How Habits Will Affect Your “Return To Office”

For over two years many knowledge workers have been working from anywhere, but mostly from home. They’ve worked from couches, from kitchen tables, from islands, and in some cases - resorts. Now that the pandemic has begun to wain, employers are finally setting return to office dates again. However, they may hit an unexpected snag in the form of preexisting habits.

How Habits Form

Habits are formed by the repetition of actions over time. A habit is actually a series of actions involving a cue, craving, response, and finally a reward.

Source: James Clear Atomic Habits

A real life example of this can be found in the Cinnabon franchise. They put their stores at the entry / exit of malls. You enter into the smell of Cinnabon and this creates a craving. By the time you’re on your way out the smell hits you again and you respond by just getting a “small” Cinnabon. You are rewarded with gooey goodness and a sugar rush. Unfortunately the more this happens the harder it will be to say NO to the Cinnabon.

Why It’s So Hard To Break Existing Habits?

Existing habits are extremely hard to break. Anyone how’s tried to give up sweet treats, or try dry January knows how hard it is to change the way you do things. This extends to all sorts of habits, including where and how we work. Normally we just call this our “routine.” Over time habits form grooves of sorts in our brains that make them extremely hard to break.

Many of us have been forming a new habit of working from home (or whoever) for the past two years. In habit formation world that’s a very long time. The habit of working from home and not going to the office is carved into our brains.

What To Do About Your “Return To Office” Plans

As James Clear outlines in his recent book “Atomic Habits,” in order to create a new habit you have to make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. To break a habit you have to make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.

In the context of going to the office, it is not just one habit, but a larger “stack” of habits that take us from getting ready in the morning to getting out the door, and finally into the office setting. Breaking one habit can be hard enough but breaking multiple stacked habits is extremely difficult.

When companies order people back to the office without input and set a “return to office” date it triggers something called reactance. Reactance is a human tendency to react to being told what to do by maintaining our personal freedom by doing the opposite. So you tell someone to return to “work” and they say “I resign.”

Unfortunately, this is likely to put a dent into many companies return to office plans as they exist today. To make working from home unattractive or difficult would quickly create a toxic culture situation on the part of the company. This could create bad feedback if those employees who feel mistreated decide to leave due to a negative culture experience. So, what can employers do to avoid these issues?

Taking a People First Strategy

Companies that want to lead the future of work are better off focusing on building new habits vs breaking existing ones. We encourage companies to engage in feedback sessions with employees before they make any decisions, and then begin planning at business unit levels for how / when they will gather intentionally moving forward. If you intentionally create a habit of bringing people together for a specific reason and slowly repeat over time, employees will naturally form a habit of coming together.

Building new habits is always going to be easier than breaking existing / replacing existing ones. In a world where there’s 3.9 % unemployment and employees largely have the option to walk away into a situation more aligned with their current habits, taking a people first strategy will enable more successful outcomes.

Want to know more? Feel free to reach out to us directly or find us here or on LinkedIn.

How Binary Bias Is Affecting Your Workplace Decisions

It’s us or them. You’re in or you’re out!! You’re smart or you’re dumb. You’re remote or you’re in office. What do all these statements have in common? They’re binary.

Hi! We’re Affordances. An advisory team that uses design thinking to create better outcomes for workplace teams. With this blog post we’re exploring how Binary Bias can have an effect on our Workplace decisions.

Two Kinds

As humans we love to categorize things. It’s a survival instinct that has helped us survive for generations. However, things in life rarely fit into neat buckets or are in fact binary. As Adam Grant points out in his latest book Think Again, “It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories.” Closure and clarity are great words to focus on for the world of workplace right now. Closure is something all employees and employers could use at this point. The seemingly endless discussions of how to address our responses to covid have grown tiresome. We’re starting to burn out on them, but we should be cautious.

“It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories.” - Adam Grant, Think Again

Knowing this it should not come as any surprise that in discussions about the future of work and the future of the workplace we can see this bias emerge quite often. Just browse your LinkedIn feed (10 Reasons You’re Wrong About Remote), company newsletters, or even internal company discussions and it is noticeable. We must be vigilant to avoid binary bias. The truth is that there is a wide spectrum of workplace options for any company.

A Spectrum of Workplaces

A logical next step is to ask how we can combat this bias in our internal and public discussions about the future of work/place? In his book Grant points out that the simplest solution for combating this bias is what he calls “complexifying.” By showing the actual range of options that are available we can help ourselves to think differently and avoid this bias.

