Our panelists Rich Benoit, Senior Consultant with Steelcase’s Applied Research + Technology team and Jessica Glyde, VP and Senior Project Manager at JLL Design Solutions engaged our audience with a series of polling questions. These questions lead to some energizing audience participation as we debated such topics as return to the office policies, generations in the workplace, and important issues on leaders minds such as sustainability, diversity equity and inclusion and wellbeing.

In terms of return to the office, most respondents for the poll indicated that they either had individual choice as to balance home and office work or they had their company decide for them.   Very few indicated that they were expected to be in the office every day or that they had absolutely no guidelines. Rich commented that the most successful return to office initiatives have some level of policy and expectations; but that at the same time, the difference in actual attendance increases only slightly if employees are asked to be in the office two verses three days per week. Jessica Glyde works with customers on a national basis and indicated that this is consistent with what she is seeing across the nation.

In both sessions, the conversation turned to what amenities companies were providing to encourage return to the office. As companies are divesting of real estate, some of that funding is going to increase amenities for employees who are coming to the office. Jessica sites a popular ride share app company who is providing breakfast, lunch and “to-go” dinner at no cost to employees. While this does seem to be an effective tactic for many organizations, Rich cautioned against the dreaded “badge coffee” – employees simply badging in to get a free coffee and then going home to resume their work.

Our next question posed was around increased importance of engagement, sustainability, DEI initiatives and wellbeing since the pandemic. Not surprisingly, wellbeing topped the list, however the conversation took a much broader context with discussions of employees bringing their whole self to work and how we as employers support them with the workplace. DEI initiatives were also top of everyone’s mind, including how the workspace can be inclusive in terms of furniture, technology and even food service.

Finally, we had a spirited conversation around the generations in the workplace. Many in the audience acknowledged the surprisingly strong desire for Gen Z employees to make the commute to the office. Research around what motivates Gen Z included career development and meaningful work.

We thank our panelists for a spirited conversation and look forward to engaging in the future.

The post That’s a Wrap! Rethinking the Workplace to Earn the Commute Event appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Our efforts first began with a focus on diversity from a racial perspective following the murder of George Floyd. While that continues to be important to the organization, we’ve broadened our purview to understand that diversity includes all things that make individuals unique: race, gender, age, religion, education, economic background, and sexual orientation, to name just a few.

It goes without being said that it is ethical for employers to create an environment that is representative and inclusive of the vast communities they may serve, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that it also caters to the success of a business. Just like any living organism in nature, companies must evolve with the ever-changing world in which they exist, or they will perish. As we celebrate Ohio Desk’s 115^th anniversary this year, we understand that the best way to progress is by utilizing insights from all members of our organization. That is why we’re piloting our first Employee Resource Group, or ERG, for Emerging Professionals.

An ERG is a voluntary employee led peer group where individuals can meet and support others with whom they share commonalities within an organization. These commonalities can be identity based (i.e., race) or situational (i.e., caregivers). The Ohio Desk Emerging Professionals Resource Group will aim to connect those who are interning, relatively new to the workforce, or perhaps adjusting to a career change.

We have seen unprecedented changes to the workplace and economy within the past few years and understand the experience of being an “emerging professional” will not be the same across generations. The goal is to encourage collaboration, growth, and mentorship by guiding group discussion, workshopping skills, and strengthening connections within the company. Topics of conversations may include what makes group members feel fulfilled at work, how they view advancement within the organization, or how they are coping with record high inflation while trying to establish themselves.

By backing this ERG, Ohio Desk hopes to aid in the development of less-tenured employees while giving them confidence to share thoughts on organizational matters and play a role in how our company evolves. As we continue to advance in our DE&I journey, we hope this group is a catalyst for employees to create other resource groups that can aid in the growth and diversification of Ohio Desk!

The post Shifting Perspectives and Gaining Momentum with DE&I appeared first on Ohio Desk.

The dialogue around equity and injustice has been front and center in recent years, and as we’ve listened and absorbed the conversation, our team has realized that we need to step up and expect more of ourselves. Serving our community isn’t enough: we need to integrate with our community. We need to take an active role in promoting equity and inclusion within our industry. We want to earn a reputation as an organization that leads an honest, earnest charge to provide opportunities for everybody, everywhere we work.

In 2020, we formed our Community Team with five members and a simple goal: educate ourselves on the needs, struggles, and lived experiences of people of color. Our family and neighbors in Northeast Ohio are incredibly diverse, and no one person can speak for everyone. It was important for us to absorb as many voices as we could so we could better understand the work ahead.

Since then, our team has grown to thirteen people, and our efforts have resulted in a paradigm shift within the culture of Ohio Desk. We’ve trained extensively on the fundamentals of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) with the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio. We’ve met with Pastor James Knight, founder of Leading with Humility, and shared his mission of “building safe environments where everyone can thrive and bring their best selves.” We’ve even held a bi-monthly book club so all members of our organization can learn and grow together by reading first-hand accounts, teachings, and perspectives from people of all colors and orientations.

