lmi 67.6 post-occupancy property becomes an hr...
TRANSCRIPT
Online workplace forums were alight recently with discussion about an article in the UK’s Guardian Online newspaper that asked, “Is this the end of the office as we know it?” Apparently, 46% of UK workers find their local coffee shop a more productive environment than their office.
However, the footnote to the article revealed the journalistic equivalent of bubble-wrap: “Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with O2 Business.”
It is yet another article rallying knowledge workers to break from the shackles of their ineffective offices, authored by the mobile communications giants who stand to gain most from swathes of mobile tech users becoming reliant on (addicted to) super-fast mobile networks.
The paid-for content was based on “a survey of 10,000 workers” and was conducted by Telefonica’s O2. Few details are available about the questions that were asked but the resultant findings “revealed that more than half of respondents thought
technological breakthroughs will transform the way we work over the next five to 10 years.” No s**t Sherlock!
This was hot on the heels of another study conducted by Virgin Media, one of the UK’s largest providers of domestic broadband connections, which concluded “The UK economy could receive a £1.7 billion boost if employees are given the option to carry out their work from where they see fit.” They of course mean from home – using an internet connection provided by them!
They appear to have drawn this figure from a Confederation of British Industry report that states that £17 billion is lost every year through absenteeism. It is unclear whether the “£1.7 billion boost” is calculated from 10% of those absent employees suddenly feeling well enough to contribute from their sickbeds because they have blisteringly fast fibre optic internet connectivity, or whether it is their office-based healthy co-workers picking up the slack by adding hours when they get home or using their mobile tech while en route.
O2 and Virgin Media are not alone - Microsoft has a Chief Envisioning Officer, BT a futurologist and Vodafone a workplace strategy consultancy service - and much of what they propose is beneficial.
The ‘evidence’ would be so much more compelling if it focused on the core issue.
If indeed employees are retreating to cafés en masse, it surely says more about the quality of the workplace they are escaping from, than it does of a technology or caffeine fuelled yearning for greater concentration.
Rather than pitching mobile technologies and coffee at us, perhaps the communications giants could focus their PR based “research” activities on raising the debate about the design quality of office environments: just 54% of the
70,000 employees Leesman has asked, report that the design of their space enables them to work productively!
There is little doubt that for some employees struggling with low enclosure offices, the
opportunity to escape for the sanctuary of home is a lifeline.
Across Leesman’s 70,000 research respondents, 33% indicate that they work from home at least occasionally and 17% work from home more than one day per week, but 44% of those homeworkers say they have no dedicated space or room to work from when at home.
Clearly improvements in technological connectivity allow these respondents to contribute and be productive, but to what extent can they really be ‘connected’? Is it possible to create a socially
cohesive ‘unit’ working towards a common goal if the team members are not in the same physical space?
There may be a small number of roles and personality types for whom isolation is beneficial, but our data tells us that whilst for some, concentrated activities may be better supported by the solitude of home, almost all collaborative activities, including ‘learning from others,’ are hampered by it.
For HR professionals the management of remote teams produces bigger issues. With a growing awareness of the impact of social isolation on clinical depression, we have to question whether it is really possible to have any sense of employees’ physical or mental wellness when they are not in the office.
Our data leaves us in no doubt that the most productive workplaces are those that have the best “social infrastructures,” not the best patronage of local coffee shops. Looks like that makes property an HR issue.
Journalists’ doomsday predictions of ‘the death of the office’ abound. But can HR professionals cut through the lazy reporting and help shape a better understanding of the impact of place on people?
Stephen Haynes and Colin Bullen Opposing opinion pieces discussing whether wellness campaigns can deliver real value to organisations and individuals. Has wellness failed? Pages 2/3
Jonny Gifford and Peter Cheese The human imprint in workplace design – the need to develop collaboration between professional disciplines. Page 9
Peggie RotheLeesman’s newest recruit, fresh from her PhD workplace research, examines the risk of not seeing change from an employee’s perspective. Page 10
Issue 15 | 2014 Q3leesmanindex.comData reported 30.09.2014
Leesman Lmi
59.8Lmi 58.0 pre-occupancyLmi 67.6 post-occupancy
This issue: Human Resource Special. Looking at wellness programs, the change process and a case study of Nordea.
69,504 respondents
2.3 million sq m surveyed
579 properties
63% av response rate
11 min av response time
Our performance
54.3% The design of my workplace enables me to work productively
48.7% My office is a place I’m proud to bring visitors to
Economic indicators
Top 5 Activities, Features and Facilities by importance, with satisfaction / support rankings.
Activities: Individual focused work, desk based 78%Planned meetings 76%Telephone conversations 66%Informal, unplanned meetings 63%Collaborating on focused work 73%
Features:Desk 72%Chair 68%Computing equipment 66%Telephone equipment 68%Printing / copying / scanning equipment 63%
Facilities:Tea, coffee and other refreshment facilities 65%General cleanliness 58%Washroom facilities / showers 46% Restaurant / canteen 48%General tidiness 55%
See more on pages 6-7...
Data rise and fall
25
20
000s
15
10
5
0RoWRoEScanUK
UK 35,890Scandinavia 18,840Rest of Europe 9,341Rest of world 4,644
Data distribution
Pre 72%
Post 17%
Day 2 11%
10.0
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9.9
20.0
– 2
9.9
30
.0 –
39
.94
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9.9
50
.0 –
59
.96
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9.9
70.0
– 7
9.9
80
.0 –
89
.99
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00
.0
0.0
– 9
.9
Distribution of properties surveyed with 50 respondents or more by Lmi banding.
Lmi Location spectrum
90
120
150
60
30
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123
102
1822
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A briefing on global workplace strategy, management, satisfaction & effectivenessDelivering insights that drive better strategies
‘If indeed employees are retreating to cafés en masse, it surely says more about the quality of the workplace they are escaping from, than it does of a technology or caffeine fuelled yearning for greater concentration. ’
Top 5 coffee producers1. Brazil
2. Vietnam
3. Columbia
4. Indonesia
5. Ethiopia
The Bean BeltAll the world’s coffee grows here:
Top 5 coffee consumers1. United States
2. Germany
3. Italy
4. Japan
5. France
Britain’s coffee shop market by shareIn 2013 the total UK coffee shop market was estimated at 16,501 outlets with a £6.2 billion total turnover. The branded coffee chain segment recorded £2.6 billion turnover across 5,531 outlets. After 15 years of considerable growth, the coffee shop sector continues to be one of the most successful in the UK economy.
