Episode 43 · 14 June 2023 · 1:47:08

Is the Office Making a Comeback? Redesigning Spaces for Well-being

0:000:00

Tip: click any timestamp below to jump there and keep playing.

Chapters & timestamps

Click any timestamp to jump the player to that moment.

Framing the debate — is remote work a mistake?
other#remote-work #debate #productivity
Meet the 16 guests
other#guests #interviews #podcast
The elephant in the room — measuring productivity
other#productivity #measurement #elephant-in-the-room
Takeaway 1 — The most significant factor in productivity
other#productivity #takeaways #factors
Why 'white stark rooms' fail
other#office-design #creativity #workspace
The history of the office
other#office-history #design #architecture
Offices imitating factories
other#office-design #factory #workplace
Recap — design matters
other#recap #design #workspace
Top 10 ways to get employees back
other#employee-engagement #return-to-office #strategies
Theme 1 — Change your mindset
other#mindset #change #office-culture

Show notes

Is the Office Making a Comeback? Redesigning Spaces for Well-being

This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) are back with part two of their special recorded at Clerkenwell Design Week. Joined by 16 experts in architecture, interior design, and workplace psychology, they dig into whether the office is really making a comeback, what great design does for wellbeing and performance, and why tech companies are no longer the gold standard. Plus, the top 10 ways to get employees back in the office.

🔥 Stories Covered

1. Is the office making a comeback? Paul Graham recently described remote work as "a mistake," calling it one of tech's biggest errors. But the 16 experts we spoke to at Clerkenwell Design Week tell a more nuanced story — the office isn't coming back, it's being redesigned. Collaboration, connection, and creativity are the arguments for the office, but the overriding theme from our guests was about giving people control and treating them like adults.

2. The dirty little secret about productivity Dr. Craig Knight, Chartered Doctor of Workplace Psychology, has spent 20 years researching the workplace. His finding? The most significant factor in productivity isn't the fancy furniture or the colour scheme — it's giving people control over their environment. A happier person produces 20% more productivity. And a white, stark room? Bad. A comfortable, personalised one? Good.

3. Why tech companies are no longer the gold standard The tech giants that once defined best practice in workplace design aren't the benchmark anymore. Our guests argue that the future belongs to human-centred design that treats employees like adults — giving them levers of control and trusting them to do great work.

4. The 10 themes for getting employees back From changing your mindset to moving from fixed to flexible, supporting collaboration, and embedding sustainability — we've distilled the wisdom of 16 experts into 10 practical themes for leaders trying to entice employees back to the office.

🧠 What We Learned

Top 3 Takeaways

Design is not fluff. The most significant factor in workplace productivity is giving people control over their environment. White, stark rooms suppress creativity; comfortable, personalised spaces unlock it.
Offices need to stop imitating factories. Charles Handy's observation still holds — businesses are still run like factories, and management loves that power. But the era we're heading towards is about people coming together, not being processed.
Ask the people within the space to create it. The most effective way to design a workplace people actually want to come back to? Just ask them. Treat people like adults, give them levers of control, and trust them.

💬 The 10 Ways to Get Employees Back to the Office

Change your mindset
Move from fixed to flexible
Support collaboration
Embed sustainability
Be intentional
Power the office of the future
Design for wellbeing
Support all bodies
Listen to employee voice
Get expert help

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript

Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. And of course, what we see is lots of organizations panicking like hell because management is losing control and they're calling people back to these old, malfunctioning, discredited Hello, and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Leanne ElliottMy name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.

Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures. I would also just like to issue a quick apology before we start this episode. As you may hear, my voice is somewhat gone. I've been struggling with a virus that quite frankly put me on my arse this week, but I'm getting there. Secondly, we have quite a big thunderstorm happening at the moment and a very scared dog. So if you hear any rumbles of thunder or any whines from our little dog Peanut, apologies.

Al ElliottAnd if you listened last week, then you'll know that this is the second part of a 2-parter where the first time we talked about— or the first episode we talked about remote and working from home. Now we're talking about The Office and we're arguing why we should potentially go back to the office. We spoke to a lot of very, very interesting and very well-qualified people at Clark and Wilde Design Week about a month ago, didn't we?

Leanne ElliottWe did. I'm not sure it was that long ago, maybe 2 weeks, 2 and a half weeks ago. But yeah, some very cool people that honestly, I left that thinking, is the office back? Is it making a comeback? Maybe.

Al ElliottAnd that's what we're going to talk about today. So we have quite a few people who you're going to hear from. Don't worry, you don't need to remember all of them because it's a transcript. We'll be on the website, and it'll show everyone's name next to each of what they're saying. So just pick out your favorite one, you can go and find them.

Leanne ElliottYes, and I think it would be good to start framing this episode with, I guess, the pushback. There's been a lot of very public pushback, particularly from tech companies, about working from home or working remotely. We've seen it from Google, we've seen it from Starbucks, we've seen it from so many different organizations, this recalling and mandating people back back in the office, like getting their whip out and being like, get back now.

Al ElliottYeah. And I think that very recently there was an article on Yahoo.com, which I think was yesterday or day before. And it was Paul Graham, who— he's the guy who co-founded the Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup that invested in Airbnb, Stripe, and every, probably every single thing you've ever heard of. Really, really switched-on guy. Really well respected. And he's basically said remote work is wrong. He said he's talked to multiple founders recently. This is what he tweeted. I've talked to multiple founders recently who have changed their minds about remote work and are trying to get people back to the office. I doubt things will go back all the way they were before COVID but it looks like they'll go most of the way back. Sam Altman, the guy behind ChatGPT. He's—

Leanne ElliottI think it's pronounced Chat Jupiter.

Al ElliottChat Jupiter. He recently described remote work as a mistake. He said, I think that Definitely one of tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to get together in person. There was gonna be no loss of creativity, he argued, or that's what— that was the argument. He thinks that would be wrong. He thinks there's more energy and collaboration and connections happening when people are together, which is kind of what we're hearing from our experts at Clerkenwell, wasn't it?

Leanne ElliottYes, yes, collaboration, connection, creativity was one of the main arguments we will be hearing about. However, there is a caveat. There is a caveat to this, I think. I think it would be doing our experts a misservice if we said that they agreed with this point of view.

Al ElliottHmm.

Leanne ElliottWhat was actually the overriding theme that came out from people who are as well— we'll call them pro-office— um, is actually that it comes down to choice. It comes down to Great people leadership. It comes down to employee voice. No, I don't mean to give you too many spoilers here, but the fact of, of mandating people back to the office because remote work simply doesn't work was not— from the tens of people we spoke to, not one of them had that opinion. And I find it really interesting that we're seeing this pushback from leaders like, like Paul Graham, like, you know, the, the leadership team at Google, at Amazon, that we're seeing this from people or organizations that are typically quite innovative and creative and, and boundary-pushing, and yet the experts in the space of workplace design do not share this point of view.

Al ElliottThey do not. It is really, really— in fact, we've got, like you say, we've got— I mean, is it 12 people on the— on who are going to be appearing on the podcast today? We'll go through them all in a second. And like Leanne said, most of them are saying it depends.

Leanne ElliottYes. So I am going to run through all of our fabulous guests. We will remind you who they are when we introduce their clips later. on. And as always, we'll leave all the links to our guests in the show notes if you want to find out or hear a bit more from one guest in particular. Our first guest is Simon Richlick. Simon is founder and MD of Mute, a pioneer and specialist in interior acoustics, and the providers of our pop-up studio both at Clerkenwell Design Week and The Water Cooler.

Al ElliottThen we've got Dr. Craig Knight. Dr. Craig is a chartered doctor of workplace psychology. He's an expert in the modern workplace and improving workplace design, and also salty. As you like.

Leanne ElliottMy new favourite. Our next guest is Jürgen Laikoura. Jürgen is founder and creative principal at Rainlight Studios and has numerous awards for his work in architecture, design, and film.

Al ElliottThe next one is Mark Eltringham. Mark has worked in office design and environment and workplace facilities management sectors for over 25 years. He's now the publisher behind The Works magazine and workplaceinsight.net.