Ultimately, though, it’s not enough to say that we’re DEI-friendly: we need to prove it with our actions. We aim to embed the principles of inclusion in everything we do. That means expanding our search for new team members to include diverse sources and underrepresented groups. It means actively reaching out to minority-owned businesses for services like catering and supplies. It means keeping our focus at all times on providing a safe and welcoming workplace – and partner – for everybody in our community. Our roles and responsibilities in diversity, equity, and inclusion are constantly evolving, and there is always some aspect of our organization that we can improve.

Despite this increased focus on our DEI initiative, we have not slowed our efforts to actively assist our community. After all, diversity and inclusion are only part of our mission: we still have an obligation to the people in the communities we serve. To that end, we have worked hard to provide a variety of ways for our staff to interact with those in need throughout the year. Our Cleveland offices volunteer twice yearly with the Achievement Centers for Children and the Cleveland Food Bank. In Akron, we help feed families with the Ronald McDonald House. Our Youngstown team donates their time to local soup kitchens. We’re regularly involved with smaller grassroots efforts, too: this fall, our entire organization participated in Socktoberfest, a sock drive benefitting children through the Akron Children’s Hospital.

There’s a reason we’re called Ohio Desk, and it’s not just because of our geographical location. We have deep roots here and take pride in the communities we serve. The work is already in our DNA: honing our focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion is merely the next step in creating a better life for everybody in our communities.

The post Diversity, Equality & Inclusion at Ohio Desk appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Steelcase Eclipse Light

Not just your standard task light, the Steelcase Eclipse flawlessly illuminates your work and provides the perfect lighting just where you need to look your best on virtual calls. The best part?  The handy little stand that keeps your technology within an arm’s reach.

Steelcase Flex Personal Spaces

Hybrid work is just that – its hybrid. Workers move fluently throughout the day and home cannot be the only option for workers who need a space for “heads down” work. Flex Personal Spaces provide a heighted level of privacy and control, in the workplace.

Steelcase Everwall

It is no secret that one of the things workers expect in the office today is privacy. Private spaces in the open plan were at a premium prior to the pandemic, and that need has only increased. In addition, there has been significant pressure in the supply chain and am increase in labor shortages. All of this makes Everwall the perfect product to create a resilient workplace. Enhance acoustics, accelerated installation timeline and lux finishes make Everwall the ultimate hybrid work partner.

Jabra PanaCast Camera

The ultimate team player when braiding the digital and physical work environments. With seamless connection, point to zoom camera and superiors acoustics, this device seamlessly connects your teams – wherever they may be.

The post We Make it Easy, Hybrid Work Edition appeared first on Ohio Desk.

As Jo heads into the office for the first time in two years, she knows things will feel different. She doesn’t have an assigned desk anymore — her company moved to unassigned spaces when they adopted a hybrid work schedule. She spends more time on video calls — over half of her meetings will mix in-person and remote participants. Her hours shift depending on her work and her life. She’s excited to have more flexibility in her schedule and greater autonomy, but…

If Jo walks into the same workplace she left two years ago, and the only difference is new policies, the office may feel empty, it could be a struggle to get work done and she may wonder why she bothered to make the commute. She’s expecting the office to be better than what she has at home. She wants to connect with people in a new way, do meaningful work together, and still have her boundaries and needs for privacy respected.

Why Neighborhoods?

Jo is not alone. Research suggests her need for a sense of belonging and control over her environment are must-haves for people as organizations adopt hybrid work. The new reality is that hybrid work will change old patterns and behaviors, plus people want their workplace to be more humanized which means the office needs to respond to a new set of needs.

Workplaces of the past took their cues from hierarchy and efficiency. We believe they should draw inspiration from a new source — our neighborhoods where we live, learn and grow. Great neighborhoods are diverse, inclusive and resilient. They bring people together and create a sense of community, yet they change over time to respond to the people who live there. Everyone has a responsibility to the whole, and yet people’s individual identities shine. (Read why in The New Hybrid Neighborhood). We wondered, why can’t our offices be more like the places we choose to live?

If you think about a workplace like the communities in which we live, there are shared public places available to everyone, like parks, plazas and cafes, blended in with neighborhoods where people live, reflecting the unique needs and personalities of the people who reside there.

It’s different from the old paradigm of designing departments where everyone is assigned the same type of space – an office neighborhood is designed to be inclusive because it provides a diverse range of spaces that allow for differences in what people need and the ways they prefer to work. Spaces can be shared or assigned based on the degree of hybrid work or patterns of the team and the neighborhood becomes a homebase in the office where people feel they belong. (Remember Jo? She’ll know where to find her teammates and her tools — and feel connected).

Neighborhood planning is based on multi-modal spaces that are highly flexible and support a variety of types of work within one setting, making it easy to switch between individual focus work, collaboration, socialization and learning from simply being together. Planning is modular, which allows organizations to change settings within the neighborhood and be resilient as the team’s needs change. And, they support any level of hybrid work policy as well as future changes.