UK’s top 3 branded chain outlet share in 2013Costa Coffee (1,670 outlets)
Starbucks Coffee Company (790)
Caffè Nero (560)
Sources: Allegra Strategies UK, British Coffee Association, Mintel Coffee UK
Amount of caffeine per cup:
125 million people depend on coffee for their livelihoods
None of the above countries are locacted within the ‘Bean Belt’
Did you know?
Coffee roasting is generally done at 500°FCoffee grows in more than 50 countries
It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso
35% of coffee drinkers take their coffee black
Coffee takes 14 hrs to digest
The average coffee cup size is 9 ozThe average coffee drinker consumes approx 3 cups of coffee per day
Decafcoffee3 mg
Hotchocolate
19 mg
Shot ofespresso
27 mg
Can of cola
40 mg
Black tea
45 mg
Red Bull
80 mg
Brewed coffee95 mg
Coffee is the most popular drink worldwide with around two billion cups consumed every day. In the UK, we drink approximately 70 million cups of coffee per day.
Coffee is the second most traded commodity after crude oil. Coffee is also the second most popular drink in the world after water.
2b 70m 2nd
Others11%
Costa Coffee46.8%
Starbucks27%
Caffè Nero13.8%
AMT Coffee1.4%
Market segment by brand
Property becomes an HR issue
A key reason why workplace wellness campaigns are ineffective lies in their failure to recognise the psychological influences that cause an individual to change their behaviour. We need to understand what drives our unhealthy habits that seem so hard to break.
Companies’ wellness investments are too narrowly focussed and short term and fail to understand the psychology of habit change. One of the favoured false beliefs is that employees will change their behaviour because they are shown a healthier way to live, backed up by facts, statistics and great new ways to get healthy. But feeding people information does not lead to habit change. It might change their levels of knowledge and understanding, it might even change their attitude towards that particular aspect of health, but it is unlikely to change their behaviour.
There isn’t a smoker in the world that doesn’t know that smoking will increase their risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and premature death, and yet 26% of the global adult population still smoke.
To drive sustained behaviour change you need to consider the powers that allow an individual to change and the contexts in which those powers are perceived.
Powers needed by individuals include:- Capability and confidence
to move into a new way of behaving
- Motivation to do something differently
- Assistance or tools to allow them to negotiate the barriers to change
- Support to resist the forces that actively try to pull them back to old bad habits.Typical wellness
programmes ignore most, if not all of these.
Context is also critical to successful change.
The wellness programme must also consider the context in which this change is to take place. There’s a tendency to believe that we are masters of our own destinies when delivering wellness solutions, and we therefore focus on the individual. In fact less than 10% of the decisions that we make are truly logical, rational and delivered with significant forethought. In practice, many other influences stop us changing behaviours, making
new habit development desperately hard to achieve.
Take the social context. When we want to change, the biggest influencer of action (or inaction) is friends and family - that circle of people we turn to when we want to test out or get support for a new idea. The influence of social spheres is even more pervasive. Consider the following – if a friend of your friend is obese, possibly someone that you have never met, the chance that you are also obese is 25% higher than the national norm. Social contagion matters and yet wellness campaigns have, in the past, given it only cursory consideration.
Closer to most readers’ hearts is the context of office space, and the physical environment more generally. Is office space important? Absolutely, and yet it too has been ignored. There are many aspects of building and office design, from the cafeteria to the working environment that encourage us to move and engage and that can fundamentally affect our ability to change our behaviour.
According to a campaign launched in the UK, sitting is the new smoking. There is a raft of research suggesting that sitting for too long can contribute to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Spaces that encourage people to get up and move regularly, to take
the stairs rather than the elevator, to hold walking meetings, to use standing or treadmill desks, all result in better health outcomes for your employees.
If you want to keep meetings short, improve productivity and reduce back pain (a leading cause of disability and sickness absence), try introducing balance balls to your boardroom instead of expensive leather chairs.
How many ‘wellness providers’ have asked to come and spend time in your office with a view to changing the environment and lowering the risk profile of your business – I’d expect very few.
And then there’s the virtual context. Even with the right space for exercise such as an on-site gym, few employees use it. People do not associate work with exercise and find it hard to allow themselves to be seen exercising by their colleagues. There is often guilt at being seen to take time away from the desk. How many in your office now lunch at their desks, sandwich in one hand, the other feverishly tapping out emails? It’s important to get the virtual environment right too.
Wellness can and should work, but to be successful, campaign protagonists must consider the psychological barriers to success and all of the contexts in which we live our lives.
For a man who’s spent over 20 years in the health and wellness industry, it’s taken a good deal of reflection, hard graft and self-honesty to be able to say that workplace wellness has failed.
However, there is a fair chance that if you’re in a sizeable company you will have engaged in some form of wellness since over 50% of global employers invest company resources in an attempt to improve employees’ health. Many embark on wellness campaigns believing that improving employees’ health reduces absence, medical and disability costs, or drives up productivity. But if they were to measure the outcomes robustly, they are likely to find limited evidence of success. So is wellness not all just smoke and mirrors?
We are right to doubt. The USA has an annual budget of $6 billion for ‘wellness,’ but it has the most obese population in the world. In 20 years, I have seen few robust examples of successful wellness programmes. And yet, like many others, I still believe … recently more so than ever.
Analysis of over 1,000 independently published research articles and exploration of the world of behavioural psychology by Health At Work, points to how wellness
programmes might succeed better.
2 –– Issue 15
Wellness works
Wellness works. It has not failed. It’s all a matter of how you determine success.
Before I discuss the three vital ingredients for a successful health and wellness programme, I want to look at the terms “success” and “wellness” because these are often the most widely used but ill-defined phrases when it comes to workplace health. I believe they should be clearly defined up front, regardless of the size or scope of a programme.
A recent HR Magazine survey of 400 CEOs from small to large organisations, including multinationals, showed that around 65% have a health and wellness strategy
in place (but over three-quarters of these just provide a range of initiatives and don’t link to business goals), 25% want to do something and around 10% do nothing. It’s a good temperature gauge of where businesses are today in their thinking about workplace health & wellness.
Just under 1 in 5 employers are now linking health and wellness to business success. Compared to 10 years ago, the growth in [measurable] programmes is pretty good, so what is holding back further progress and why do
we hear so much talk about ineffective spend, lack of engagement and limited ROI?
There is still confusion over what the wellness agenda is and, of course, it doesn’t help that wellness looks very different from one organisation to another. An approach that reaps high engagement and great returns for one company may fall flat with another.
The HR Magazine findings that almost half of the 400 companies surveyed provided initiatives but didn’t join the dots is also
indicative of a tendency towards discrete initiatives that have limited integration with a broader programme or business strategy. This is not necessarily a bad thing as each initiative will tackle specific issues. However, we should differentiate this approach, which fuels the low engagement and ROI naysayers, to one that takes a more formal business strategy alignment focus.