Leanne ElliottWe also spoke with Mick Jordan. Mick is a qualified journalist and wrote for local newspapers and sports reporting before discovering the world of interior design through FX Magazine. He is now the editor of Works Magazine.

Al ElliottThen we spoke to Libby Ferrin via Zoom. Libby is the Chief Marketing Officer at Human Active Technology, and she works alongside Patrick McDonald.

Leanne ElliottPat is Vice President of International Sales and Strategic Partnerships at HAT, a family of brands providing healthier interactions between people and technology.

Al ElliottThen we met Zainab Makadem, Zainab is an architect, Head of Design and Workplace India, and Director of Project and Development Services for Cushman Wakefield, and was named a thought leader in architecture and design by thebestcreators.com.

Leanne ElliottWe also spoke with Tim Hobbs. If you listened last week, you'll have heard me say that I was somewhat surprised that my favourite conversation at Clerkenwell was about electricity and batteries, but that's because Tim Hobbs is a legend. Tim is Technical Director at OE Electrics Limited, a company he took over with his dad Richard in 1993. Since then, Oi Electrics has claimed its place as a master in design and innovation of power and data delivery modules.

Al ElliottThen we've got Ana Rita Martins. Ana's a Senior Associate, Sustainability Lead, and Architect at Woodalls, where she develops construction practices based on ESG, which is Environmental Social Governance methodology, for sustainable and well-being design.

Leanne ElliottWe also spoke with Jim Mayer. Jim is founder and chair of Day Two Interiors, one of London's largest independent furniture dealers who act as furniture consultants and vendor suppliers to large businesses, And then we spoke to Paul Wilkinson and Kent Parker, who are co-CEOs of Formway and NoHo.

Al ElliottFormway is a furniture and home furnishings manufacturer, and NoHo is its retail arm.

Leanne ElliottWe also spoke to the lovely Jessica—

Al ElliottOh, Jessica.

Leanne ElliottWe did. Jessica Black. Jessica is Support and Operations Lead at Obo, our dear friends and furniture providers that focus on the physical and emotional well-being of people in the workplace.

Al ElliottThen we spoke to Henry Watson. Henry is a product designer at JDD and a visiting lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton for product interior furniture design courses.

Leanne ElliottAnd finally, I spoke with Frances Lung. Frances is creative director at Homegrown Plus, a not-for-profit organisation founded by Neil Pinder addressing issues of diversity in architecture and beyond. She's also the founder of Puddingstone Studio.

Al ElliottOh, I like that, Puddingstone Studio.

Leanne ElliottIsn't it nice to say Puddingstone? Some amazing guests that we are speaking to today. But first, Let's address the pink elephant in the room.

Al ElliottWhy a pink elephant, Leanne?

Leanne ElliottI don't know.

Al ElliottYou're still a bit ill, aren't you?

Leanne ElliottPossibly, possibly overmedicated. Um, but first, let's address the elephant in the room. Now, you might be listening to this and go, Al, Leanne, I'm with you, I'm clinging on, I'm trying to not— I'm trying to believe that there is a science to people and culture and, and we need to think about these things, but are you really telling me that the color I paint my walls and the types chairs I have are going to impact my people and culture. Dare I say it, Leah, this is starting to sound a little bit fluffy. Well, let me tell you. In fact, no, let Dr. Craig tell you.

Al ElliottIt's fluff. Yeah, fluff. Well, what we've done is we've made sure that we know how to measure productivity. Okay? And you cannot, for example, measure productivity subjectively. People measure productivity by questionnaires. It's impossible. It's a bit like asking somebody how fast they run a marathon without giving them access to a clock. Just, here's a question now, how fast did you do it? A world record? Well done, you're 73. Fabulous. People have no idea how productive they are. So it has to be measured objectively. They always do that. And when we do it, we can get increases in productivity of 32% going from that lean start, minimalist toxic space to the empowered space where people develop it themselves. 32%. That's not too fluffy, is it?

Leanne ElliottNot too fluffy at all, Dr. Craig. Let's hear more about that. So Dr. Craig there mentioned shifting the environment from a lean, stark, minimalist, toxic space to an empowered space. So let's hear a little bit more about Dr. Craig's research and unpick a bit what he's talking about there.

Al ElliottWell, there are actually 3 takeaways that we can talk about now. The first of these is that the most significant aspect of management which has influenced design leads to toxic workspace. That's the first thing. Now, that is something called Lean Six Sigma, which looks to create these really stark, Spartan workspaces where people are monitored a lot, where they have to follow process, where people are meant to be standardized. If you put any animal into that kind of space, this lean, stark, highly monitored space, It suffers. And that kind of treatment of an animal as a good idea only exists in the business bubble. It's risible from scientific perspective. So that's the first thing. Lean, stark, minimalist spaces, which design still quite likes, does nobody any good. If you want to improve that, then you enrich it. And you can enrich it any way you want. You can spend lots of money and go down the biophilic route. Or you can put plants, you can put artwork, you can put anything of interest, anything that's psychologically engaging to the workspace, and people feel better and crucially perform better. You can't be too happy in terms of how you perform. And the third takeaway is that instead of management saying, we're going to be parental in terms of we're going to give people a horrible workspace and treat them like little boys and girls that we don't trust, or we're going to be a really nice workspace where little boys and girls can play. Treat them like adults. Let them choose what kind of space they work for themselves. And that works best of all.

Leanne ElliottAn adult-to-adult relationship, Al. Who, who knew? That's never been mentioned before on the podcast.

Al ElliottI think you knew. You always know, Leah. So we asked Dr. Craig what an example of this impact would be. Our base point is always Lean Six Sigma. All right. We started with that base point when we, when we began this research back in 2000 2003. Okay, so we take that and I'll give you a quick example of what we might do. So we're sitting here and I don't know if you can see the whole list. There's, there's a can of drink. Okay, so we'd say to people, in 90 seconds, tell me how many uses you can think of for this can of drink. And you might say, well, you could use a doorstop, you could crunch it up and use a weapon, you could use it as a receptacle for flowers, you could use a can of drink, and so on. As many ideas you can think of in 90 seconds. And what we find is we find that the increase in ideas that people think of can increase by up to 60%, going from that lean space to where people are empowered and where they, for example, are empowered to use design as a submissive rather than a driving force. Okay, so that's a big thing. Not only that, we look at how many discrete ideas groups think of. Let's say everybody's in a group of 3. So everybody thinks of 6 ideas in that group, but the 6 ideas are different. So we might get 3 ideas overlap and another 6 that don't. So out of 12 ideas, 18 ideas, 9 of them are discrete and unique. What we found is that the discrete ideas in the empowered condition were higher than the number of ideas in total in the Lean Six Sigma space.

Leanne ElliottSo what Dr. Craig is basically saying there, to paint, paint the picture for you, if you put a group of 3 people in a plain white room, with a hard chair, harsh lighting, and, and no cup of tea, right? No access to some kind of beverage. Then they're not going to ideate as well. They're not going to be as creative. They're not going to come up with as many ideas or as many unique ideas. You put that same group in a place that is a bit more comfortable, maybe throw in a nice comfortable sofa where we can sit around and have a chat, have a nice cup of tea, in a room where the lighting isn't too harsh. Perhaps we have natural lighting from a window and some plants around us to make us feel that we're a bit more outside and a bit more in nature.

Al ElliottHmm.

Leanne ElliottThen we are more creative. We ideate more and more uniquely. So basically, white stark room, bad. Nice comfy room, good.

Al ElliottSo that's the science behind it. But what about the sentiment? Here's Henry to explain. If you go to a workplace and you've got kind of outdated furniture and seats that have had 20 other people sitting on them over the years, I think you do kind of lose a little bit of passion for that workplace. I think if it looks trendy, it looks kind of in with the times, and it is kind of modern, um, then people will be a bit more proud to be there and perhaps, you know, uh, want to stay there for a bit longer. And I've worked in places before at my last job, and it was— the people there were absolutely fantastic, really nice people, but the actual workplace, I didn't look forward to going there and sitting there all day. Yeah.