We’ve sketched a quick view below of what that spectrum might look like from a workplace perspective but even this chart could present as biased. It’s hard to write nuance into a deck / image. Each of these options could then have 100 tweaks / options within them.

We know from recent surveys that opinions on how many days employees want to be in the office varies. More importantly we also know the opinions on the future work also diverge even further when comparing employees vs executives. This highlights that each company needs to openly discuss, define, and discuss again what the future of their work/place is. Acknowledging the complexity is the first step to building a better future.

An Iterative Process

Once you’ve acknowledged that the spectrum of workplace options is broad you can start to think about charting the right path for your team. We suggest beginning by creating common definitions (understanding), assessing your company goals, and then aligning them with an appropriate workplace plan. Moving forward we’d advise all companies to consider creating a unique / bespoke solution for their teams. From here we suggest continuing to improve by doing small tests and iterating continually with your teams. Just like any product, your workplace will get better over time if you take on user feedback.

Three Areas Companies Should Consider When Adapting Their Workplaces To Covid-19

When 2020 started the word pandemic was something you would only hear in blockbuster movies, video games, and TV shows. Where we are now doesn’t feel nearly as exciting but is equally as frightening as some of those films. However, even as many people have begun to settle into the routine of working from home (or wherever they happened to be when the shelter in places went into affect ) there’s thousands of people trying to figure out what Workplaces will look like when we finally go back to them. We think some (not all) of the adaptations we will see can be broken down into three categories; construction, culture, and operational adaptations. We have left architectural planning out of this post as that is not our field of expertise.

Construction

As we begin the slow ramp up to being back in the workplace we can expect many of the projects that were halted to begin their process of moving towards construction. When they do they should expect extended time frames for the construction of their spaces. General contractors need to adapt to the new social distancing rules and we have already seen multiple guides from contractors requiring more stringent check in processes, health checks, and applying rules limiting the number of people on a job site. All of this will result in safer conditions, but also in tasks taking more time. Teams that manage construction will need to advise their clients closely on this to avoid issues with the delivery of spaces.

Additionally we can expect to see longer lead times for furniture and other manufactured goods. Many of the factories that make these goods have had to shut down, but there will be a pent up demand from many projects ramping back up at the same time. We believe there should be an expectation as well for there to be a desire to use new types of materials like copper.

Culture

Many companies have shied away from allowing employees to work from home. The argument has been that it would not work, or that it’s just not right for their culture and employees become disengaged. We believe many companies will realize that many more people than they thought could, can work from home. Companies will need to set a strategy for who can continue to work from home, how many people can come back to the office as currently designed, and how they will handle requests to not come back to the office. They will need to do this before the doors open again.

More employees working from home, coupled with new social distancing guidelines, will result in the de-densification of the workplace. Over the past 10 years companies have squeezed in ever smaller desks into the open office. They have moved from the individual to the communal. Unfortunately this will have to adjust to the new health information we have available and the norms of the company along with it. It may be commonplace for even people who currently shared private offices, to request that they have individual offices for health reasons.

Companies will also have to decide how they handle HR policies such as sick leave moving forward. If employees come to the office sick, should they be sent home immediately? How does the company enforce this policy without violating privacy? There are many questions to answer.

Operations

The way workplace teams operate their spaces will have to adapt alongside the culture of the office. Some of the changes we may see within the way we operate our spaces may include requests such as on-demand cleaning of desks. Any office with communal space will need to be cleaning more actively and more frequently to prevent the spread of germs.

Savvy operations managers will likely also look at how people enter into and move around their spaces. Automatic door openers and closers, infared temperature sensors, touchless security readers, and even self cleaning surfaces will likely come into the forefront of solutions.

It has been a blessing for employees that many technology companies and companies that have been influenced by the “Google effect” of the past 20 years, now operate cafeterias. These beautiful spaces promote culture and also are a heavy piece of operations teams workload. However, communal troughs of food, with common utensils might be a nightmare for people returning to work in a Covid-19 era. These programs will need to adapt and operate akin to restaurants (if not more stringently) in order to survive within workplaces. Every program will have to work to regain employees trust by informing them about their response and teaching new habits to current employees.

So What Is There To Be Excited About?