Which brings me back to the three ingredients that are business critical to any workplace health and wellness programme and that break down barriers to implementation or programme sustainability.
Just under 1 in 5 employers are now linking health and wellness to business success.
There isn’t a smoker in the world that doesn’t know that smoking will increase their risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and premature death, and yet 26% of the global adult population still smoke.
Wellness has failed
Leesman Review –– 3
Opinion | Stephen Haynes
How you shape, manage and measure your workplace wellness programmes is crucial to their success. They deserve and need to be a core part of your business strategy.
Wellness
init
iatives
EMPLO
YEE
BENEFIT
S
Opinion | Colin Bullen
Can wellness campaigns deliver real value to organisations and individuals? Or is it all just smoke and mirrors?
2. A shared definition of “wellness”Wellness is a great word, but in the context of the workplace, the “do this” and your company will achieve “that,” it is still too inexact. Since every company varies, “wellness” means different things to staff and the organisation.
Wellness is “… a state in which people realise their potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and can make a contribution to their community.” World Health Organisation
Workplace wellness broadly encompasses physical, psychological, social and environmental well-being and crosses all areas of the working environment – from job design, to leadership style to employee control and voice through to relationships and support – so the WHO definition is a nice starting point.
What is most important is to really understand and clearly define what wellness means to your organisation. Without a clear definition and understanding of the why, you can end up with a series of initiatives – and I don’t believe initiatives equal a cohesive and sustainable workplace wellness strategy.
3. Join the dots The final ingredient is to link everything together. Even before starting to design (or redesign an existing programme), it is vital to be thinking holistically. Everything you do should be integrated and aligned to one shared mission. So many programmes fall short of expectations because they consist of isolated initiatives that have undefined direction or measurement.
There are of course some obstacles and challenges for the employer at strategic and practitioner level in adopting an integrated approach: from historical focus on short-term returns, existing provision, policies and procedures to ownership issues. We are now seeing an increase in the number of employers recruiting dedicated in-house people to drive the ‘integrated’ wellness agenda.
I’ve only scratched the surface here and whilst there are hundreds of factors to consider in creating an effective wellness programme, when we talk about such things as ineffective spend, low take-up, no impact on behaviours or no ROI, we are almost certainly looking at an organisation that doesn’t include these three key ingredients.
1. Strategic alignment As simple as it sounds, we must understand our business priorities and the current and future needs of our workforce. These days, the former is more blurred as practically every business today is in the people business – and you’re going to struggle to find a company where staff would be more engaged and productive if their employer didn’t care about their well-being - but different companies may place greater focus on compliance, risk management and attendance than say, creation of a culture of well-being.
Employers’ reasons for having a wellness programme vary – at one end of the spectrum are those who closely align their programme with their corporate vision and embed it into their culture. At the other end, are those that align wellness initiatives with their employee benefits strategy.
Evidence shows higher participation, engagement and greater behaviour change modifications are made the closer a programme aligns to organisational strategy.
Equally, understanding employee needs and their health profiles will help ensure the programme is relevant. Why place emphasis on nutrition or physical activities if the biggest concerns about employee well-being are related to job design or say financial security?
So the first step in creating a successful programme is a strategic assessment. Once an organisation has a clear understanding of where they are now, their needs, requirements and capabilities, they can build and implement an effective, coordinated and measureable wellness programme.
‘If a friend of your friend is obese, possibly someone that you have never met, the chance that you are also obese is 25% higher than the national norm.’
‘Evidence shows higher participation, engagement and greater behaviour change modifications are made the closer a programme aligns to organisational strategy.’
Colin Bullen I Consultant I Health At Work
Colin is an experienced Actuary in charge for Health At Work’s operations outside the USA. He is a specialist in global health and wellness, including outcome evaluation, ROI and behavioural change as well as strategy and implementation. He has worked in the health and wellness sector for over 20 years.
Stephen Haynes is the Head of Wellbeing at the British Council, founder of Navigator Health and co-founder of C3 Workplace Health Movement.
Stephen is an experienced health and wellness adviser and practitioner. In addition to the above he is also a member of the Mayor of London’s Healthy Workplace Charter Advisory Group and an independent assessor for London employers seeking Charter status. The C3 Workplace Health Movement is a networking body of HR professionals who share knowledge and experience of heath at work.
4 –– Issue 15
In October, Christian Clausen, Chief Executive of Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank, reported a seven percent rise in underlying third-quarter profits, perfectly in line with previous forecasts.
Nordea’s recent results reaffirm its recognized status as one of the world’s safest banking groups.
Clausen also said that the bank's cost savings programme, which was doubled in size earlier this year and which should create 900 million euros in savings from 2013 to 2015, was on track. He also committed further resources to providing more personalised and convenient banking solutions, leading to an average annual increase in IT spend of approximately 30-35% over the forthcoming 4-5 years.
Compared to most European banks, Nordea and its Nordic rivals came through the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed and it remains the region’s most profitable lender. They are very public about how cost saving strategies are an integral tactic to counter pressures on profits from the weak economy and from increasing regulatory demands.
The consolidation and rationalisation of Nordea’s Stockholm estate is a key part of this work. By its own admission, five years ago Nordea’s workplaces would have been defenceless against the accusation of being ‘old-
fashioned.’ However they have now fully embraced ‘new ways of working’ as an essential part of their modernisation strategy.
The catalyst project in Stockholm, which aims to relocate 2000 employees to new space on Lindhagensgatan, presented an unmissable opportunity to converge culture change and a new visual and operational approach to workplace, into a design that at face value, is anything but ‘safe.’
The images here give only a brief impression of the magnitude of the change. Employees have had to make a massive shift from a sense of personal possession and adapt to collective ownership, fully embracing Activity Based Working.
Nordea put in place a change management team to lead this transition. For them, the surprise was how employees made some of the smallest aspects of the change the biggest focus for questions - lockers, cycle storage and the journey to work - avoiding the “new ways of working” topic and personalising the obstacles instead.
They also acknowledge that moving to a new building meant employees could ‘close the door’ on an old way of working on a Friday and ‘open the door’ to a new one on Monday. This had a dramatic effect in how well the culture change was adopted.
“As humans we tend to do the same thing we did yesterday but if this is broken up by having to travel to a new part of the city to a new building where you don’t follow the same direction or sit at the same desk as before then, it creates a bigger opportunity for a change in the way someone can and will work.” Anna Wildeke, Change Agent for Nordea.
