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For nearly a decade, we have used sensors and software to understand how offices, conference rooms, and entire workplaces are used. But most sensors offer only a snapshot of what happened at a point in time and in a given place.
We’ve used surveys and focus groups as a way of capturing employee attitudes, likes, dislikes, wants and needs. While these tools can offer great insights, low participation rates and survey overload can limit their value.
Recently, we’ve embarked on a mission to optimize the workplace experience. However, we’ve struggled to measure our progress or tie it to business outcomes. Using these traditional methods to prescribe workplace design and work practices is like trying to coach a football team when all you have to go on is a few game photos, interviews with a few of the players, and the ending score of their most-recent game. All that is about to change.
Click here to read the entire article from the December 2019 issue of FMJ.
What were once considered alternative workplace strategies, have now become mainstream. Now in its fifth year, this benchmarking study was conducted by Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), Global Workplace Analytics, and Haworth Inc., and additionally supported by Workplace Evolutionaries. Over 130 organizations representing over 2.3 million global employees responded. The results were compared to longitudinal data collected across the four surveys fielded since 2008.
The 2018 survey revealed significant changes in how and where people work. Some of the more interesting findings include:
- The worry over a loss in productivity when people are able to work anywhere is entirely unfounded.
- People impacts, rather than cost savings, are now the primary measure of success
- Internal mobility has more than doubled since 2008; External mobility (working at home, coworking places, outside the office) has remained flat
- Nearly half of employees are still permanently assigned to one space; no change since 2008
- Employee involvement in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of workplace change programs has decreased significantly
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Chris Hood, founding member of WE, is a contributing author of the recently published book Black Holes and White Spaces: Reimagining the Future of Work and HR with the CHREATE Project. This book offers a collection of forward-looking advice from over 70 exemplary chief HR officers and other leaders whose mission is to “disruptively accelerate the progress of the HR profession to meet the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the new world of work”
In his chapter, “A Vision of the Workplace in 2025: Doom or Boom?”, Chris Hood describes how head-count planning and workforce cost-cutting will be replaced by an adaptive-value model in which employees own their own reality and managers make decisions based on work required, rather than head count.
Previous Installments in WE Research:
WE commissioned Dr. Sally Augustin to create a compendium of research on the impact of workplace influences on the employee experience and ultimately, their performance. This publication is called Applying What Scientist Know About Where and How People Work Best.
And to help make this research even more assessable and meaningful to our members we have boiled it down to an interactive infographic. Click on the image below to make it larger and roll over the images to see the highlights from the research. If you want to obtain even more of the detail, we encourage you to purchase the book which is available to WE members on-line for $24.95. This paper was published by the IFMA Foundation with generous funding from the IFMA Corporate Facilities Council and sponsorship from Kimball Office.
Infographic
Publication
WE Research is led by Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics and Arnold Levin, principal at Gensler.
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