Leanne ElliottI think between Dr. Craig there and Henry, we have shown quite right, this isn't fluff. This has a place in the conversation, um, and the, and the evidence all points towards how our workplace is designed does impact our behaviour, our thoughts, our feelings, and our performance. However, so we mentioned at the top there an article, uh, featuring Paul Graham, and he made the point that, you know, that so much change happened because of COVID We're starting to see that reverse, and it's going to reverse pretty much all the way back. Now, I have beef with that, Al, because I think, I think whilst there may be some regression back to the office and some sentiment of people to want to go back to a place to work, I don't think we will ever go back to exactly how things were, nor do I think we should. And our experts feel the same, quite simply because the office. As it's set up pre-pandemic, as it is now, being honest, is archaic. It is old, it is useless, it is not effective. So I would like, before we dive into our reasons why the office may be making a comeback, to do a little history lesson in terms of, of the office, where it came from, um, and why we have this setup that we do today.

Al ElliottSo we asked Jürgen Licora, who's the founder and creative principal, don't forget, at Rainlight Studio, Quite a big deal. Numerous awards for architecture and design. We asked him about the history of the workplace. Probably get stuck in ruts, and then we start to think that workspace, workplace has to look a certain way or function a certain way, and then it becomes embedded in our thinking. We looked at the history of work. We went all the way back to the Middle Ages when they were writing manuscripts. You know, by hand, mostly, you know, monks and scholars who were working in teams in a collaborative way. And if you see their workspaces, because we have the drawings, they look like what we're doing now. You know, again, it hasn't really changed. They have tables. They gathered around a table to meet, to talk, to look at stuff.

Leanne ElliottBut as Dr. Cray explained, If we're looking at the history of the office, we can go back even further.

Al ElliottYou can trace offices back to the ancient pharaohs, where scribes were the 3rd most important people in the land. You had obviously the royal family first, then you had the priests, then you had the scribes. And even things like terms we use today, like cleric, for example, leads to the term clerical. And they— cleric and clerical both share clericus, which is the Latin Because the Romans were at it as well. And even bureaucratic derives from medieval kings in England. They used to have clerks/monks ride around on horses with bureaus attached to their horses. And it's from those bureaus that we derive the term bureaucratic, because those people were so pernickety and strict about the process that had to be followed to fill in the king's taxes and forms.

Leanne ElliottDr. Craig has been researching the evolution of the workplace for the past 20 years. So I asked him, surely there must have been some changes?

Al ElliottThe main changes are there are no damn well changes. Those don't exist. People keep reinventing the wheel and calling it the same thing. Agile flexible space, for example. Agile flexible space dates back to Josiah Wedgwood in the 18th century. And we're still reinventing it and calling it different things. People don't talk about Taylorist spaces anymore. But to go back to the principle we're talking about of Lean, which Affects 70% of workspaces. If you've got— if, for example, you've got a clean desk policy, that's a lean policy. So it affects 70% of offices. The 5 pillars of lean don't come from Japanese manufacturing, where they're said to have come from. They are taken precisely from Taylor in writing his book in 1911. And the reason that it is Taylorist is because what happens is called Toyotism. Toyota Copied their ideas from Ford. Ford, Henry Ford, employed Taylor to set up his production processes. So all of that, and of course Toyota influenced what's going on now in the workplace with Lean and Kaizen and all of these wonderful terminologies. So the thing that has changed in over 20 years is nothing. The best opportunity we've got is post-pandemic. And now And of course, what we see is lots of organizations panicking like hell because management is losing control, and they're calling people back to these old, malfunctioning, discredited, suboptimal ways.

Leanne ElliottOld, malfunctioning, discredited, suboptimal ways. So far, I'm not sure we're putting many points on the board for the office here. What Dr. Craig is saying there is that the, the idea of the office that we have today goes back millennia. So I had to ask him, why? Why hasn't The Office evolved?

Al ElliottCharles Handy, who is a brilliant business guru, an Irish chap who was based for years at LSE, said that business is full of clever people doing remarkably stupid things. That's why. Management took power unto itself, particularly after Taylor, because again, I'm sure your listeners are aware, but what Taylor did is he worked in the steel industry. And he said he increased productivity by 800% by taking complicated jobs like the manufacture of steel, which was done by teams of people. And instead of having a team of people do the whole thing, he split it down into individual components. And by doing so, he said he increased productivity by 800%. And at the same time, what he also did is he took the power that people had in the workplace into management. And that was copied by the office structure. I recommend if you want to have a look, put in Sears Chicago 1913, and you will see serried ranks of women because women were the most recruitable, most dismissible, most suitably skilled, and cheapest resource available being controlled by other people.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottImitating a factory. And management likes that power, loves that power. It likes to think it has the tricks to make things better. And when it doesn't, when it shares that power, when management becomes what it should be, which is a facilitating, not a directive body, then wonderful things start to happen. Dr. Craig isn't the only one to have read Charles Handy. Mark Eltricham, the guy behind workplaceinsights.net, also read him and also Explains that remote working isn't new. What I think engaged me about it was in about 1992, I was working for a furniture company near Cambridge, and I was introduced to the work of Charles Handy. We'd heard all the arguments before about remote work and productivity and well-being and so on and so forth, and they've been established since at least the late '80s. You know, there's no real reason why anybody needs to go into work together, if you, if you look at it in that way. I mean, the water cooler thing, you know, which keeps getting trotted out, isn't a particularly good argument. This idea that, you know, you put people together like peas in a tin, you know, and they'll bounce information, ideas off each other. I don't think that necessarily works out in practice. But there are strong arguments, and in particular things like the idea of weak ties, that have really come to the fore. So there's stronger arguments in favor of the office It was more about how isolation is, is bad for people, and not just in terms of, you know, because most people aren't completely isolated, but they're, but they're kind of insulated from encountering people from different backgrounds and with different ideas and stuff like that. You look at how some of the tech firms are now thinking about this, you know, a lot of them have now got some sort of mandate for a return to the office of some, you know, I'm just using current terminology. So they're not going fully remote themselves, and that is because they're discovering that parts of the way they function are going missing. And so they're not able to deliver projects in the same way, to the same quality, and in the same sort of time frames. So I think the arguments in favor of in-person working are There, but I don't think they're always made very well. I think if you have a conversation with anybody in any field that's an expert, they can always dig down deeper. You know, there's always a but there, or an and, or something like that.

Leanne ElliottSo let's recap on some of the things we've learned here. The first is that the design of the place we are working from does have an impact, not only on the organisational culture, but on our performance, our productivity, and our wellbeing. We know that from, from the science Dr. Craig has outlined. The second is that we know if we look at the history of the office, it is archaic. It has been around for millennia. So the drive for employees wanting to change this setup feels long overdue to me. And third, the pandemic changed everything. Accelerated trends in remote work. It shifted employee expectations of what the workplace is and how work fits into our lives. And as Dr. Craig explained, this gives us an amazing opportunity to finally make the updates to the office that are long overdue. So with that in mind, I asked Tim Hobbs from Oi Electric, what happens now in terms of a post-COVID office? What can that look like?

Al ElliottIn terms of bringing people back from COVID I think what people have enjoyed while they've been at home There's some things they've not enjoyed, but the things they have enjoyed is the fact that they're free to move to a place they want to work during the day. So I can sit in the conservatory, for instance, because it's sunny in the morning, but by the afternoon it's too hot, so I'll move into the living room. And in an afternoon, later in the afternoon, I might want to be in the kitchen. So they can change the scenery, they can flex, they can be in a soft sofa for a meeting, a Teams call or something like that. When they got back to the office, what did they come back to? They don't want to come back to you're sitting at a workstation all day long and looking at a screen or looking across at the same person all day long. What they're wanting is that flexibility to work in the way they've been— they've learned to work over the last couple of years. So to attract people back to the office, managers of offices have got to start putting in these spaces where people can choose how they want to work. If they want to work with a couple of people for an informal meeting, there's some spaces that they can do that. If they want some quiet time, there's booths or pods that they can do that in. Or if they want to sit-stand-table to be able to just flex their back and stretch their back, they can do that. They can work at a window.