This offers Nordea challenges elsewhere in the Nordics where the programme’s implementation will have to contend with the constraint of existing properties, but it is clear that the Lindhagensgatan space is integral in Nordea’s modernisation and rationalisation strategies.
Leesman Review –– 5
Case Study | Nordea
Can Nordea’s track record of successful profit management be replicated in their ambitious workspace change management programme?
“As humans we tend to do the same thing we did yesterday but if this is broken up by having to travel to a new part of the city to a new building where you don’t follow the same direction or sit at the same desk as before then, it creates a bigger opportunity for a change in the way someone can and will work.” Anna Wildeke, Change Agent for Nordea.
All im
ages ©Strategisk A
rkitektur
The building is a 26,000 sqm flexible and modern office area where close to 2,000 people work.
The activity based office is equipped with 3,500 – 4,000 places to work.
Nordea has 9 floors. Floor 9 is the Green Room where everybody is welcome to meet and work.
160 meeting rooms containing a total of 1,100 chairs.
Banking on big change
Europe’s largest resource of contemporary workplace performance data
Standardised Workplace Effectiveness Measurement
Resp
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nts
2010 20122011 2013 2014
0
10,000
20,000
80,000
60,000
70,000
50,000
30,000
40,000
Desk
Chair
Computing equipment
Telephone equipment
Printing / copying / scanning equipment
Temperature control
Personal storage
Natural light
Meeting rooms (small)
Noise levels
In-office network connectivity
Meeting rooms (large)
Air quality
Office lighting
Remote access to work files or network
General décor
Quiet rooms for working alone or in pairs
People walking past your desk
Dividers (between desks / areas)
Informal work areas / break-out zones
Space between work-settings
Ability to personalise my workstation
Plants & Greenery
Desk / room booking systems
Accessibility of colleagues
Shared storage
Art or photography
Archive storage
Audio-Visual equipment
Guest / visitor network access
Variety of different types of workspace
Individual focused work, desk based
Planned meetings
Telephone conversations
Informal, un-planned meetings
Collaborating on focused work
Reading
Relaxing / taking a break
Thinking / creative thinking
Individual routine tasks
Learning from others
Informal social interaction
Business confidential discussions
Hosting visitors, clients or customers
Spreading out paper or materials
Audio conferences
Collaborating on creative work
Larger group meetings or audiences
Private conversations
Individual focused work away from your desk
Video conferences
Using technical / specialist equipment or materials s
Tea, coffee and other refreshment facilities
General cleanliness
Washroom facilities / showers
Restaurant / canteen
General tidiness
Parking (car, motorbike or bicycle)
Security
Atriums and communal areas
Reception areas
Access (e.g. lifts, stairways, ramps etc)
Mail & post-room services
Health and safety provisions
Leisure facilities onsite or nearby
Internal signage
Hospitality services
1. Who are Leesman? Europe’s leading and fastest growing independent workplace effectiveness measurement experts.
2. What makes Leesman ‘independent’? Leesman offer no consultancy services – just standardised effectiveness measurement tools.
3. What is the Leesman Index? Leesman’s standardised effectiveness measurement benchmark that calculates an ‘Lmi score’ for each workplace.
4. What is the Lmi measuring? The activities people are doing and how the physical features and facilities services provided support them in their work.
5. Are the responses confidential? Yes, completely anonymous. No response can ever be linked back to an individual respondent.
6. So what will that data show? Exactly and very graphically how well your real estate is supporting the work of your teams in your spaces.
7. And does this measure staff productivity? Not directly, but it does ask whether the design of the workplace enables staff to ‘work productively.’
8. What types of organisations are using Leesman? Anyone with staff occupying a workplace ranging
from motor manufacturers, legal practices, financial services, Higher Education institutes, aviation, broadcast media and more.
9. When is best to do a Leesman survey? In truth at any time. But certainly as early as possible in planning a capital project.
10. Can it then be used after a project is complete? Yes, this is a perfect way of measuring the improvements achieved if a survey was also done prior.
11. How many people should be invited to participate? Leesman will help you get as many respondents as possible – it has no bearing on the cost.
Data review The data reported above shows highlights from the aggregated results across the 69,504 individual respondents received at 30th September 2014. These results are provided through the Leesman Index employee workplace satisfaction e-survey, which has been conducted across a range of pre and post occupancy workplace projects as shown.
The survey is based around a fixed core module in which the questions asked do not vary. This provides us with an unrivalled ability to report and benchmark consistently across that data and offer valuable insight into differences between any number of variables, including industry type, location, gender, age or length of service.
• 192 surveys across 579 locations • 72% pre-project, 17% post-project, 11% other • 63% average response rate• 11 minute average response time
Leesman Index Q+A
The design of my workspace is important to me
It contributes to a sense of community at work
It creates an enjoyable environment to work in
It enables me to work productively
It’s a place I’m proud to bring visitors to
2014 Q3 Data Summary Lmi 59.8Ratings reported from 69,504 respondents surveyed to date. Variance shown from 2014 Q2. Figures represent combined ‘supported, well supported, very well supported’ activities and ‘satisfied, highly satisfied’ facilities and features listed.
87% 0% Individual routine tasks
78% 0% Individual focused work, desk based
77% 0%Learning from others
73% 0% Informal social interaction
73% 0% Collaborating on focused work
72% 0%Desk
68% 0% Chair
66% 0% In-office network connectivity
65% 0%Audio conferences
65% 0% Using technical / specialist equipment or materials
64% 0% Individual focused work away from your desk
64% 0% Collaborating on creative work
63% 0% Printing / copying / scanning equipment
63% 0% Informal, un-planned meetings
62% 0%Relaxing / taking a break
60% 0% Hosting visitors, clients or customers
57% 0% Remote access to work files or network
52% 0%Video conferences
49% 0% Business confidential discussions
41% 0% General décor
38% 0%Dividers (between desks / areas)
36% 0% Informal work areas / break-out zones
34% 0% Guest / visitor network access
32% 0%Air quality
29% 0% Noise levels
27% +1% Plants & Greenery
26% +1%Temperature control
25% 0% Variety of different types of workspace
24% 0% Quiet rooms for working alone or in pairs
20% +1%Art or photography
How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about the design of your organisation’s office?
Number of responses
Which activities do you feel are important in your work?
Which facilities do you consider to be an important part of an effective office?