Neighborhoods should differ based on lots of factors, including:

• Organization and team culture
• Company size and location
• Type of work and work process
• Degree of hybrid work and level of employee mobility

They should strive for equity (inclusive experiences for everyone in-person or remote, designing with input from people using the space), engagement (a homebase for teams with a variety of ownership models to help people participate, focus and stay in flow), and ease (create multi-modal neighborhoods and settings to let people cycle through all of their day’s work activities and seamlessly navigate between physical and virtual experiences).

Creating Hybrid Neighborhoods

Jo and her team can feel more connected to each other and to the larger organization in a neighborhood like this one.

Some of the personal workspaces are assigned to people who need to be in the office more often and others are shared by the team. Both offer plenty of privacy so people can focus at their desks. But when Jo needs to take a solo video call or just find solitude, she has even more options for privacy. Nearby hybrid collaboration spaces are both enclosed and open for different types of meetings, making it easy to shift between alone and together work and equally support in-person and remote teammates. And in the middle is a “social garden,” where the team can gather, chat and learn together.

Just like at home, Jo’s neighborhood at work is part of a larger community where team neighborhoods and shared public spaces meet the diverse needs of the community. After all, we love our neighborhoods, but we want to expand our perspective and connect with people beyond our comfort zone as well.

To see how a range of spaces comes together to create a better whole, we can dive deeply into some of the settings within one hybrid neighborhood.

UNASSIGNED TEAM SPACES

Access to private spaces is critical for hybrid workers like Jo. Her new hybrid neighborhood lets her pick her level of privacy. Is she listening to someone else share information and just needs a nook with visual privacy and headphones? Or does she need to present or contribute and needs more acoustic privacy? Either way, she’s covered.

Unassigned Team Spaces – Steelcase Flex Personal Spaces and the Steelcase Karman chair give people comfort and flexibility. Orangebox On the QT pods provide visual and acoustic privacy for personal calls or short virtual meetings. Steelcase Flex Active Frames create a boundary and provide storage for neighborhood residents.

SOCIAL GARDEN

In the center of the neighborhood, this social commons space combines a living room feel with a high-performance conference room to create a place where teams can gather, reconnect and build trust.

Social Garden – The Viccarbe Savina Lounge with integrated power supports a little relaxation and the Coalesse Marien152 lounge provides additional seating for impromptu conversations. Elective Elements creates a light refreshment bar while the nearby whiteboard/chalkboard gives teams a place to share news and build team culture.

ENCLOSED HYBRID COLLABORATION ROOM

When it’s time for Jo’s hybrid team to brainstorm and generate new ideas, they need a space that does more than a static, traditional conference room. This space is designed to include remote teammates with a large remote display and light, movable markerboards, letting in-person teammates move content into view of the camera.

Enclosed Hybrid Collaboration – Teams can spread out work on the large Viccarbe Cambio table and connect with remote teammates on the monitor, hosted on Everwall adaptable architecture. Steelcase Flex Markerboards and Everwall support sketching out ideas. Then, teams can use the Steelcase Flex Board Cart to wheel everything back to their workspace.

ASSIGNED HOMES

This welcoming and vibrant section of the neighborhood gives Jo and her team a destination where they can go when they first arrive at the office. It gives them that sense of belonging because the team knows where people will be, which tools and artifacts are at their fingertips and there’s access to individual and shared spaces.

Assigned Homes – Migration SE height-adjustable desks with Steelcase Flex Personal Spaces Privacy Wraps support focus work. Nearby, a collaboration space with Steelcase Flex Personal Tables and Media Cart can be used for a quick brainstorm, and the Logitech MeetUp bar makes it easy to engage remote teammates.

Neighborhoods Are Unique

Each neighborhood will most likely be designed differently based on team culture, work process and hybrid approach.

NOMADIC NEIGHBORHOOD

This nomadic neighborhood is for unassigned workers who either are required to come into the office on certain days or who choose to come in for a specific reason. Because it caters to lots of people doing a wide variety of work, it has the broadest diversity of settings and gives people the highest degree of choice and control to meet a wide range of needs. Its social space acts as a front porch, engaging both external workers as well as those inside the neighborhood.

TEAM-OWNED NEIGHBORHOOD

This team-owned neighborhood includes project studios to support generative work. Personal focus spaces outside project rooms allow a seamless ebb and flow between individual and teamwork (needed for creativity and innovation). Open collaboration settings serve as touchdown spaces to meet with visiting colleagues. ​Design possibilities are limitless because of the modular way in which neighborhoods are planned.

FOUR DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR HYBRID WORK

In all neighborhoods, four key design principles are universal.