Leanne ElliottWe would be doing team office a disservice if we tried to put together a list of arguments as to why the office, as it was pre-pandemic, is making a comeback. It's not. And what we're seeing from tech firms is a directive form of leadership, and we know that is not effective in the long run. If you are a business leader listening to this, wanting to entice people back into your office, get a pen and paper, get out your iPad, however you take notes, because I promise you these next 10 tips are absolute gold. Work has fundamentally changed how we work, has fundamentally changed. If the office wants to make a comeback, it needs to change.

Al ElliottSo these 10 themes are: number 1, change your mindset. Number 2, we're moving from fixed to flexible. Number 3, we need to support collaboration. Number 4, there's an increased emphasis on sustainability. Number 5, design is intentional. Number 6, great design is invisible. Number 7, design actually impacts wellbeing. Number 8 is individuality. Number 9 is supporting inclusion. Number 10 is measuring the impact. So should we start with number 1, changing your mindset? So Jim Mear is founder and chair of Day Two Interiors, which is one of London's largest independent furniture dealers. He's got a really good point about changing our mindset around all of this, particularly when it talks about the older generation. I know a lot of people in my generation say, oh, well, the younger generation are entitled. They want 4-day weeks. They don't want to come back to the office. They want this, they want that. The way I tend to look at it is more thinking the way my grandparents might have said, well, if they looked at me now and said, what, you don't work Saturdays and you have 4 or 5 weeks holiday a year? We only get 2 and we work Saturdays. So I think it's just a sign of progress and we should welcome that.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottBut offices are so important. You need to interact, you bounce ideas off people. How do you train people? Mentoring is much harder if it's not face-to-face. So I think the office is very much on the comeback, and I think it's much better to do it by encouraging people than forcing, whereas I know some of the big American banks are sort of basically forcing people to work from home. Yeah. People back to work full-time, 5 days a week. And I think BNY Mellon even threatened all corrective action will be taken. So I think it's much better the way the interiors industry is doing it, is focusing on design, make the, the sites much more enticing, give people a bit more space in the offices rather than cramped up on small desks, collaborative areas, giving themselves little pods like we're sitting in now so you can get away and make a private phone call or confidential call if you need. It's all about enticing people back. Make the place more vibrant, more fun.

Leanne ElliottIn psychology, we talk about a difference between change and transition. Change is an external factor that typically happens very quickly and with a lack of control. The pandemic is a perfect example of rapid change in which none of us had any control. But because of the length of the pandemic, we had the opportunity to psychologically transition to new ways of working, to working remotely. Now leaders are trying to force us in many situations to transition again back to the office. That mandated change will happen quickly. That psychological transition won't. And that's why we're seeing so much kickback about people going back to the office. Libby, CMO at HAT, also admits that the workplace has fundamentally changed. I mean, we are a mobile, global, 24/7 People now, right? So where we can adjust our, um, our workspaces or where we can adjust and make, uh, our, our interaction with technology, uh, more convenient, um, more ergonomic, whatever it is, that's how we're connecting. So, I mean, you and I are connecting right now, right? So this is our way of— I can't be there in person. We learned how to to even connect more as a group. But we also learned a lot of things about how important personal connection is too. So all that said, technology at our fingertips, right, and how we can make that a better experience, a more human experience, I think is what we're looking for.

Al ElliottSo Mick is the editor of Works Magazine, the industry insiders, and we asked him what trends he's seeing. The big trends are sustainability Yeah. Um, absolutely everywhere. Um, quite rightly, um, taken really seriously, which was, uh, I think for publishers like us, it's a huge relief because we'd got quite tired quite quickly of, um, experts and people we'd call experts and so-called experts, uh, talking about hypotheticals of where the future of the workplace lies or whether there We need a workplace. Whereas I think now there's a number, a lot of the big firms out here, the really leading firms have found a really smart balance. And that will continue to, that's something that really will evolve and continue to evolve as people move from maybe 2 and 3-day working weeks to all the way through to Goldman Sachs with 5 days a week.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottSo, um, it's a choice. There is a choice. So, uh, that, that power battle, I think, is one of the really interesting things about the market right now. I think the employee now has, um, a level of empowerment that didn't exist pre-pandemic, and, uh, there is no turning back.

Leanne ElliottWe mentioned last week that those people that didn't enjoy working remotely during the pandemic, The point was you weren't working remotely, you were working remotely during a global pandemic. And I think the point Mick has made there so brilliantly is that those of us that came back to an office while a pandemic was still going on, we didn't come back to the office, we came back to the office during a global pandemic. So actually, we need to now broaden our viewpoint and reimagine what the office and remote work can look like. But what experts seem to be agreeing on It's not about mandating people back into the office, it's about encouraging and enticing them back to the office. And as Dr. Craig mentioned before, this does mean relinquishing some control on the side of managers and leaders. Zarnab agreed that this directive approach from leadership may not be effective. I think there is, um, there is a drive to bring people back to the office, but it seems more driven by the managers or the superiors wanting the people to come back into the office for obvious reasons. They have more control and sort of more management and more collaboration. So work gets done easier from the top down. But from the bottom up, I feel people are a little bit hesitant to come back to the office, not for any other reason but convenience.

Al ElliottMick agrees and says the workplace is becoming more focused on collaborative spaces. I saw a lot of reports around the pandemic and post-pandemic of people already thinking we need to switch to, when we do come back into the space, more collaborative space, more of the softer side, which is as much for, you know, the right mindset and culture, creating a space that people want to come back into. And if you look around a space and count how many actual workplaces there are, workspaces there are, there's probably several hundred more than they actually account for because they're just putting it on the number of task chairs or the number of desks that are available. And like I say, the, that kind of new sofa lounge culture, that takes space and that space needs to be filled. So, so it's just a, I think a lot of it is a, a switching of ratios.

Leanne ElliottSo that is the first theme that we saw. If we want the office to make a comeback, we have to change our mind mindset. We have to change what the office means today. Talking to our experts, our second theme came out very clearly: the office needs to move from fixed to flexible. So having fixed workspaces to flexible ways of working. Zainab is our architect from Cushman Wakefield, and she explains that humans are social animals, and so the office needs to facilitate that sociability. Humans are social Animals, and they— you want to emote with other people. You want to have that connection. You want to sit across, understand verbal and nonverbal cues, understand body languages, and, and, and, you know, feel part of a tribe. We're almost like corporate tribes these days. So, you know, when you're going out to battle, for example, for a pitch or anything, or building something up, You want to be with your tribe and you want that sense of belonging with your people. And I think the office design can do a lot of that by A, being an attractive space to work, B, being highly functional. So now it has to be— every area has to be assigned a function and the ambiance and the equipment accordingly, the furniture accordingly, yet everything needs to be agile and can be easily moved around. I think that's, that's the biggest sort of challenge in designing overall office spaces.

Al ElliottLibby from HAC Connective agrees that workplace design is key in all of this.

Leanne Elliott30% of employee experience depends on the physical space. 30%. Some companies are saying, you know, you got to come back to to work all the time, right? 100%. Okay. But if I'm coming into the workspace, what is that going to look like, right? It better be collaborative because there is no substitution for live connectivity. I don't believe there is. And I think that that is proven out. So we can iterate together, but over the phone or over Zoom doesn't really cut it. I mean, nothing Nothing beats a good sticky note wall. Nothing beats that playing off of human interaction.

Al ElliottSo you can do it.

Leanne ElliottBut those spaces in a work environment have got to, in my opinion, foster that connectivity more over than almost anything else. So what do those spaces look like? Additionally, so you might be coworking or nomadic working, coming in, coming out, or whatever. So those workspaces also have to be able to accommodate a person who is maybe, you know, 5'3 to 6'3 on any given day. So how does that work too? So you're, you're thinking through a lot of different scenarios to make sure that the environment is really a flexible space, right? And also, you know, going back to that collaboration, those collaboration spaces have to be flexible too.