Number of responses
Number of responses
Disagree Strongly (-3) Disagree (-2) Disagree Slightly (-1) Neutral (0) Agree Slightly (1) Agree (2) Agree Strongly (3)
Data ranked by importance
total no of respondents
Not Provided Highly Dissatisfied (-2) Dissatisfied (-1) Neutral (0) Satisfied (1) Highly Satisfied (2)
Data ranked by importance
total no of respondents
Not Supported At All (-3) Very Under Supported (-2) Under Supported (-1) Supported (1) Well Supported (2) Very Well Supported (3)
Data ranked by importance
total no of respondents
75k70k60k 65k50k 55k40k 45k30k 35k20k 25k10k 15k0
75k70k60k 65k50k 55k40k 45k30k 35k20k 25k10k 15k0
75k70k60k 65k50k 55k40k 45k30k 35k20k 25k10k 15k0
75k70k60k 65k50k 55k40k 45k30k 35k20k 25k10k 15k0
6 –– Issue 15 Leesman Review –– 7
Number of responses
Which features do you consider to be an important part of an effective workspace? Not Provided Highly Dissatisfied (-2) Dissatisfied (-1) Neutral (0) Satisfied (1) Highly Satisfied (2)
Data ranked by importance
total no of respondents
Now, more than ever before, organisations need to understand the intersection of people and place at work. Employees have greater expectations of being able to work flexibly – where, when and how they work.
Over the years, non-standard work arrangements have become more common and the signs are that this trend will continue. In the last few years the biggest growth in jobs has been in self-employed and contracting work: two in every three new jobs since 2008 according to the ONS. As of March 2014, the right to request flexible working was extended to all employees with 26 weeks service.
Where, when and how much we work looks set to become an even more mixed picture.
This calls for different thinking about the nature of the workplace, productivity gains and organisational adaptability. With all the discussion about corporate culture and the importance of workforce engagement, the role of the workplace and working environment are taking on ever greater importance.
In all of these areas there is a case for more and better conversations across professional boundaries, with Workplace Design, FM and HR at the heart of them.
So what is it that employees are looking for? A recent CIPD survey found that more than one in four UK employees would like to change their working pattern. The main demand is for changes in working hours, but 21% say that they would like more flexibility about where they work – work location.
These demands are driven by the desire of employees to achieve a better work-life balance and by the need of the organisation for greater flexibility and adaptability in its workforce. The challenge is how to balance these two needs by utilising smart workforce planning and by training managers to be better able to manage flexi-working teams. There is clear give and take here, for example, while 14% of employees say they work outside of their fixed hours to match their preferred pace of work, 30% do so to match customer demand.
Employees may be demanding more in flexibility, but the flipside is they are willing to be flexible to do a good job.
With these different and more flexible ways of working, there is an opportunity for more efficient use of corporate real estate. This shouldn’t be driven by cost savings alone but by a more strategic understanding of the needs of the business and its workforce. Done well, the real benefit is in a more productive and engaged workforce, the value of which far outweighs any savings in facilities costs.
This is where the FM team working together with HR colleagues can really add value. By developing a fuller understanding of how and where we work well, organisations can extend the principles of activity-based working so that management practices, technology and workplace planning dovetail to maximise organisation performance.
What of the workplace itself? Work environments need to better reflect the nature of the work that we do. Think about your own role. How much of your job needs quiet reflection and application? How much is about working in small groups? How much is about sharing ideas, building project momentum and liaising with networks of colleagues, and where are these people based? For an increasing number of us, it’s a real mix.
Not only does one size not fit all; one size doesn’t even fit
one person. Workspaces greatly
influence corporate cultures and working styles. They can and should reinforce corporate and brand values and the behaviours we want to encourage. Consumer Products companies are typically good at this. Whether it’s the cool minimalist chic of offices like Burberry or the product filled offices of FMCG businesses like Unilever, companies should express themselves, their brands and what they are proud of, through their working environments. This reminds employees of what their businesses are all about, keeping them in touch with the real world.
The imposing glass and steel towers of the banking world with hushed executive offices full of works of art, say little of the customers or real values of the businesses and can do little to remind people working there that their real purpose is as a service.
Reinforcing purpose, values and behaviours, and realigning corporate cultures is now top of the list of what needs to change and working environments need to be part of this equation
To have these sorts of conversations across professional, functional and geographical boundaries, organisations need a range of factors to come together: organisational structure, job design, workplace environments and technology must all play their part. A Workplace Strategy needs
to align with a People Strategy and an IT Strategy.
This presents a challenge for the various professions represented in these specialisms. There is a strong sense that the worlds of FM, HR, IT and Workplace Design are often too segregated. Many HR professionals have no more than a passing inquisitiveness about workplace design, yet it needs to be part of how they think about productivity, engagement, and values and culture reinforcement.
We need to encourage employees to use workplaces and workspace effectively
The challenge is not only for HR. Much workplace design seems to treat people as little more than shadows that pass through the elegant/funky/energetic/supposedly collaborative (delete as applicable) spaces. We need not just theoretical ergonomics, but an understanding of the natural work flows of real life organisations and how actual groups of employees work best. So equally, we can ask: where’s the human imprint in workplace design?
There will always be a place for specialisation, but we need to develop understanding between professional disciplines. There is a risk that our vision will be limited by our own expertise - you know the adage, ‘if all I have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.’
This is not just a question of a periodic collaboration to get the design ‘right.’ We need conversations on the ground too, practitioners in the different fields linking up and talking to their counterparts - wherever the twain shall meet!
The WHAT? Please let me explain.
As an HR practitioner I am sometimes faced with the challenges of today’s workspaces: the “white collar factories” - soulless, trendy and fad-filled denizens of despair masquerading as offices; a factory line with grey gloom pervading every flat surface; a panel beater’s workshop with no place for a short rest in-between jobs.
The Workplace Conversation is a kind of social movement, a collaboration between BIFM and CIPD to explore new ways to understand and create a better place to call work, fit for the 21st Century.
My fascination with the physical environment that we call work started when Neil Usher, Head of Property BskyB, invited me to discuss the Punk Workplace. I created an approach to HR called PunkHR and it was a play on this. PunkHR is a playful call to arms for HR: a call for attitude, disruption and energy - a call to be anti-establishment because established HR practice is tired, outdated and needs a serious overhaul in places.
You can find out more about the Punk Workplace on my blog, so I won’t repeat it all here, but in a nutshell, it is the concept of a twisted, non-conformist approach. Instead of rows of brown, or even white, we take something radical, overhaul it and make it our own. We need to create a workplace as varied and diverse as it can be, to reflect its individuals - something unlike anyone else’s space.
True Punk had recognisable traits such as a mohawk haircut but with a personalised range of tartan trousers; leather jackets and t-shirts. Faux punk is however, a plastic replica of a safety pin adorned in Gaultier chic. Punk isn’t designed like that and it is this fundamental element that is my crucible of workplace design in a punk mindset.
