - MOSH PIT #115

Workplaces have evolved to wherever work gets done but not all spaces have the resources and flexibility needed to complete quality work. Transformative workplaces do. They are dynamic systems that respond to employees' needs—which have accelerated, fueled by awareness, technology, and global change. Workplace designs should respond to these evolving needs with choices driven by the employee(s) who are responsible for the work and accountable for its success. My perspective: listen to history, people, buildings, and science. Solve for work first, then place.

Listen to History?

• Employees know how to do their jobs or probably wouldn’t have them.
• Mentors matter: water cooler time, visible work in progress, historical successes displayed.
• Data security is a huge issue. It’s also whack-a-mole and will never be fully resolved.
• Commutes suck.
• Open offices were about saving space (they didn’t), collaboration (hello earbuds), and “seeing” work done that had moved from paper to digital. One of middle management’s greatest fears is being responsible for work they can’t see.

Listen to People

Numerous industries never went home or returned early in the pandemic: healthcare, essential services, R&D, manufacturing and more. Industries with lower attrition looked closely at % of work that required specific equipment (e.g., hospital rooms, shop floors) and % of work that could be done remotely: nurses charting outside a hospital, computational research that can take place outside a lab. Early on these industries evaluated individual tasks and identified which were place bound and which could be separated from place. Success came from giving employees flexibility and autonomy while holding them accountable for the work.??

Employees know what skills they need to accomplish a task. When they detail skills as collective resources, they are also outlining measurements of success for management: who should contribute to a task, what the results look like, and how they will be measured. Collaboration with purpose. These skills might not be found within traditional interdepartmental relationships. Giving employees the agency to gather skills as needed also highlights when mentors should contribute.

Tie data requirements to tasks and not job titles; data access should be dynamic by project. Connecting data access to project-based needs addresses data security issues stemming from locations. Depending on level of project security, certain places are acceptable.

Technology influences everything we do—without it, the pandemic would have been cataclysmic—but it’s a French fry to our ketchup. It’s a transport mechanism, an enabler, an equalizer, it’s not the solution itself. Let responsible employees choose the tech they need to complete project work. It’s far less expensive to swap tech than to replace a frustrated employee. My perspective: we will soon stop carrying laptops and just carry interfaces. Walk up to a work setting, confirm identify, and have application and data permissions granted. The outcome is employees carrying $200 and not $2,000 of equipment.

Listen to Buildings

One: This is easy. Between sensors, cameras, QR codes, RFID tags, CAD, BIM, BIS, BMS, CAFM, CMMS, IWMS, and digital twins, there is a solution at every price point. The data is far easier to gather and less expensive than losing employees due to bad design, false adjacencies, or poor IAQ. (Goldman Sachs had a fantastic opportunity to track who showed up when they messaged, “everybody back.”)

Two: Match places to project needs instead of mandating work in place. IT coopted the term architecture and rebranded systems design. We need to coopt the term agile and adapt to uncertainly with agile, dynamic, flexible settings that foster productivity. Think fungible, flexible spaces that serve multiple needs.

Quick example: I worked with a tech firm that had 4-week sprints. That’s the time devoted to incremental work before end-users review results. We ‘sprinted’ a prototype obeya (large room) and put everything on wheels. First day of the sprint, employees set up the room any way they wanted: tables, chairs, displays, whiteboards, files, pillows, snacks. After four weeks, product results were shared with the client and furnishings were moved back against walls for the next sprint. Each sprint looked different. Employees loved it because it made sense; it connected work to place. Through this perpetual prototyping exercise, the company found they didn’t need less space; they needed more flexibility.

Three: Recognize we’ve always had third spaces. They were just part of a confined microcosm: shared offices, meeting rooms, lounge spaces, cafes, huddle rooms, hallways and stairwells for personal calls. The microcosm has grown with more choices. The challenge is figuring out branded footprint needs.

Listen to Science

We don’t have good data that connects successful learning with high achievement, and quantifying belonging is still a vibrant discussion. We do have data that shows a major key to workplace success is happiness. Here is a quantitative study on a correlation between workplace success and happiness. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between happiness in the workplace and employee engagement that leads to organizational success. The Oxford Happiness Inventory and the SHRM Employee Engagement Inventory, both validated instruments, were used during the study. Perhaps in our mindset of perpetual surveys we should be asking about happiness instead of days/week, expressos, and yoga classes. What makes each of us happy, how we want to be seen, heard, managed (oversight), and developed (mentored) is unique. Look for transitive dependencies: espresso leads to happiness which leads to positive contributions.?

Check out Shawn Achor’s TED talk on The Happiness Advantage. Remember our goal is to support business success. Happiness gets us there.

We have billions of neurons and thousands of varieties of neurons (motor, sensory, and interneurons). Evidence suggests that some neurogenesis occurs in adult brains throughout our lives. In adults ~700 new neurons are added per day, corresponding to an annual turnover of 1.75%. The term neurodiversity was coined in 1998 by Judy Singer, an Australian sociologist, to recognize that everyone’s brain develops in a unique way. The term neurodivergent is a nonmedical term that describes people whose brain develops or works differently for some reason. While some people who are neurodivergent have medical conditions, it also happens to people where a medical condition or diagnosis hasn’t been identified (this includes anxiety and depression). Anyone of us on any given day and over time could test someplace on a divergent spectrum and benefit from a variety of options.

If we are to truly design for neurodiversity we might need more and not less space.