Al ElliottPat McDonald works with Libby Annie. Everybody understandably agrees that we're no longer fixed to a desk. We need to move. When they think about how they work at their desk, whether their desk is in their home space or in the office space, they don't often have the tools that allow them to maximize their comfort and their productivity at the same time. So they have fixed-height desks, they have fixed monitors, and they may even have fixed chairs. But our bodies are not fixed. We're all designed to move. So if their workspace doesn't move as well, then it's really not the most ideal set of tools for them. The other thing that people are doing is creating work environments that move, allow a person to move as they move. So if they want to sit down and work for a while, they'll do that. If they want to be able to stand and work for 15 or 20 minutes and do that, they'll set all of that Jim agreed and added the point that while we may need some structure, we absolutely need flexibility. Even though there will be some regimented structures which are necessary for working, but I think it's got to have the appearance of much more relaxed sort of lounge style so people can sit down and interact and brainstorm with their colleagues. There needs to be a little bit of discipline in coming back, but I think if we get the design right and make it enjoyable, Make it a place people want to come in. Humans are by default a sort of a sociable animal. So let's encourage that. Now, when we talk about giving the power back to the employees, we actually literally need to, which is what Tim is doing. Tim is the electrics guy who's revolutionizing the way that we charge devices. What you've got to do is make sure that wherever anybody can be, whether it be sitting or standing, there's somewhere they can power a device. Everybody is carrying around a battery-powered device now— your phone, your laptop, your tablet. The PC is almost gone. There are certain, certain parts of an office that will have PCs, but the people who are going in and out of an office, who are hybrid working, inherently have laptop devices, mobile devices. They only need to have USB charging. And if you can just put USB charging, low-power charging anywhere in an office so that people are free to be where they want to be, you've solved the problem of attracting them back to that office.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—

Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode with an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the worlds of politics, business, and brands as well.

Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing, but there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Al ElliottIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.

Leanne ElliottSo that's our second theme, moving from fixed to flexible. Our third theme is around supporting collaboration, which is very much an extension of fixed to flexible. One of the biggest arguments we hear from leaders is that in-person working is better for collaboration. And while there is some data that we talked about last week that may contradict that slightly, it does seem to be a preference But of course, if we're mandating people to come back into the office to collaborate, we need to create spaces that support collaboration. Here's Mick.

Al ElliottCreativity comes from human beings interacting, coming together. The era we are heading towards is that there will be less, should we say, operational floor plates with the desks and the task chairs and what have you. And there will be more collaborative space, more social space, more coming together so that people can just create, be creatives. The idea of absolute flexibility is— flexibility seems to be one of the really, really most— the key, most important words floating about today. Ideally, everyone is looking for absolute flexibility in their workspaces.

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.

Al ElliottMore in line with People coming together. And Libby agrees.

Leanne ElliottI think that we create environments for people to come together. And I think that that's never going to change. I don't care what year it is. I don't care if it's a decade from now, 2 decades. There is nothing that can replace human interaction, right? But what I do know is that we have got to support people's behaviors and people's people how they work and where they work, because that's always gonna, that's always gonna change, right? The traditional office, you know, with all the rows of desks and everything, that's gonna change, right? It's already changing.

Al ElliottI think Pat McDonald ties all this together perfectly by talking about collaboration. You know, what we find is that many companies today are thinking of ways to reimagine their space to draw them back into the office. And so, although people could do their jobs remotely, we find that the collaborative spirit, that the level of engagement that keeps people connected to a company, that happens more in the office than remotely. And so we're finding people looking at ways to build more collaborative spaces while still giving people the individual space as necessary so they can get their tasks, some of their tasks done.

Leanne ElliottOne, if we're asking people to come back into the office to collaborate, we need to enable that collaboration through the design of our office. And 2, if you're asking people to come back to the office to collaborate, and yet you haven't changed the structure of your office, you may be putting up, putting up a barrier to this collaboration. While being in the office can nurture work-based relationships, it can distract from home-based relationships. And this is where we need to think about the workplace the work office as becoming more human-centered.

Al ElliottWhen we studied people working from home, and when we compared that to people working in the office, we found that requirements are similar, but the way in which they're catered for are different. So that, for example, when people work from home, what's important is the people that are important to them— friends, neighbors, associates, whatever it is, via Facebook or TikTok, wherever they have their contacts— Or knocking on the door, and also the people with whom they work. Now, when you work from home, it's really quite important to make sure that you stay in contact with the people with whom you work. And that can be something that's neglected. You know, somebody's off in, I don't know, John O'Groats, and they tend to be forgotten about by head office. So it's really important to make sure that we retain work contacts with people that are working from home. But just as important, those things matter in the office too. So when they're in the office where business contacts are easy, remember that people's personal important contacts are important to them as well. So if you block things, which lots of companies do, like Facebook and TikTok and access to all these social media sites, you are damaging the access to those important people and you are damaging the organization as a result because productivity will fall. And more practical Another critical obstacle to collaboration is the fact that you usually need to bring a device with you, and you usually need to have that powered up. Remember Tim, our electric guy? A genius. Well, he talks about how collaboration requires power, but also how nobody really likes the cable. All the architects, the specifiers, every furniture manufacturer I've ever known has always hated the cable. I've never seen a single catalog which shows a picture of a desk with a monitor with a cable on it. They conveniently get rid of the picture of cables for the first time. So what we've developed in addition to our mains-powered solutions at OE Electrics is we've developed a DC battery-powered power system rather than just an individual product, a system. Which can be used in different ways in different pieces of furniture to make sure that every single place that someone can be, there's a power outlet for them to power a mobile device, and they don't have to worry about whether that piece of furniture has the ability to be tethered with a cable. Now we've got the ability to power sit-stand workstations, so a battery can be picked up at reception. Clicked into a dock in a desk, and that desk suddenly can become alive. It can— the sit-stand mechanism works, the monitor works, it's powered from the battery, the laptop is charged, your phone is charged. If they had an LED light, that could be powered as well. So just the user bringing a battery to the desk can create life in that piece of furniture. And that's why we call our system Animate. We're bringing furniture to life. And we've been doing it with AC electricity in the past, but we're really doing it well now with batteries.

Leanne ElliottNow, I got very excited at this point, and you might be thinking, why? And it's because if I think about the barriers of collaboration, ideation, creativity in the office, is you're, you're literally tethered to something because you need your computer plugged in, or your phone's low on battery, or, or I'm pretty bad actually for charging my phone overnight. Yeah, so I'm the one that needs to be near the plug socket. Whereas this completely removes every barrier. If I want to go over to a standing desk and have people stand with me, sure. If I want to go and sit on the sofas, I only need a teeny tiny little USB plug, or I can use my battery. It completely changes from a, from a practical perspective what our office can look like and how it functions. And in terms of aiding the behaviors we want to see in the office in terms of collaboration, creativity, ideation, This is the game changer, and it is exciting, and I stand by being excited over batteries. And the best thing, Al, the cherry on the battery-shaped cake, is that it is sustainable.

Al ElliottThe future of energy is always— is going to become one of DC. Renewable energy is, is made, made, or creates DC electricity to start off with. You've got to be able to store it. You can only make wind energy when the wind's blowing. You can only have solar energy when the sun's shining. If those 2 things aren't happening, how are you going to power anything? So this is always my belief for the last 20 years. How are we going to power the world renewably? Batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and in the future silicon-ion batteries, and there's other technologies coming along, they're enabling us to store that renewable energy. Energy for use when we don't have sun or wind. And that's going to lead us to a future of all renewable energy, DC energy. And what we're doing with OE and bringing a battery into the workplace is we're providing that first step from powering your device with AC to powering with DC. Those will then be charged by batteries in the basement, big Tesla, Tesla-type walls, but bigger batteries than those, and they will be powered from renewable energy. Everybody will start hearing terms like microgrids, where a small village or even a big building like the Gherkin will be its own power supply. It will have— it will be able to create power with its own windows, store energy in the basement, and then it needs to distribute DC power to all of your DC devices. Every single device that you've got that you can use in a mobile way has a battery in it, and that's DC electricity.

Leanne ElliottIt's very cool. But also then, if we think about how this ties into the values that Gen Z are looking for— environmentally friendly organisations— this really does back up that value in a tangible way. Similarly, we saw the bad press last week around Nike and, and all that's going on in terms of their greenwashing behaviour. And I think finally, one of the main arguments, if you want to put a point on the board for the office, Al, if we think about this type of technology, the main argument for remote workers was they cut out on their commute, they're cutting carbon emissions. Yes, but do you have green energy in your home? We do in the office.