Workplaces, large and small, are looking for operating efficiencies to help their fiscal returns and that often means compromise and standardisation, but people are not standardised commodities. They respond to a range of stimuli to thrive. So why do we think
a standardised workplace is right and proper?
Punk was about an alternative to tired, middle of the road music and looks. The current mindset of the workplace appears to be stuck in a crossfire of practical space planning “blandtopia” and pretentious adult playpens. I generalise of course - there’s a lot in between, but it feels a bit like this.
Punk’s musical church was broad with Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, the Jam, the Clash, Crass and of course the Pistols. There was no identikit to punk as there should be none for the workplace.
The workplace exists to be conducive to the art of human performance: a workplace people feel they belong to, that brings the best out of them, that provides sanctuary and inspiration over a spectrum of situational needs.
If a Punk workplace is even remotely on the way to being a solution to over-planned, underwhelming but well-meaning workplace design, how do we “Punk it up” without falling into the faux punk trap?
8 –– Issue 15 Leesman Review –– 9
“The way you get a better world is, you don't put up with substandard anything.” Joe Strummer.
‘Not only does one size not fit all; one size doesn’t even fit one person.’
‘Employees may be demanding more in flexibility, but the flipside is they are willing to be flexible to do a good job.’
The Workplace - BYOD (Bring Your Own Design)
The human imprint in workplace design
Opinion | Perry Timms
The Punk Movement, spawned in the 1970s, rejected the status quo and encouraged individualism. It was colourful, anti-establishment, resourceful, accessible and most of all, creative. Can we, and should we, try to instil the essence of Punk into today’s workspaces?
Comment I Peter Cheese and Jonny Gifford I CIPD
Breaking down the silos that exist between HR, FM, IT and WD can create a more flexible and agile working environment.
Peter Cheese | Chief Executive | CIPD
Peter's previous roles included Global M.D. of Talent and Organisation Performance Consulting for Accenture and Chairman of the Institute of Leadership and Management.
Jonny Gifford | Research Adviser | CIPD
Jonny specialises in employee relations and engagement. Prior to the CIPD, he held various research posts at Roffey Park Institute and the Institute of Employment Studies
The Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD) is the professional body for HR and people development. The joint CIPD and British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) forthcoming initiative, The Workplace Conversation, aims to develop insight into how the interplay of people and place at work can benefit organisations and their workforces.
How to Punk-up workplaces 1. Work with what you have and see it
as an advantage - something to exploit and make the most of.
2. Fix as little as possible. Fewer offices
and corridors but not just open plan. Moveable stuff and adaptable areas.
3. Flood the place with character not
fixtures: colours; graffiti art, textures. Loud, brash and subtle. Edgy but not cold. Intriguing and noticeable.
That definitely ISN’T beanbags.
Punk venues were all sorts - Art Deco, French brothel, or warehouse - made with nothing but random and interesting in mind.
4. Allow people to create and customise
their spaces. BYOD - Bring Your Own Design - means YOU source your fittings and fixtures.
That might mean you order reclaimed furniture, locally made bespoke pieces, your artwork. It is your space shaped how you like it. If you are a large enough company, you can trade fixtures in an internal marketplace when individuals want to do a makeover on their workspace. Communal, contemplative and creative environments are created by the collective efforts of individuals to be flexible, customisable and as inspiring as can be. Most importantly, the workplace design element does not stop on occupation. It does not restart on reshuffle and it definitely shouldn’t box up its offering in white, off white or arctic white. Let’s bring the person back into the process of workplace design. Let’s bring colour to the grey world of work. Let’s bring Punk to the place we call work.
Perry Timms | Independent HR Professional
Perry is an energetic and passionate independent HR Professional and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD and Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Hallam Business School. Having over 20 years experience in organisational change through technology, Perry’s speciality is the socialisation and digitisation of work. Perry speaks, writes and lectures across the UK and internationally on the use of social technologies to build new ways for people to connect, communicate and share; work, lead and learn.
10 –– Issue 15 Leesman Review –– 11
Reshaping the path to changeMy discussions with individuals in my research case organisations really made me realise that every single person has their own unique experience of change. And their experience will have been influenced not only by the management actions (communication, engagement, involvement) that were taken.
Their previous change experiences heavily influenced how they expected to be treated. Their personal connections within the organisation would have influenced the amount and timing of information they received. Even their employment type might have impacted how much they were told. So to bundle all these individual unique experiences into
one and say ‘this is what the employees thought’ is a high-risk approach.
So if we accept that the success of any workplace change program lies in how
well the employees in the organisation receive and take on board the changes, we must surely seek out ways of reaching and involving as many as possible?
And I am not suggesting for one moment that this is easy. It is very challenging – perhaps impossible - to manage every single change experience at an
individual level. But there are ways to come close. And for employees – either individually or en masse, a “you said, we did” approach is a good starting point.
So efforts invested as early on as possible in understanding the individual employee viewpoint will give you highly valuable insights and allow you to think about the change from the perspective of the employees as individuals. And at the very least, give them that “you said” opportunity.
a perception of unfairness. A decision such as who will
and who will not be allocated a personal parking spot can easily be perceived as unfair if the individual does not understand the logic bahind the decision. This is called outcome (un)fairness.
And even if the outcome is rational, the decision can be perceived unfair if the process with which the decision was made seems non-transparent and biased. This is called procedural (un)fairness. This can happen even though effort has been invested in communication.
The thing is, while you’re busy planning your communication message, you might not be managing what people are already seeing and hearing on the ground. Rumours can appear from small little clues in the environment that you might have no control of.
People constantly try to make sense of what is happening around them. If answers are not given, they will look for rationalisations and create their own reality. And even if answers are given, individuals might chose not to believe what is said because they seek plausible or more comfortable explanations rather than the truth. This is how rumours emerge.
Theories around sensemaking in organisations can make it easier to understand how individuals make sense also in workplace change (see below):
Sensemaking theory says…
Sensemaking can be triggered by deliberate initiative but also novelty, discrepancy, and uncertainty of an event
Sensemaking is grounded in both individual and social activity
Sensemaking is focused on extracted cues
Sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy
In the workplace change context this means that…
There’s no reason to think that people will start making sense of a workplace change only after it has been formally announced. Any small clue indicating that something might be going on can get people thinking and worrying, so communication is needed sooner rather than later.
When questions emerge, people will not keep the questions to themselves but instead start talking to others and speculating together in order to find (or make up) explanations. At this point, positive and negative attitudes can be very contagious.
Anything in the surrounding might lead individuals to draw their own (potentially wrong) conclusions. For example, if the new office is smaller than the old, people might easily assume that the sole purpose of the change was to save on space costs (and completely disregard any more strategic aims of the workplace change).
