Kursty Groves, workplace consultant and author, talks workspace and how we can use our environment to improve engagement.
Over the past five years, the number and volume of conversations around work space design has risen steadily, occasionally amplified by the publicity and fanfare surrounding the next ‘cool’ office opening. Instagrammed photos of enviable workspaces are shared by individuals as a way to show off their inspiring and creative offices to their digital community.
Most organisations can no longer deny the global forces that have shifted the workspace; technology has mobilised and connected, space has been commoditised and five generations are rubbing shoulders at the proverbial water cooler. Silicon Valley giants, whose bold proclamation of what the modern workplace should look like: expanses of beautiful, open spaces have become a weapon in the ‘war on talent’; their amenities and physical perks an entitlement of the new employees they seek to attract.
But what happens after the honeymoon period ends, when the Hawthorne effect wears off and people settle into the daily expectations of working life? Is it enough to stop at attraction; how might organisations keep the love affair with the mission and values alive long after an employee has experienced the initial positive change?
When a report by Gallup was released in 2013, it highlighted the start of what was to become a worldwide concern over employee engagement. At that time, only 13% of employees in the USA were actively engaged in their workplaces. The UK fared slightly better with 17% engaged, but pathetically so. In spite of recent gains, the levels of engagement remain worryingly low, with the least engaged generation being Millennials.
86% say they’d stay longer with an employer that had the ideal location and features
The physical workplace needs to be considered not only as an attractor of talent, but also an engager of people.
A recent study showed the relative increase in productivity between lean (unfurnished, clinical) environments and enriched (decorated with interesting artefacts and colour) environments to be 17%. What’s more interesting is the finding that empowered environments – ones where people have been involved in the process of creation or decision-making of the space – gave rise to a 32% uplift in productivity.
Moreover, through my own research, I have found that the happiness levels and engagement in an organisation increase when people are afforded a choice of settings or simply offered an invitation to contribute.
36% of workers say they will be more productive at work if they were working in the ideal office
It is the activation of spaces – the deliberate activities, events and rituals – that are built into the everyday experiences of workspaces, that bring the values and culture of an organisation to life. A slide between floors quickly becomes a gimmick unless its meaning is intrinsically linked with the values of the organisation (e.g. speed of communication) and it is continually activated (e.g. Friday Slide-day, when no one uses the lifts).
Without genuine ongoing engagement, expensive external expressions become annoyances and the genuine needs of people to engage in great work lost.