Al ElliottSo talking of green energy, the 4th theme here seems to be around sustainability. We spoke to Jim. I think it's got to such a level in our industry that You just have to have sustainability at the forefront of every design. We have to lead the way. I mean, I know there's issues like we've got with the water companies at the moment and polluting rivers and polluting the sea and so forth. The old days, a company who's bringing out a new product would think about functionality and aesthetic and price. They wouldn't even think about sustainability. Well, now really sustainability It's almost got to be the starting point. If you don't design with sustainable materials and with a sustainability story in mind, whether you've got a good price, good product, or good aesthetic, a lot of companies won't touch you. We also spoke to Anna, the architect at Woodhalls, and she agrees.

Leanne ElliottI think for me, sustainability and social value considerations are really embedded in the way that we design, or I design. But also as a designer, when you think about a quality, beautiful space, I think that has to be not only respecting people's health to help them flourish, to make them feel happy, but also protecting the environment and making sure you're not harming our natural resources. I think that I'm such an advocate on measuring the impacts, having the right data, the right assessments done. So it's not just claims. And I call it sometimes sustainability sprinkles, which is like a little bit of, you have done the space, you've done the project, and then you just add this kind of really sustainable sprinkles. And that's not what it's about. It's about really understanding how creating a regenerative system of designing. Nothing is really perfect. And I think people just need to be transparent about this process. It's a kind of lessons learned kind of journey. And we should all start this journey because it's a really difficult one. You're trying to understand not only if they have the right certifications, because sometimes certifications are a piece of paper, ticking boxes. They're really important for that due diligence work because designers and architects don't have the time to sometimes, you know, doing the sustainable due diligence.

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottSo I quite often ask this to suppliers. Don't show me your green chairs or don't show me your kind of like products that have been done in a very sustainable community or have been helping somehow kind of just kind of like a village somewhere. But what I want to know is, what are you doing to actually completely change your system, your supply chain? What are you doing that is promoting maybe the health of your employees? Jim agrees that when it comes to sustainability, it's all about diving into the details.

Al ElliottI think there's different levels of sustainability and different ways of looking at it. I remember when before this became a big topic many, many years ago, when people started thinking, well, we need to be environmentally friendly, but not really knowing what we're talking about. Chrome became banned, almost banned from all products. Um, because of the poison in the material. Well, I'm not sure poison's not the right word, but toxicity. But then someone else pointed out, well, hang on, but things made with chrome last longer, so you're not going through the whole process of manufacturing. I don't think small businesses should be frightened of the cost element anymore. 10, 15 years ago, to get a sustainable solution, you were paying So I think what Jim says there perfectly is that it's about, like what Anna said, going back to ask suppliers to tell their stories. NoHo, the designers down in New Zealand, they have this baked into their entire story. Here's Ken. So the environment's a really big part of our material selection and how we design our products, how we minimize the use of material in our products, how we use materials from waste streams or from regenerated regenerative sources, and we actually connected with a company called Econyl or Aquaphil, and they've got an Econyl product which is recycled nylon from fishing nets, textiles, and carpets. So it's completely waste stream nylon material, but they've got a patented process where they repolymerize material right back to its virgin properties. And those virgin properties are what we needed for the engineering requirement of the components we were designing. So it was about using a waste stream of product material to deliver a high-performing technical seating product to support the human body. Isn't that incredible that you could be sitting on a chair made of nylon fishing nets? Paul, who works with NOHO, talks about another material they use to make chairs. And we found, in the case of Lightly, we found a material made by DSM called Ecopax. It's actually made of the castor bean oil or castor bean plant. So they make an oil from the castor plant, and then they use that oil to form the basis of the polymer. So they make a plastic out of it that rather than using petrochemical uses a plant. And the great thing about the plant is that it actually doesn't need water. It actually likes living in poor soil and rough soil, so it's not something that you'd plant in places where you grow food, so it's not competing with the food chain for plant material. So we've got a great material. Again, it's also a very low— almost the carbon footprint. It actually, you know, uses carbon in growing the plants, so the processing and the growth of the material almost make it a carbon-neutral product, which is fantastic.

Leanne ElliottOne of the things I really enjoyed about the Clark Mell Design Week was the global representation we had from around the design and workplace design community. I think we can be guilty as people from the UK or Western Europe or North America to be very US-centric or UK-centric. So it's wonderful to hear what, what the guys at Knowhow down in New Zealand are doing. It was also a great joy to hear from Zainab about India and how sustainability there is really taking Sustainability is huge in India. So to the extent it's— people consider it a personal responsibility as well nowadays, especially the woke culture. So they're, they're very mindful when it comes to the office space. There is the drive to use sustainable, net positive, if not net neutral, sort of, you know, carbon, carbon carbon-positive, if not carbon-neutral furniture. And I think, yes, we have— like, India has become extremely conscious about the waste that they are producing. And, you know, there's also responsibly sourced materiality that goes into the furniture. What does the furniture do? When I say furniture, I also mean carpet and light fittings and everything else that goes. So I'm just using an all-encompassing term, furniture. So, uh, what, what, where does it go once it completes its life cycle? Fun fact, our podcast is carbon positive.

Al ElliottYes, it is. Thank you to Andrew from Pod Positive.

Leanne ElliottThe 5th theme that we saw come out was about being intentional. And this really made me smile because as we said, I think it was last week, intention Intention seems to be the word of 2023 when it comes to leadership and workplace culture. Well, in the world of design, intention is also crucial. Here's Anna. The way that we design has to be mindfully and environmentally considered to a point that is not only celebrating beauty aesthetically, but also is going to be contributing to not harm our, you know, biodiversity, that is going to help us to really regenerate what we need in order to not only protect us as a species, but also kind of like understanding how we use space. How can that be actually making us feel healthier? How can that make us feel flourishing? So in 5 years' time, I really hope that the design is being considering not only environmentally, but also social values into all of our decisions, into the supply chain, But I do say if we need to do those changes, we need to start now and with a big kind of like push because it's a big, big mountain to climb. It's not going to be easy. And I think without starting, it's going to be really, really hard if we, 5 years down the line, we didn't do a big impact on changing the system. Yeah.

Al ElliottI don't know about you, but I've always thought architecture is like, oh, that's cool, but I don't really understand it. Frances from Homegrown Plus kind of agrees. She studied architecture, but it took her a long while to understand exactly what architecture does.

Leanne ElliottI had a very love-hate relationship with architecture, as a lot of people probably do. So, when I left studying it, I don't know, it kind of, it was so overwhelming and And very difficult to still comprehend. I did go into a few practices, but ultimately, I met Neil Pinder at an event, and we just got talking, and we work really well together. I was really interested because I'd personally experienced that kind of disconnect from what architecture was taught to be, and, you know, just taught to be like, oh, these people need these things because, I don't know, it's X, Y, and Zed and standards and blah blah blah. But then the more you learn about it, the more you realize it's actually about people and understanding what their needs are and how they want to use the space. Pat agrees that if we want to address disconnect that people are feeling with the office. We need to think more carefully about how people use our spaces.

Al ElliottEverything comes together, whether it's a HAT product, or it's ambient music in the space, or it's creating— like, we're sitting in this lovely pod that gives people an escape from the noise that's right outside the glass. And I think those mental breaks are really important for people, and it doesn't It doesn't take a lot. It just takes a bit of thought by the manager, the director, the owner of an organization to think that not only is the overall space important to employee health and productivity, but little pods like this— and by the way, I do not represent Mute, but it's just an incredible product, right? Yeah, it is. That this gives me a mental break. and mental health right now. It's always been important. We just haven't known that it's been as important as it is. And so everything that you can do to add to the big areas for everyone to collaborate, and then the individual areas for people to get their own work done in their own way. This intentionality about thinking about how people actually use the space is exactly the ethos behind NoHo. What we recognize is that people don't sit still, that they move constantly. We did— she said, because we're, you know, we observe people when they're working, we observe them when they're working, whether they're at home, whatever environment they're in. We put up cameras and watch how they actually live their lives. And what we observed is that because people move regularly, they, you know, they can move every 30 seconds, you move some part of the body. So this whole idea of sitting upright, sitting in a stationary You know, one ergonomic position is just wrong. So we design products that move with you so that when you move, you know, when you lean in to become engrossed in a conversation, that the chair is supporting you while you do it. When you turn sideways in the chair and, you know, relax, that the chair works with you and allows you to do that. Isn't it incredible that we use a chair and we don't really think about how we use it? But what was cool about that is that These guys literally set up cameras. I mean, they obviously had permission to do so. They set up cameras and watched how people, how people use the chairs and then designed it for that.