If explanations and answers to questions (such as why is my desk taken away from me) are not convincing, people will make up their own explanations or look for more believable answers elsewhere.
Darwin is often mis-quoted as saying it is the strongest who survive. He actually proposed that it is the “adaptable” who survive – those who change and develop in line with changes in their surroundings. If the same is true in corporate life, is it not time to offer greater help for employees to adapt to workplace changes
around them by looking at the world from their angle?
So I’ve ploughed through large amounts of change, change management and workplace change literature. And at the risk of oversimplification, I would say most focus on employee resistance and on the various “tricks,” such as communication and
engagement, to overcome this resistance.
But I think it’s a bit too harsh to say that people blindly resist change – I would suggest instead that they merely “react.”And I think you will agree that to “react” is an entirely reasonable response when stuff is going on around you.
Wouldn’t it in fact be rather alarming if nobody challenged a move from a private office to open plan, or giving up their designated desk in return for having the option to choose between numerous free workstations every morning? Wouldn’t that signal a complete lack of engagement and motivation?
So everyone should
be allowed – or actually encouraged – to challenge new things in their organisations. So I suggest we stop talking about employee resistance as the worst challenge a manager can face, and instead embrace the change critique that people offer.
It has also frustrated me while digging through endless academic papers on transformational change, how employees are too often lazily massed as a homogenous group called “the employees” and how this group is then seen as an object in which change needs to be implemented.
It is almost as if the employees were one and the same person who thinks and reacts in the same way. Yet we all know this to be so far from reality. The reality is, not everyone will react in the same way. When change is delivered, some people get excited while others put their foot down and challenge what is happening. We simply are not all the same.
At the Workplace Trends event in London a few weeks ago, one of the speakers was asked how the employees had reacted to the workplace change that they had delivered. Her answer “Some people will always complain” was met with comfortable laughter from the audience, as to confirm “we know what you mean, we’ve all dealt with those people.”
But instead of just laughing and accepting that some employees will “always” complain and using that as justification to ignore the problem, why not make an effort to actually understand why some people always complain.
One popular model used to describe the emotional process that employees go through when confronted with change is the so-called Change Curve. It was originally developed by Kübler-Ross to explain how people deal with catastrophic loss, and it suggests that people go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining
and depression before reaching the final stage of acceptance.
Although it serves the purpose of communicating the emotional process people might go through in change, there’s again a risk that it is used to oversimplify the experience of several individuals into one collective experience. And certainly don’t expect employees to progress through the curve at the same pace.
In my research I’ve heard two individuals from the same organisation, who were subject to the same communication and engagement, give completely contradicting answers about certain events related to their office relocation.
I’ve also seen how location decisions, distribution of office rooms and allocation of parking spaces have become big issues and have caused unnecessary distractions for project teams because of unanswered questions, wrong interpretations and
Analysis | Peggie Rothe
The importance of perceived fairness in the change process
Before joining Leesman, I spent my time at the Aalto University in Helsinki researching how people experience relocations and workplace change. I’ve had a chance to dig deep into case organisations and assess how employees, as individuals, make sense of the process around them.
‘Wouldn’t it in fact be rather alarming if nobody challenged a move from a private office to open plan, or giving up their designated desk in return for having the option to choose between numerous free workstations every morning?’
‘For employees – either individually or en masse, a “you said, we did” approach is a good starting point.’
“We are all rational riders, sat on emotional elephants.” Jonathan Haidt.
Situational change is critical to supporting the alignment of reason and emotion and in minimising errors in successful change management programmes.
When Ben Williams staggered through his front door slurring his words and bumping into the furniture, his wife accused him of stopping off at the pub on his way home from work. However Ben wasn’t drunk, he was the victim of a rare administrative error by his pharmacist which meant that he’d been taking three times his prescribed dose of painkiller.
According to data from the National Patient Safety Agency there were 160,000 reported errors in administering prescribed medication in the NHS in England last year. 46 of these resulted in deaths.
Many organisations are concerned about the potential consequences of very infrequent individual errors. They worry about the one error in the kitchen that only occurs every 10,000 covers, the single rude remark from a customer service agent in a million calls processed by a call centre, or the one unhelpful sales assistant that might lose a retailer a lifetime of sales.
Managers struggling to influence the behaviour and performance of their teams can find the metaphor about human nature from psychologist Jonathan Haidt useful: ‘we are all rational riders, sat on emotional elephants.’
In most organisations, employees’ rational riders know what the company wants them to do, the challenge is that their emotional elephants just don’t want to do it.
Since it is the instinctive, intuitive side that drives most behaviours, managers who fail to engage their people’s elephants, fall into the trap of continually telling people what to do and then getting frustrated when they don’t do it.
However, it isn’t the elephants at fault for medical dispensing errors. You can’t accuse doctors, nurses and pharmacists of not caring about whether the pills they give to their patients will make them better or do them harm. It’s not a rider challenge either; they understand the importance of prescribing and administering the right medication and are well qualified to do this. Instead, this is a problem best addressed by reshaping the path the elephant and rider are walking along.
When Becky Richards was the Director of Clinical Services at a hospital in San Francisco in 2006, the hospital had an error rate of 1 per 1000 medications administered. Becky’s theory was that these errors were most often caused when nurses were distracted, so she set up a trial where nurses had to wear luminous orange bibs when dispensing medication to patients. When a nurse had the bib on, no one was allowed to interrupt him/her. The nurses hated the idea and hated wearing the bibs, but after six months the impact was clear; errors had dropped by 47%.
In my opinion, altering the work environment is the most under utilised tool in cultural change programmes. Organisations are getting better at explaining to their employees what they want them to do and why. They are also increasingly aware of the importance of emotionally engaging their staff in the journey that the business is on, but few appreciate just how much their current work environment influences employees' behaviour and sustains the very culture that they’re trying to change.
Peggie Rothe | Associate | Leesman
Peggie Rothe is an Associate at Leesman and the company’s resident academic. Before joining the team in September 2014, she worked as a researcher at Aalto University (Finland) with a focus on corporate real estate and workplace management. In her research she looked at topics such as usability of work environments, office occupiers’ workplace preferences and short-distance office relocations, and she has published her findings in several peer-reviewed academic journals.
With an educational background that combines real estate management, real estate valuation, and work psychology, Peggie looks at workplaces from several different perspectives. However, she has always been passionate about the user focus of the built environment, modern ways of working, and developing workplaces to better meet the users’ needs, and is therefore very exited about the opportunity to help organisations understand the link between people and place with the Leesman survey.
Peggie is currently finalising her PhD on relocation management and will earn her doctorate in 2015.