• Me + We​​: Design spaces to support both individuals and groups, allowing easy transitions between both.
• Fixed-to-Fluid​​: Create spaces with less emphasis on fixed architecture and furnishings, and more focus on ways to easily adapt in the moment and over time.
• Open + Enclosed: Open spaces are inherently more flexible which will invite more collaboration. Meanwhile, people want more control over their boundaries, and while they won’t always need fully-enclosed spaces, people need more access to private spaces.
• Braiding Digital + Physical ​Experiences: This is ultimately what hybrid collaboration spaces are all about. Technology and space need to be considered holistically because that’s how work will happen.

Creating Hybrid Neighborhoods: See six new spaces designed to support people’s needs in the hybrid workplace.

Explore the Hybrid Neighborhood

The post Hybrid Needs a Home: Designing Neighborhoods at Work appeared first on Ohio Desk.

We recently sat down with Dave for a little Q&A session to find out more about his interests, his inspirations and his interesting view of IT systems.

WORK-RELATED:

Q: What excites you most about working at Ohio Desk?
A: There are interesting technical challenges on a daily basis, but I get the most satisfaction out of interacting with every member of our staff. We have such a great staff and I have the benefit of working with almost everyone on a regular basis, so the challenges, stories, humor and the history we share are special to me.

Q: What do you find most interesting about IT work?
A: Though switching gears so regularly can be frustrating, I really appreciate the diversity of my workday. Challenges big and small keep me very engaged, and there is never a “regular” or “boring” day. On the technical side, I very much enjoy digging into our data…mainly in Hedberg, but also in other data sources….to assist in making sense out of the pile of activity we process on every day.  I find rummaging through sometimes hundreds of data tables to present just a few summaries or bits of information oddly satisfying .

Q: As an IT professional, what is your #1 thing (tip, hack, etc.) that you wish people knew?
A: Our staff is generally very resourceful, so there isn’t one particular trick, but one thing I think of regularly regarding IT systems is how much they seem to be organic vs “mechanical”.  I’ve seen analogies between IT systems and human physiology that are very interesting when you think of data and blood flow…or the number of cells that comprise us as compared to the number of files that make up an operating system alone, much less all the applications we use.  With all of this complexity on both sides, the fact that these systems works so well can seem miraculous, but it shouldn’t surprise us when one file of 100,000 on one of our machines starts to cause problems. As I sometimes joke with folks I’m working with, entropy comes for us all, humans or computers.

FUN FACTS:

Q: What are some of your favorite past-time hobbies?
A: I have numerous interests, but reading and travel are among my first pleasures.  Those, though, regularly take a back seat to the “task orientation” that my father ingrained in all of his children.  As a kid and early teenager, the fact that I was regularly reaching into the engine block of a car or working on some house repair project, grated on me when I would have much rather been with friends.  But now, I don’t know any other way;  so I always have some sort of project to build, repair, or otherwise maintain something.  I find a considerable pleasure in both the accomplishment and the connection with my father, particularly in the fall, when we were in more of a “rush” to complete things before the weather turned.

Q: What is the one food you couldn’t live without?
A: I don’t know that I have a food I couldn’t “live without” but I will say that my “desert island” cuisine is Indian.  The variety of spices, heats, and textures seem endless and so unusual as compared to the more conventional options we have around us.

Thank you, Dave, for all you do for Ohio Desk!

The post Employee Spotlight: Dave Miller, IT Manager appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Now, the two companies are introducing Steelcase Roam for Microsoft Surface Hub 2S 85″ and expanding the Steelcase Roam Collection to amplify large-scale collaboration in person and at a distance.

The post Work Face-to-Face When You Can’t Be appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Amongst the whirlwind of volatility that seems to spin from one crisis to the next, business leaders are looking for new skills and strategies that will help their organizations thrive in the new global economy. At the same time, in this era of unprecedented complexity, the study of resilience has emerged in which scientists, economists, government leaders and psychologists are working to understand how systems, organizations and people can adapt to stay fit within an environment of constant change.

In his new book, “Resilience, Why Things Bounce Back,” author Andrew Zolli draws from ecology and sociology to consider resilience “as the capacity of a system, enterprise, or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances.” Zolli suggests that “If we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats.”

The notion of resilience is generally talked about in terms of economies, markets, ecosystems or people, but rarely in conjunction with organizational real estate. Leading real estate professionals consider how to create greater flexibility in their portfolios, but many overlook how they might better leverage these assets by developing strategies designed for resilience. At Steelcase we asked ourselves how the concept of resilience could be applied to the creation of the places where people within an organization come together. Could we construct a strategy designed to leverage today’s complexities and embrace the speed in which circumstances change? Could real estate become an adaptive system to better support an organization’s strategy, brand and culture by shifting fluidly while remaining economically viable? Could we develop that “better boat” through real estate? In each case, we believe the answer is yes.

A GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY

Space Per Employee 2013

Ten years ago the average allocation of space per employee in the United States was 250 sq. ft. Five years from now it’s projected to shrink to 150 and other countries are moving in the same direction. Global organizations have an opportunity to not only shrink their real estate footprint but also amplify the performance of their people. Resiliency is not just about making things smaller, but also better.