This sounds like…a lot, doesn’t it? Yet when writing this, we are not downtrodden. We are hopeful. Over the past 20 years there has been a very disjointed effort for improvement and many times too much focus on the glitz and glam of spaces. For the first time in this century, we have a problem that all of us in Workplace Experience are trying to adapt too. We are all working on the same problem and trying to solve it. This is why you see so many people (now myself included) pontificating on the internet about what comes next.

This is an extremely encouraging fact to me. We believe that if we are willing to share what we find, what we learn, and what we enact as a response to this issue - then we will all be able to overcome it. We will be able to bring our employees back to workplaces that they enjoy, at least the ones that don’t work from home now.

Looking At Your Workplace With A Diversity and Inclusion Mindset

There’s no one way to approach Diversity and Inclusion initiatives.  However, we’re very lucky as Workplace Experience professionals to be able to take an active and vital role in improving the setting for these initiatives.  If you work at a company that is embracing diversity and inclusion, the below is simply a group of thought starters based on previous experience, pain points, and ways you could easily push forward to make spaces that better accommodate all users.   The focus below is mainly on inclusion, but we will be following with more blogs on Diversity as well! 

Room Schedulers and Wayfinding

I started my career when we were still using paper schedulers at Google.  That feels like a long time ago.  Today most companies have a room scheduler on every room that looks something like the below.  

Conference Room Booking System by TEEM

Unfortunately the way these are typically mounted (too high for people in wheelchairs), the way the display is designed (no accommodation for color blind users), and the way the casings work (do not have Braille to accommodate blind users) - is sub par in terms of inclusion.  How could we change this and easily make it better?  A few suggestions are to simply move the scheduler down on the wall, create displays using already known best practices from UX design, and to simply add Braille to the physical sign.  Some quick sketches of how this might work are below  - but please forgive my terrible skills at drawing:).  Again these are just a place to start!

Move the scheduler down to a lower position for wheelchair accessibility.

Adding typical UX standards for color - blindness accommodation is easy!  Also adding Braille will help your meeting rooms feel more welcoming for blind users.  Yes, it’s a legal requirement, but often one people get wrong and don’t update often. 

Conference Room Seating  

As space planners we typically try to maximize the number of seats we can fit into a conference room.  This helps our ratios and helps us to make sure that the room feels full.  But if a room is already tightly designed, and it’s not easy to move chairs around already, what does that mean for a user in a wheelchair?  Could you imagine having to come into a meeting, or an interview, and attempt to move a chair out of your way?  It doesn’t seem very welcoming at all.   

But what if you thought about designing your conference rooms differently?  What if you left a spot at every table for users?  You could easily make sure that this is done by leaving one space open, and adding a simple symbol to the end of the table.  This will help people know that this is a dedicated spot, and also let your facilities team know not to place a chair there as well.  A simple example is below. 

Leaving space creates an invitation. 

Place a symbol at the end of the table to help note that this is a dedicated space.  Bonus if it’s the new more inclusive ISO symbol.

A Mindset for Inclusion

As I said a few times above, this is just a beginning. These are simply thought starters that are based off my own experience and pain points I’ve observed.  So how can you think about Inclusion and go further?  I’m a big believer in research and that you should do your own to figure out the best way forward for your company.  As a start I’d suggest the below: 

1. Research what the legal requirements are in your region - Are you ahead of them or not even meeting them?  Are they progressive, or are they falling behind the rest of the world?  What standard should you use as your base?
2. Consider each area of your space and think about ways in which they could be more inclusive. 
3. Put yourself in their shoes.  Use empathy to think about how users with difference physical abilities will utilize your space.  Empathy is a powerful tool. 
4. Try it out!  Why not create a prototype for your idea and quickly implement it.  You might find that it is well received and then have the buy in to keep pushing forward with further initiatives. 

There’s no perfect way to start, but starting is the hardest part.  Once you start thinking about your space with an inclusive mindset, the rest will follow.

What Is Workplace Experience, And How You Can Create A Great One For Your Team

So what do you do for a living? 

I’ve often had the funny experience of having to explain what I do for a living at social gatherings.  I love being a part of the Workplace world.  Due to this, I typically quickly overwhelm the person inquiring about my career with far more information than they probably wanted.    After their eyes glaze over they focus in on the one part of the explanation they are familiar with.  “Oh you work in facilities.”  “Oh you work in design?” "Oh you work in real estate." These are just a few of the common responses.  