Leanne ElliottEvidence-led. I love it.

Al ElliottOnce a psychologist, always a psychologist. We heard from Simon before. Now we're going to hear from Simon again. He is the guy who produces the MutePods that we recorded our podcast in. If you listen to the quality of the Zoom interviews we've got on this episode and also the other interviews, the other interviews were recorded in a pod in a really busy office. I think you can tell the difference. And Simon is really fanatical about acoustics. Well, we basically figured out, and the research that was done worldwide in, in the last couple of years showed that bad acoustics is one of the main issues in modern offices, together with bad lighting and bad or improper type of air that is used in, in offices. So basically Yeah. It has been an issue for a couple of years. And the reason why it is an issue is because, as you know very well, we moved into open-plan offices some time ago. There is no way out of open-plan offices. We are probably not going back to cubicles that we used to have years ago because open-plan offices are, well, much better, much cheaper, much easier to produce. They give you the speed and agility that is so much needed in modern workplaces. It also gives you a nice, you know, flat hierarchy in the company. But one of the main issues of these open-plan offices is the fact that it's pretty much loud. So basically, if you have one team which is focused on, you know, just working and typing on the computer, and the other one which is a sales team pretty much shouting over the phone all the time, you have to find the right balance in order for all of those individuals to feel well. On top of that, you have different kinds of people. You have introverts, extroverts, all of them basically operate at a different level. They are used and they are motivated by different sorts of atmosphere around. And you have to take all of that into account. And that means that acoustics is extremely, extremely important in the modern office. There are some offices that basically would need only a one-person Mm-hmm. Pod multiplied by, you know, pretty much the number of people that might need a quick phone call or a quick Teams call over a certain period of time. But there are a lot of other companies that would need a larger pod or a larger modular system, which is one of the new trends that we see on the market, that would be used in larger groups for brainstorming. So, there's no one single, you know, solution for such a problem. You can even create with a set of accessories that we have designed a coffee point, copy point, reception, bar, you know, whatever you need. So, you can pretty much design most of the rooms that are being used in the office, but in a way which is much smarter and much more sustainable and much quicker versus the traditional building which is You know, plasterboard and all the glass walls, which once you build it, you will never move it because you would have to destroy it, throw it out, close the office for 2 weeks, and so on.

Leanne ElliottWhen we were at the OBO office, our good friend Aggie from Perks came down to see us. You may remember Perks. A few episodes ago, we had Stella Smith, the founder, on. So, Aggie came in, Al was recording in the booth, and we went into one of the other Mute Pods just to have a chat. And it was incredible how very quickly we got into quite an in-depth, personal conversation, not one we'd want lots of people to, to overhear, but the space was just so safe and private, we felt able to do that very, very comfortably. So from an HR perspective, that's brilliant, because, you know, how many times have you accidentally overheard a phone call that you maybe weren't meant to, or you want to have a conversation with your boss, but trying to find To find a quiet place in the office is impossible. It is such an incredible product and has so many uses. Do check it out. We'll leave a link in the show notes, but it is just a phenomenal product. And here's my— I don't get excited about furniture, Alan. I'm excited about this.

Al ElliottIt really is very, very cool. And we had it in Excel as well. If you go back to the Water Cooler episode, we were right in the middle of 5,000 people wandering around in Excel. And again, it performed perfectly and the audio quality was just magnificent. Magnificent. Okay, so going to theme number 6, great design is also invisible. Here's Pat from Hat Collective to talk about why. I would hope that the employee experience is one where they don't even think about the desk, frankly. They don't think about the monitor that they're using. They don't think about the chair that they're sitting in. They just are able to go in and get their work done easily, comfortably, safely, and productively and really not think about, well, the desk allowed me to do this. If we design the product to work in such a way that somebody doesn't have to think about interacting with it, then they are only thinking about doing their jobs. And that is a huge win for the employee. It's a massive win for the employer as well. So yet again, we don't think about a desk, but obviously the designers do. In terms of the chair, let's go back to NoHo and hear how Paul designs the chair to be important yet invisible. I think that one of the things we love is that the chair interacts with the human body. So it's a very personal interaction. You know, people have a very close relationship when they sit down, whether they acknowledge it or not. And for us, it's understanding how people sit, how we can improve the, you know, what they do while they're sitting, understanding how they— what activities they do, what they interact with. And then providing solutions that make their lives better. It's not something that people think about. They don't go to work to sit on their bottoms and think about their seating or a lot of other aspects of their workplace. But subconsciously, they have an effect on their performance. So, you know, it's like wearing a bad pair of shoes. You instantly react to a bad pair of shoes within a few hours.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottAnd walking around town or going for a walk, you're very uncomfortable and you know all about it. A good pair of shoes, you completely forget about. You know, they just work, so they're not an issue, are they? So it's actually about— a lot of our product is about designing things that don't negatively or don't disrupt people's activities. It just lets them do what they need to do and behave how they want to behave.

Leanne ElliottI think that's probably the headline of how to design the office of 2023, isn't it? It lets people do what they need to do and behave how they want to behave.

Al ElliottThat just sums it up. It's brilliant.

Leanne ElliottAnd this is why, like Tim, I'm very excited about the evolution we're seeing in how we power our devices and how it integrates with our furniture. Again, you know, and it sounds so silly, but if we're not tethered to a desk, we can do what we need to do and behave in the way we want to behave. And if I can do that, I'll come into the office.

Al ElliottI don't think I've been quite as excited about anything that we've done for a long time. And we've got to this point, people are starting to understand how their world can become agile. And when I've told people all bets are off, everything that you ever understood about power and the fact that you were going to have to have a floor box, you were going to have to plug into it, your furniture which has wheels on was going to have to be tethered by cable, all those are gone. And our biggest problem at OE now is just getting people aware of the fact that they don't have to think that way anymore. They can do what they like, when they like, where they like.

Leanne ElliottAnd isn't that the point? People like remote work because they like what they like, when they like, where they like. If I can do that in the office too, yeah.

Al ElliottAnd I think that's the beauty. Like, we've been remote working for, like, probably abroad for 10 years. in total for about 15 years. And yeah, there's lots of times that we go into a bar, for example, in Cambodia, and we want it— we need to go and do a couple of hours work, and you've got to choose, all right, where's the plug socket? Is that plug socket working? You know, and then you go, well, this plug socket is really close to the road, so it's really noisy, so I can't really have the Zoom call I wanted. And I think what Tim does is just— I can see why he's excited. It's just, it solves all the problems.

Leanne ElliottI did ask Daniel, um, his colleague, like, how much the batteries weighed. Because I thought exactly the same in terms of people working remotely or from home or nomading. What a brilliant solution.

Al ElliottAbsolutely.

Leanne ElliottYou can have that one for free, Owe Electric.

Al ElliottSo our 7th theme is all around design and well-being. We asked Libby— remember Libby from Hack Collective? We asked her, at work, when we're doing work from home, what are we doing wrong?

Leanne ElliottSo what are people doing wrong at the home office? Well, we know that approximately 41% of people experience back and neck pain working at home. Why is that? Because they don't have the proper tools and resources at their home. They think working at the kitchen bar, you know, oh, I've got, you know, I've got access to my coffee or whatever. That's great, but you're not supporting your body. And what we find is most offices, right, most places that people go to work, they have most likely a proper task chair and they're sitting at a potentially, you know, at a workstation that has a monitor that is— has a monitor arm. So I'm not bending down, I'm keeping my neck and my shoulders back. So you have to think about those type of tools in your own space too. And what's interesting is even during the pandemic, we've worked with so many different companies that were providing those products for people at home. So they were sending, you know, a proper desk that was a height-adjustable table that I could sit or stand, a monitor arm to put their, you know, monitor so they could experience a better viewing and a better— what do I just say— visual.