A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH

Researchers define resilience as the ability to adapt to changed circumstances while continuing to maintain core purpose and integrity. Exploring and applying some of the principles of resilience provides a framework for real estate strategies to achieve this adaptive capacity.

When a real estate strategy embraces these ideas, it can create a more sustainable approach that is not only capable of withstanding volatile economic conditions, but also help builds trust and cooperation—what Zolli terms “people’s ability to collaborate when it counts.” It creates real estate that can help augment the interactions of people at work and build resilient workplace communities through strong social networks based on trust, that can flourish even in the most challenging situations.

To date, in an effort to respond to rapidly changing conditions, organizations have implemented alternative work strategies (AWS) such as teleworking, hotelling and mobile working. These have been implemented as a way to limit real estate costs while supporting organizational objectives, such as work-life balance for employees or reducing carbon footprints. The idea behind AWS was pioneered by IBM in 1989, but it’s only in the last five years that most companies—80% according to one recent study—took hold of it as a means of reducing real estate costs and supporting a more mobile workforce.

Overall, AWS reduced the size of real estate portfolios about 6-10%, according to CoreNet Global. While a broad implementation of alternative work strategies might have reduced portfolios further, currently only about one-fifth of employees are engaged in alternative work programs. And some companies that have implemented AWS as a space-cutting strategy often leave real estate idling: 11% of workers who use alternative workspaces still have an assigned workspace.

AWS has resulted in modest reductions in real estate portfolios, but there is a steady shift happening. Ten years ago the average allocation of space per employee in the U.S. was 250 square feet; today it’s 185-195 and projected to shrink to just over 150 in five years. Europe posts similar numbers, according to global real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield: offices in Italy average 215 square feet, in France 180; Spain, 162; the United Kingdom, 170; Germany, 320; and Austria, 130.

While the cost-reduction trend is encouraging, there is a growing awareness that AWS can be effective only if it’s part of a broader approach that considers effectiveness as well as efficiency. This begins with understanding that work is inherently a social endeavor and that in order to be successful people need other people, they need access to technology and they need places that bring these elements together. As one of our research colleagues put it, “The workplace is the original social network.” Thus space is being recognized by executives as a key element of organizational success.

PLACES WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO WORK

In the past, people had to go to the office to go to work. If they weren’t in the building they couldn’t connect with co-workers, the company’s IT system, or printed files; if they weren’t in the building, they weren’t working. Then technology cut the tethers to specific locations for work, the global economy became everyone’s marketplace and cutting expenses became paramount.

Technology tantalized us with the idea that we could save money by rethinking our approach to work and traditional concepts about the workplace. Did we need buildings at all? Could workers simply work from home and communicate virtually? Could the company substantially reduce its real estate and its inherent costs by implementing alternative workplace strategies? Companies that focused primarily on cost-cutting and finding ways to put more people into smaller spaces learned some tough lessons, says Peter Shannon, managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle, a worldwide real estate services firm. “Companies lost some things in the process. Teams could not truly collaborate. Employees felt disjointed. Leaders saw a decline in creativity and productivity.”

Today some companies have started mandating that people come back to the office as a way to drive collaboration and rebuild a sense of connectedness to the organization.

Despite plenty of pros and cons cited for co-location versus distributed work, real estate professionals agree that the discussion has elevated the awareness of how much the physical environment drives organizational performance and business results.

Leading organizations know this means more than just bringing people together in buildings that bear their name. It means going beyond the aesthetics of the environment to creating places that actually help people engage more fully in their work, help build trust with distributed co-workers and allow people to innovate faster. “Companies have learned and now they’re asking how to create work environments where people really want to come to work,” says Shannon.

THE TENSIONS OF TODAY

Knowing how to create places that amplify the performance of people and the organizations they work for means understanding and designing for the tensions that exist today:

• The more mobile our devices allow us to be, the more we need fixed places to come together to connect and collaborate
• The smaller our technologies, the more we need scale to share and communicate effectively with others
• The more data we generate, the more we need places to help us make sense of it
• The more collaborative we became, the more we need time alone
• The more distributed we become, the more we need to be together
• The more virtual we need to be, the more physical we want to be

This is the role that place can and should play. In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent economy, the places where organizations come together matter more than ever.

The opportunity is to not just build smaller offices, but to create destinations that attract people because it is where they can do their best work. Places that provide meaningful experiences for the people who use them, today and tomorrow. Workplaces where resilient organizations can grow and thrive.

CONSTRUCTING A RESILIENT REAL ESTATE STRATEGY

Three principles from the study of resiliency form the framework we’ve developed for creating real estate that fluidly adapts to to ever-changing circumstances and an evolving organization, while continuing to serve the company’s mission.

#1 Clustering 

Zolli writes that “resilience is often enhanced by the right kind of clustering—bringing resources into close proximity with one another…a special kind of clustering, one whose hallmark is density and diversity—of talent, resources, tools, models and ideas.”