Matt Grimshaw | Partner | The Pioneers
The Pioneers is a consultancy that helps organisations to innovate in the way they manage their people.
The Kübler-Ross change curve
Source: Adapted from Kübler-Ross (1982) & Procheska and Diclemente (1992)
ShockSurprise or shock at the event
DenialDisbelief; looking for evidence that it isn’t true
FrustrationRecognition that things are different;sometimes angry
DepressionLow mood; lacking energy
ExperimentInitial engagement with the new situation
DecisionLearning how to work in the new situation; feeling more positive
IntegrationChanges integrated;a renewed individual
Pre-contemplation Contemplation Preparation Action Maintenance
Mor
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and
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Time
Worth a closer look
The opinions expressed by contributors represent those of the individual authors and unless clearly labelled as such do not represent the opinions of Leesman Ltd. The Leesman Review is the journal of Leesman, Europe’s fastest growing resource of consistent workplace effectiveness data and we welcome contributions on the subjects that you think should interest us. Leesman is a registered trademark and all Leesman Review content is Copyright December 2014. Leesman, 5 Wormwood St, London EC2M 1RQ, 00 44 20 3239 5980, [email protected] | Design by [email protected]
A Great Day At The Office Dr John Briffa, HarperCollins
Offers key insights and practical guidance on all the factors that drive our energy and effectiveness including diet, physical activity, light exposure, breathing, sound, psychology and sleep. Individuals who put even a fraction of the advice offered in this book into practice stand to be rewarded with an energy and vitality that enables them to get more done, more easily – both in and out of the workplace.
Social: Why our brains are wired to connect Matthew D. Lieberman, Random House
Based on latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our scholls and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this book suggest ways to improve learning, make the workplace more productive and improve our overall well-being.
Next issue Sustainable strategies
When the World Green Building Council publish an 80-page report examining “the next chapter for green buildings” and position Leesman alongside the long established Gallup, it is clearly time for us to wade into the “sustainability strategy” debate.
Their report proposes a simple, high-level framework for measuring organisational outcomes and relating those back to the physical features of buildings and continues their mission to transform the building industry and ensure buildings and cities are healthy, efficient, productive and sustainable.
So issue 16 of the Leesman Review will focus solely on whether it is time to engage in a new wider Corporate Social Responsibility debate around building efficiency.
After all, a LEED Platinum or BREEAM Outstanding certified building is still environmentally detrimental if it is being under utilised or the employees it accommodates cannot work effectively.
We’ll also take a detailed walk through our Leesman+ certification and look at one of the early recipients – the world’s leading facilities outsourcing provider ISS – and discuss with them how they set about building a world class HQ then outsourced its FM to one of its own companies.
Comment | Philip Vanhoutte
Pretty much every HR director is having to come to terms with pressure to report on the potential benefits of ‘smarter working’ practices, but if employers are to benefit, they need to offer better, more targeted support and training to organisations, teams and individuals.
More on the web
www.c3health.orgwww.cdc.govwww.cipd.co.ukwww.healthatwork.comwww.navigatorhealth.co.ukwww.nordea.comwww.thepioneers.co.uk
I recently spoke at the annual Smarter Working Osservatorio convention in Milan. The HR Director of Milan City explained how she lives her Smarter Working life; Being there for her children and friends - helpful and caring; For her company – focused and inspired, self-selecting her place, time and ways of working; For local government - adding value and motivating others. And last but not least, being there for herself - taking care of her physical, mental and mindful health.
Too busy? Stressed? No, not at all. She was inspirational, with an
ability to put things in perspective and a really great ambassador for Smarter Working. She is full of energy and good health, well balanced – both happy and productive. It’s one of those things that sounds simple …
but it isn’t…The idea of ‘working
from home’ is at last shedding its negative encumbrance and is becoming one of the
core ingredients of ‘Smarter Working’ for leading organisations. And extensive investigations over the past few years have revealed that it gives people far more freedom to choose how they work best.
But one of the biggest issues for home workers is a struggle between either working too much and not looking after themselves, or struggling with motivation
and not doing enough work. Overworking is the more common problem.
And there is still prejudice in some countries that home working is somehow an ‘easy option.’ This can gradually erode people’s self-esteem and even impact how well they look after themselves during the day.
But our own research showed that in fact the biggest challenge can be working too much. Employees reported routinely working both inside and outside core working hours as a matter of fact. Working time ranged from 07.00 – 23.45 with commitment to US related business a commonly cited
Many employees also reported working regularly at weekends. So smarter workers do not feel that work is any more intense than office-based working, due to the nullifying effect of increased autonomy and flexibility, but it does have an extensifying effect.
So training is needed. The investigation proved that Smarter Working (including home working) gives autonomy, flexibility, different ways of managing work-life balance and increased productivity. But the risk is that without coaching, guidance and training, people will become overworked and overloaded, unable to recognise the danger signals as their environment and atmosphere can seem adjusted, relaxed, focused and productive.
Training on ‘switching off’ skills and mindful focus on work is just one example of key support that is needed. It is crucial that companies that are moving rapidly into the Smarter Working playing field have strong trainers, coaches and managers to guide and support.
I support then that physical, mental and mindful health should be defined as a strategic imperative. Total Wellness – as we call this – is an essential ingredient for Smarter Working and for high-energised productivity. Total Wellness supports the vision that “happy people are more productive people.” Tip top condition leads to top performance.
If you are an HR leader and Smarter Working and Total Wellness are not already an integrated part of your strategy and anchored in your organisation, I assure you pressure is coming your way some time real soon.
Overworking homeworking
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Recognising the best – the Lmi 70+
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The idea of ‘working from home’ is at last shedding its negative encumbrance and is becoming one of the core ingredients of ‘Smarter Working’ for leading organisations.
We have now measured the effectiveness of over 650 buildings and there are some that inevitably stand out. So in January 2015 we will begin an annual process to recognise the best of the best in a new report profiling the properties that have achieved a Leesman
Lmi of 70 or above. There are only 26
properties (4%) above that 70 threshold mark so this really is an elite class. We will investigate some of these in detail and see if there are any common denominators that impact their effectiveness; examining occupant density,
floor plate size, amenities provision etc.
By showcasing the Lmi 70+ we believe that we can help to elevate debate about the fundamental importance of offering employees an environment that supports them in their roles. It will also help focus attention on
Philip Vanhoutte, Sr VP & MD EMEA of Plantronics and chair of Leesman’s Advisory Board
the consequential impact on organisational performance.
Properties surveyed up to the end of December 2014 will be included. The report will be available to download from our website from the end of January 2015. Print copies will be available to purchase at £120 each.