However, I’ve also found that even as an industry we often have a difficult time defining what Workplace Experience IS, and how it fits into the grand scheme of the global business.  A side note here that companies call the Workplace team a variety of names as well, which adds to confusion. Workplace, Operations, Facilities, Office, Places team are just a few of the names the industry uses.

The rest of this blog is simply my attempt to help bring some clarity to the confusion based on my experiences, observations, and the way I see the future of Workplace Experience developing.  This might be hubris, but I beg forgiveness as I feel this is something that we as an industry really need to define.  So if nothing else, I hope this gets you thinking.

 In the beginning... 

In a land before computers and skyscrapers, there were people who managed businesses.  Often  these businesses physical space were managed by partners and clerks, the same people who managed the actual business.  The clerk to me has always represented the earliest verison of a Workplace persona.  As time went on and people started working in larger more complex companies, they moved into a time of secretaries managing offices.  Though these individuals worked hard and surely created incredible organization, there was a discernible lack of upward mobility for the individuals, and not much desire from comapnies to creatively improve upon the Workplace.  

As we moved into the modern era there was a move to office managers.  Those team members who help to run every factor of an office.  These captains of their ships could be responsible for anything from payroll, to minor HR items, to events, and even to managing the facilities.  While this is still the norm for many companies, there is a distinct shift towards a new type of professional and organization style for Workplace Teams.  This shift involves moving away from a specific subject matter expert leading the team, to a multi-disciplined individual leading the way for teams with varying responsibilities / skills.

Workplace Experience

Workplace Experience is, simply put, the totality of the experiences any person has in the space controlled by your company.  For employees the Experience starts when they are recruited, and it ends on their last day as they leave the building.  Throughout that time their Experiences should be consistent, enjoyable, and with limited encumbrances.  Consistency will help lead to greater productivity, and overall a better outcome for the company and employee mutually.

Why even call it Workplace Experience instead of just Workplace?  Experience also denotes a rising movement noted by many research firms and architectural firms as well - people don’t want things to just be good enough.  People want a great experience, especially in the place they spend more time than at home, the Workplace.  According to Gensler’s recent Experience Index study, “creating a good experience isn’t enough; the best places—ones that engage people’s emotions and keep them coming back—have to be great.”

Workplace Experience professionals, thus, need a variety of skills they need to draw from, and or people skilled in a variety of disciplines they need to utilize in order to manifest such Experiences.   These disciplines include space planning, project management, real estate, interior design, wellness, event management, procurement, food / beverage, and vendor management.  What’s more they need to have excellent communication skills to keep up with the constant communication / feedback loops that exist in today’s modern companies.

Workplace Experience is a very complex field.  However, if you break it down into it’s main disciplines, it becomes easier to understand.  Then it just becomes a matter of effort and care, not money.

How You Can Improve Your Workplace Experience

Over the next two months I’m going to be putting out a series of blogs that sum up my philosophy on Workplace Experience.  The first blog is going to touch on how the scale of your company relates to Workplace Experience (from here on referred to as WX).  From there we will touch on the varying disciplines that are a part of WX and how they can best be utilized to help create a unique, and consistent Experience for your team. 

I hope you’ll join me.

 

Designing A Workplace For The Five Senses

Museums are beautiful places.  I personally enjoy aimlessly walking around a museum and taking in the history that lies within it's walls.  What I cannot understand, is why anyone would design their space to feel like one?   Museums specifically put the focus on the objects they are displaying, and on nothing else. They are not spaces meant to house humans (not living ones at least).  Yet, many people insist on designing workplaces as museums.  When the majority of us spend more time in our workplaces than at home, we can ill afford to be in a place that is cold and inhuman.  What can we do to make our spaces feel more human?

One place to start is with Ilse Crawford’s concept of designing for the 5 senses—designing for the human experience.  It is just as relevant to Workplace as it is to the residential or hospitality fields.  As she states in her book A Frame For Life,“At best, an office can act as host to the people that work there—creating the best emotional and physical conditions for them to do their best and an atmosphere of trust that they will do this—and as a space that facilitates co creation among staff and clients.”

Now, how can we start creating a human centered Workplace Experience by designing with the 5 senses in mind?

Sight

Are you designing your Workplace with one type of fluorescent or LED light across the entire space, or are you actually considering the type of work your teams will do in each space?  Different types of work require different lighting.  Programming in the right kind of light can make a big difference in productivity and how a space feels.