A resilient real estate strategy is one that embraces this principle as a foundational element and promotes the cross-pollination of people, ideas and experiences through places that bring them together. These places are designed to augment their interactions, whether working alone or in teams, side-by-side or across the globe.

Such places enhance both the quality and quantity of human interaction when they are equipped with the tools and experiences that matter most—quick and easy access to colleagues, the tools people need to do their jobs and the technologies that amplify their performance.

Through our ongoing design research about the behavior of people at work, we know that choice and control over where and how people work is fundamental to satisfaction and engagement. Places that support the various modes of work in ways that consider physical, social and cognitive wellbeing help people be most effective at what they do.

Based on this understanding, we developed a concept that we deploy in our own spaces as well as with our customers: the interconnected workplace. It promotes choice and control over the places people work within an overall ecosystem of spaces with three key features:

• Palette of Place: a range of owned and shared spaces designed for both individual work and team work
• Palette of Posture: spaces designed to support movement
• Palette of Presence: spaces that support mixed presence experiences, both physical and virtual, and analog and digital information-sharing

This concept leads to workplaces that allow people to choose where and how they want to work, or as we call it, “best place”: the ideal place, anywhere on campus, based on the type of work that needs to be done and the environment required to be successful. The result is a global ecosystem of spaces designed to augment the interactions of people, while reducing the company’s overall real estate footprint and costs.

This approach allows an organization to do more with less and challenges the company to leverage today’s complexities to rethink rather than merely shrink real estate. The return it yields can impact the bottom line in ways that transcend cost-cutting since resilient real estate invests in the key asset of any organization: its people.

#2 Modularity

There are certain structural features of resilient systems that allow them to ensure continuity by dynamically reorganizing when circumstances require it. “While these systems may appear outwardly complex, they often have simpler internal modular structure with components that plug into one another, much like Lego blocks,” writes Zolli. “This modularity allows a system to be reconfigured on the fly when disruption strikes, prevents failures in one part of the system from cascading through the large whole, and ensures that the system can scale up or scale down when the time is right.”

A resilient real estate strategy mimics this principle when it has been intentionally designed to create a balance of spaces equipped for individual work and group work, some which are owned by individuals and teams and some which are shared. The ability for users to self-select places where they can be most effective allows the overall space to address the shifting needs of the organization.

In terms of the physical properties of resilient spaces, modularity integrates interior architecture, furniture and technology to allow for easy configuration and adaptation as required to support the types of spaces organizations need at any stage, especially during times of rapid change and disruption.

As the needs of users shift and external factors impact business conditions, these spaces remain vital because they are capable of morphing and evolving as required, without increasing the overall footprint and operational costs.

Resilient places are designed for maximum performance. Every square foot contributes to the effectiveness of the people working there. This understanding caused us to question conventional thinking about real estate and why the focus is primarily on the horizontal plane and rarely on the vertical.

Through further research and development, we have explored how vertical real estate can expand the role of walls beyond boundary and division to become vehicles for communication, collaboration and concentration—the elements essential for augmenting human interaction. We believe the vertical plane is a foundational element in creating an interconnected workplace and can be the underpinning of resilient real estate when it’s designed for intelligence as much as for function.

#3 Feedback Loops

“From economies to ecosystems, virtually all resilient systems employ tight feedback mechanisms to determine when an abrupt change or critical threshold is nearing,” Zolli writes. “We are soaking in a world of sensors and the feedback data that these sensors produce are a powerful tool for managing systems performance and amplifying their resilience –particularly when those data are correlated with data from other such systems.”

Real estate executives and the teams they work with need to apply this same thinking to make sure they employ feedback mechanisms that offer regular, ongoing feedback that can signal when change is required or critical issues need to be addressed.

“The business cycle is so dynamic and elastic. The environment changes and you can’t always predict where the business needs to go, so you have to increase your capability to respond. Flexibility is so much more important in real estate now,” says Shannon of JLL.

While collecting and analyzing feedback that informs global real estate strategies can seem daunting, there are a number of ways to capture the data. The spaces themselves should provide organizations with feedback that can help inform their real estate strategies. Advanced scheduling systems integrated into individual and group spaces can track space utilization with real-time analytics that measure and report reservation patterns, lighting, temperature, etc.

The Pricewater house Coopers real estate group closely monitors workplace performance data for each of its member-owned firms by tracking when staff members access PwC’s network, check-in to the hotelling system from digital devices or use an access card. Data is captured daily and segmented by lines of services (tax advisory, assurance, etc.) and types of employees (partners, directors, staff). “Detail is key,” says Steve Adams, PwC’s director of workplace strategy in the U.S. “Who is coming in the office? Are people taking advantage of our mobility programs?”

Each month, updated workplace performance information is made available via an internal web-based dashboard and document repository for PwC’s senior leaders and partners who manage markets and facilities. It shows who’s following hotelling protocol in their office, conference room usage, even how other firms are responding based on their client list, where they’re located and their mix of business.

“If you don’t have this information to manage your workplace it’s like running a business without a balance sheet. It’s essential to understanding how our office environments are working,” says Adams. (For another innovative way to measure workspace performance, see “Moneyball for Business” on the opposite page).

Like every balance sheet, workplace performance data reveal only part of the story. Adams says that, like most organizations involved in the knowledge economy, “our people are our product. They’re the ones who serve our clients, so we want to make sure they have the best workplace experience possible.” This experience translates into support for mobile workers and a workplace that attracts and engages talent, communicates the company brand, and supports the relationship-building that sustains collaboration, trust and company culture.

Workplace surveys can be an effective way for organizations to monitor and measure the experiences their people are having at work. Steelcase offers a wide range of workplace surveys to our clients, providing feedback data on mobility, collaboration, worker satisfaction and other measures. We use these surveys to measure the effectiveness of our own global real estate portfolio.

RESILIENT ORGANIZATIONS

A company’s people and its real estate are its two greatest expenses—and its greatest resources. The two are irrevocably intertwined. Real estate can and should do more to create value for the organization by amplifying the performance of people at work. Therein lies its greatest value to the company.

In a world that seems to leap from one crisis to the next, resilience can make the difference between success and failure for an individual, a group, a company. “We can design—and redesign—organizations, institutions and systems to better absorb disruption, operate under a wider variety of conditions and shift more fluidly from one circumstance to the next” notes Zolli.

A resilient real estate strategy, based on the principles of clustering, modularity and feedback, helps create strong communities of people in the workplace. It allows them to be more adaptive to change, more able to respond quickly and decisively to a changing global marketplace, and collaborate and cooperate more effectively. Steeped in trust, these people are more agile, innovative, and ultimately more resilient.

And resilient people lie at the heart of a resilient organization.

MONEYBALL FOR BUSINESS

Using Big Data to Develop Better Workplaces

185-195 square feet. That’s the typical amount of space allocated for a knowledge worker in the U.S. today. Five years from now it will be 150 square feet, according to CoreNet. At Steelcase’s global headquarters, the current average is 155.

“While this is almost 30 square feet less than it was two years ago, the more important question is, how well do these spaces support communication and collaboration? How well will they adapt to new technology, new work processes? How resilient will they be over time? These are difficult questions for any company to answer,” says Dave Lathrop, director of WorkSpace Futures and strategy at Steelcase.

But the company is using new research methods to gauge workplace performance, “and the results we’re seeing are more accurate, detailed and nuanced than ever,” says Lathrop.

For example, the research reveals that conversations in the morning are more process-related conversations, with more informal interaction happening in the later afternoon, even though both take place in the same location. Lathrop believe “people hit the ground running and are task-focused in the morning. As projects peak and wind up, there’s more back-and-forth discussion, more sharing of what happened and discussion of results.”

In the new workplace people are communicating more, both face-to-face and via email, video and text, with colleagues located farther away on the floor. “We believe that since these people have worked together for some years, they know others nearby but need to connect with people located further away,” says Lathrop.

To provide such detailed data, employees wear sensors (about the size of a company ID badge) that record detailed information about their movements and conversations over a period of weeks: body movements, the energy level of conversations, where they’re located in the work environment, what spaces they use and the interactions they have. “By analyzing this data, we can track how information flows around the company, the diversity of connections, what workspaces are being used the most, how connected or disconnected people are, how they relate to others on their team and similar information,” says Lathrop.

“Since much of the value that a company produces comes out of the interactions that people have with each other, it’s critical to know the kinds of spaces that best support interactions.”

Lathop’s team works with Sociometrics Solutions, a firm begun by people from MIT Media Lab, an organization with which Steelcase has had a working relationship for many years. Sociometrics developed the sensors and the software that analyzes the collected data.

Ben Waber, Sociometrics CEO, likens the work to how baseball teams switched from using intuition and observation in player evaluations to using detailed statistics, a game-changing idea featured in the movie “Moneyball.” “We’re applying Moneyball to business. We’re taking what’s been a very qualitative process for a long time and using data to inform and drive decisions.

“If you ask people, for example, who they talked to yesterday, their responses will be about 30% accurate. They’ll respond with the people they know best, or who they like. People aren’t being dishonest, they just don’t remember that kind of detail. By tracking their interactions, we get very fine-grain, accurate data.”

Individuals are not identified; people are linked to teams and only aggregate data is analyzed. Individual information is kept confidential.

“At the end of the day, this information gives us the ability to fine-tune our designs and applications like never before,” says Lathrop.

The post Resilient Real Estate: Space as an Adaptive System appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Those of us who were assigned to the kids’ table were not exactly engaged in the whole family dinner experience. We either goofed around or just put up with it until dinner was over and we could go home and play. Sound familiar?

Fast forward a decade or so, and many of us find ourselves in a similar situation at work. Often times we are told where to sit, what to do and how to do it. We constantly have to deal with the many distractions that can pop up at work and have no place to go to get away and focus.

Unfortunately, for a significant population of the world’s employees, work is something they simply put up with until it’s over and it’s time to go home and play.