Sound

Have you considered what kind of sounds you do (or don’t) want people to hear in each specific area?  Have you ever accidentally placed desks for quiet work right next to a kitchen with a loud blender?  Designing with intention by defining what the sound levels are for each space in your Workplace will cut down on complaints and foster happiness within your team.

Smell(S)

What’s the first thing a guest would smell when they walk into your office?  Is it the smell of freshly ground coffee?  Or is it the smell of the trash cans that weren’t emptied the night before?   Smell is typically the last thing Workplace team considers when designing a space, but it can have a major impact (good or bad).   Even just the absence of smell is not a bad thing necessarily, as smells can be polarizing.  Considering what smells are produced by your space, and where they flow to, is important either way.

Touch

Touch is such an incredible sense and it can be used for so many things in Workplace design!  Every day we touch hundreds of objects.  Each object we interact with can inform us, guide us, or even remind us of something.  The textures of objects in a room can even change the way we experience that space.  The textures of furniture  can make the room feel more warm and put us at ease. Would’nt you feel more comfortable having a difficult meeting in a room with a soft - inviting chair,  rather than a room with a hard plastic chair?  Little human-centered details can make all the difference.

Taste 

Taste is one of the senses that can immediately spark joy.  When we taste something delicious, it can change our whole mood.  Employee food programs are a great way to help brighten people’s day, while improving their health as well.  Psychologically, people will cultivate a positive association with the space in which they had that delicious food memory. 

Human Centered Experiences

These are a few examples of how to apply thinking about the 5 senses to your Workplace, creating a human-centered design.  In reality, it takes time and effort to consider these things.  Considering them, however, is something your company should begin doing immediately.  When you start to design your spaces with the human experience at the center, then you will be creating great Workplace Experiences.

The Workplace Experience Job Titles You Should Retire In 2018 And What You Might Replace Them With

What’s in a name?

While it might be a popular trend for companies to say that “titles don’t matter,” unless you’re staying at that company forever - your previous title might matter  to your next employer.  However, there are a lot of titles in Workplace that simply no longer apply.  If your title is Receptionist and you run a catering program, it might be time for a change. Read below for a rundown of titles to change out to progress your Workplace team into 2018. 

Take a moment and think about where your org is headed and what your team members do. 

Old title: Office Manager

New Title: Workplace Experience Manager  

 The Difference:  There are definitely office managers in the world, and they’re great.  They might run a medical office, dental office, or they may work at a larger corporation.  That said, the job specifications in forward thinking startups and other fast scaling companies does not translate to “office manager.”  Workplace Experience professionals run events, design spaces, establish norms, and help keep company culture strong. 

Old title: Facilities Manager

New Title:  Physical Ops Manager 

The Difference: Facilities management is a field unto itself, and deserves more respect.  That said, when talking about FM at younger companies, the FM teams typically get handed a whole plethora of jobs that don’t fit a typical FM role.  Just a few examples; educating users on why things went wrong and how they’re getting fixed, researching and integrating new forward thinking solutions  to better improve indoor environments, and creating nationally used standards and processes (and updating them every year as the company grows 2-10x).  There’s a lot more customer facing burden out on these teams at young companies.

Old title: Receptionist

New Title: Concierge Services

The Difference:  Every company I’ve worked at or had close colleagues head off to in the past 8 years have had roles called receptionists or front desk coordinators, but does this really cover the scope of what those team members do?  No!  Today these team members manage programs from the desk.  They do all the hard work behind the programs and wind up with a plethora of odd assignments from different parts of Workplace.  It can be a great learning experience for the right person.  All the while, they’re expected to greet guests, work with vendors, and give candidates a great experience.  They’re the first and last person people interact with, and their position should be seen as vital, not just someone who “receives” people.

Old title: Likely Does Not Currently Exist 

New Title:  Wellness Specialist

 The Difference:  Over the past decade there’s been an increase in awareness of health in the workplace.  This includes not just physical, but mental health as well.  Think beyond ergonomics and “health week.”  These future teammates will help build mindfulness programs, fitness programs, and even help develop healthy standards for internal food programs.  Remember, healthy employees are productive and happy. 

 Thanks, We’ll Keep Our Current Titles

I am of course just one person and have a particular point of view about where the future of workplace is headed. However, all these titles are is suggestions.  I would propose that if you want to create a workplace that is progressive and cares for employees (and cares for those who care for your employees) you will at least consider looking at your current org.  Think about customizing your teams titles to their actual roles and your company culture.  It might just make a difference.