That’s because so many employees are disengaged. And it’s a huge problem for businesses and other employees. Disengaged workers are often doing just enough to avoid getting fired. They can drag down teams and cost the company time, money and opportunities.

There are many reasons people become disengaged, or not. At Steelcase, our research has shown that the physical environment shapes people’s beliefs and behaviors, and we wanted to understand how the workplace impacts engagement, and what kinds of changes can make a difference. So we partnered with global research firm Ipsos to conduct a study in 17 countries with over 12,000 office workers. We asked questions about their physical environment, such as the type of space they work in, the culture of their organization and what their experience is like at work.

We learned that 37%—over 1 in 3 employees—are disengaged. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 34% of workers are engaged, and 29% are in the middle-ground. It’s a pretty precarious balancing act for organizations to keep disengaged workers from effectively canceling out the efforts of their highly engaged counterparts.

“We wanted to understand how the workplace impacts engagement, and what kinds of changes can make a difference.”

CHRISTINE CONGDONEditor, 360 Magazine & Director, Global Research Communications

The good news is our research confirmed that the workplace can help tip the balance in the right direction.The data showed a correlation between how satisfied people are with their workplace and how engaged they are. In short, people who were happy with their office tended to be more engaged. But the people who hated their office, tended to be more disengaged.

The research also identified ways to design offices so that people can feel better about their workplace. Comparing the differences between highly engaged and the highly disengaged workers, we saw a pattern: employees who have more choice and control over their work experience are more engaged.

For example, highly engaged workers are typically able to choose where to work in the office based on the task they are doing—they aren’t tethered to their desk.They can control their need for privacy, concentrate easily and work with their teammates without disruptions.Their workplace supports movement throughout the day and working in a variety of postures.

The workplace should be designed to give employees choices and enable them to have a higher degree of control over their work experience. It can help people feel like grown-ups, and in turn be used as a strategic tool for organizations to help improve engagement levels.

Engagement at work is a complex topic with a lot of variables. And of course, simply redesigning your workplace is not going to solve every engagement issue.  But we all know what it’s like to walk into a place where you feel energized and inspired to do your best work. Wouldn’t it be great to have that kind of experience, at least most of the time, at work?

I remember the first Easter dinner when I got to sit at the grown-ups’ table. I sat up a little straighter, and was on my best behavior. It felt great that someone trusted me enough to make good decisions.

Isn’t it time to give everyone in the organization a seat at the grown-ups’ table? According to our study, it can have a very big impact on employee engagement.

Introducing New Research on Engagement + the Global Workplace

1/3 of workers in 17 of the world’s most important economies is disengaged, according to new research from Steelcase. Working with global research firm Ipsos, the Steelcase Global Report is the first to explore the relationship between engagement and the workplace.

REGISTER FOR REPORT

The post Why Employee Engagement Matters appeared first on Ohio Desk.

Nic Mark, who’s spent more than a decade studying the economics of wellbeing, says, “People who are happier at work are more productive—they are more engaged, more creative, have better concentration.” In order to foster creativity in the workplace, it’s important to put employees’ mental and physical health at the forefront.

Read below to learn why employee wellbeing is vital to success and discover easy ways you can foster a creative work environment.

Why Wellbeing Matters

Employee wellbeing is about more than just workers’ physical health, but also their mental health and self worth. When an employee’s wellbeing is taken care of, they often feel more open and trusting in their work environment. The ability to create deeper relationships with coworkers, and to feel safe and welcomed at the office is the foundation for creativity.

A happy and healthy employee is one that is more willing to take creative risks and engage in collaborative brainstorming sessions, because they feel like they are in a safe place where their ideas will be heard.

In order to create such an environment, it is important to understand the six dimensions of employee wellbeing in the workplace. When these dimensions are combined, they can create a productive and creative office environment for the entire company.

• Optimism: Fostering creativity and innovation
• Mindfulness: Fully engaged
• Authenticity: Really be yourself
• Belonging: Connecting to others
• Meaning: A sense of purpose
• Vitality: A get-up-and-go attitude

When you incorporate these six vital things into your workplace, it’s easy to create an environment where employees feel creative enough to be happy and productive.

How to Foster a Creative Work Environment

If you want to foster a creative work environment, it’s a good idea to think about your office design. Incorporating spaces where people are able to both collaborate and focus can accommodate the various working styles of your team. Whether you open up spaces for social engagement and collaboration or carve out rooms where employees can have some quiet time, thinking about the different ways your employees need to work can help foster a creative work environment.

To improve employee wellbeing in your creative work environment, investing in ergonomic office furniture is a great way to keep your employees happy and healthy. Ergonomic office furniture has also been shown to increase productivity engagement in employees, and reduce the amount of workplace injuries that occur.

For more ideas on how to foster employee wellbeing and a creative work environment, follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | RSS feed

The post How the Modern Workplace Emphasizes Creativity and Wellbeing. appeared first on Ohio Desk.