Al ElliottI've got my height-adjustable table.

Leanne ElliottI've got my monitor arm. I've got great lighting, I've got power, I've got a great task chair. That to me is like, it's my cockpit for the day, and it makes me fully supported. So it's really important at home to have those tools as much as it is, if you ask me, in the office.

Al ElliottAs the guys at Know-How, Paul and Kent, point out, it actually could be quite dangerous. So, you know, when they talk about deep vein thrombosis from long flights. Well, that happens to us every day when we sit at work. So, you know, we encourage people to move in our products, and we certainly would encourage people to stand for parts of the day as well. So the more movement you do, the more energy use you have, the more blood flow you're promoting. And, you know, activation, small activations of muscles is really important to that sort of slow static time that we have when we're at work.

Leanne ElliottWhen it comes to wellbeing, I wonder actually whether team office have a stronger argument when it comes down to physical wellbeing. Anna agrees and also points out air quality. So be mindful when we speak to clients to kind of make them understand that maybe the space needs to be accessible. Maybe it's really important to actually monitoring the air quality, um, not only just focusing on the environment, but like you said, on the wellbeing of people. It's going to be a space where people spend, you know, 90% of the time they spend indoors. So it's going to have an impact on their health, physical and mentally. And so all of those considerations is about asking. But on the other side, suppliers need to be more transparent. If there is toxic materials, what are they doing to kind of like change those kind of ingredients? We talked last week about how remote work facilitates not only work-life balance, but perhaps work-life integration. Speaking to Zainab, she brought up the term work-life harmony and agrees that hybrid may be the way to go. And I've spoken about work-life balance before as against work-life harmony, because I think that's one of the most significant changes that, that the pandemic has brought. I do not think you can separate the two. The boundaries have dissolved. So it is, it is in our best interest to have work sort of integrated into our life. Because if I come from a place of, okay, I need work-life balance, I'm going to be disgruntled every day because I'm setting out to achieve a target that might be very difficult to achieve in today's time and age. I encourage my team to think more about work-life harmony and, and move with that, which means hybrid working. If we are adapting as human beings, I think the office space also needs to adapt as effortlessly as possible. So yeah, changing needs, changing demands, and our response needs to change accordingly as well.

Al ElliottSo Libby from Hat Collective explains that actually a happier person produces 20% more productivity.

Leanne ElliottRemember, 20% more productivity comes out of a happier person.

Al ElliottAnd that to me is great.

Leanne ElliottSo if you're a happy person and you're working and you feel like you're in control of your environment, your way of working, how you want to work, you're more apt to be more— 20% more productive, they found. So I think it's pretty—

Al Elliotta pretty astonishing statistic that doesn't take a lot to be a happier worker. Pat, who works alongside Libby, remembers a time when the environment had detrimental impact on his well-being. Well, I think about a place I used to work where we had a facility and we had all old furniture and the walls hadn't been painted and the floors were not great. And over the course of a handful of weeks, Just did a complete refresh. And the energy of myself and my coworkers when we came back into the office, it was massively different. And so I think the advice would be, just imagine how you would feel as an individual as you walked into a brand new space. How do you feel when you smell the new paint, you see the new color scheme? that is current as opposed to outdated, how does that make you feel? And then multiply that times 5,000 or however many employees you have. That's a whole new level of energy that can help your team, your organization, especially in really tough times, get together and push forward as opposed to, well, it's just another day at the office.

Leanne ElliottJessica from Aruba agrees. Well-being is much more than furniture. And well-being is more than furniture. Yes, it's important to create the right workspace for the individual, but mentally you need to have the tools as well. Everyone, we're all going through the same stuff. We're all working, we're all—

Al Elliottand just sometimes having a 5-minute chat about, had the worst cup of coffee this morning, or, you know, just breaking up that time, breaking up that day, Mark from workplaceinsights.net, he actually thinks that if you are working from home and you are isolated, it can be really quite damaging and talks about an idea from Japan. And I think there is some evidence to suggest that actually younger people are starting to look for something that is, you know, to use the wrong term, real. You know, hence my daughter's sort of interest in, you know, her generation, in fact, they're interested vinyl, for example, is a quest for something, um, that gets them away from their screens and from this endless, bottomless, infinite supply of content and experiences that, you know, is readily available to them. The Japanese have this concept called hikikomori. There are these people who withdraw. It used to be just young men, but it's increasingly sort more, more mixed than that, who withdraw completely from the world, who just stay in their rooms, um, either their own place or, you know, parents, and just play video games and eat takeaways, you know, and just communicate to everybody through, through screens and, and whatever. And, um, and yeah, I think we've got to be careful about that kind of thing as well, that we don't insulate ourselves from, from each other.

Leanne ElliottI agree, and I think particularly with the younger people in our workforces, they want places where they can come together, meet new people, learn from, from more senior people, and really create that workplace community. But that again, as we've heard, requires intention. I've lost count of the number of offices I've walked into and I see everybody sitting there with their headphones in. So I think if we're wanting to really address these problems head-on and with intention. Again, we need to create these workspaces that are going to facilitate this type of, of human interaction, this type of community. Our 8th theme is individuality. We've heard a lot about this on the podcast this year. I think that with so many different choices and options and preferences floating around in our post-pandemic world, individuality really is important. We asked Jess from OBO her thoughts on this. Employers need to remember that everyone's a human being. Employers need to know that everybody's individual and they all have different needs. They should be doing a lot more listening to what people need as individuals. And yes, we all need to work and we all need to have a desk at certain times, but employers need to be more flexible with the individual. Dr. Craig agrees that it's less about office versus remote, it's more about what suits individuals.

Al ElliottProductivity can thrive in many different environments. What it needs, though, is happiness. If you're happy in a space, you will work well within it. And what tends to happen is people quite like, for example, working from home some of the time and going into the office at other times, or maybe going to the coffee shop another day. So when you give people again that choice of where they want to work from, rather than, let's say, in Jacob Rees-Mogg style, hauling people back into the space. That choice makes a really big difference about how creative and productive people are. So going back to this idea of isolation, Paul from NoHo, they're very aware of this. People are feeling isolated by working remotely. Young, you know, the younger generations coming through, we were quite surprised. You know, they're— one of the things they want to be together for is to get the mentoring, to work with the more experienced people, to evolve their careers. And that's really hard to do when you're working remotely. I think workplace itself will always have— well, I think it will have part of what work is, just because of that ability to be with people and actually form those bonds with the people you're working with and having that true collaboration, because it's really valuable. It's where all the great ideas— Certainly in our business, and from talking to, you know, All sorts of industries, collaboration is so hugely valued that being together is the best way of doing that. And finally, Mark from workplaceinsights.net. His concern is that well-being and productivity, those 2 words, are being bandied around without really any kind of thought put into them. And my concern with the whole well-being issue would be that it's kind of a little bit obscured by the productivity thing, because the whole remote work thing instantly became about, are you more productive working from home? So that might be interesting, is to see a shift back towards the conversation focusing more on well-being than productivity. And I know there's this idea that people are better off in terms of their well-being working remotely. And I'm sure, again, most people are, you know, in some ways most of the time. But again, there are some people who are clearly worse off. There is, you know, there are clearly some people who are going to be made very unwell by it, um, or encounter other problems. And we need to have a much broader conversation about that, about, you know, what individuals need and how firms can create a workplace, both digital workplace and a physical workplace, that meets the needs of everybody, rather than making grandiose proclamations that seem to apply to everybody but don't. Yeah.

Leanne ElliottMic drop.

Al ElliottI tell you what, that guy knows a thing or two about the workplace. If you're not subscribed to workplaceinsights.net, look at the show notes, you'll have a link, and he's got lots of publications including magazines, which, let's be honest, when was the last time you held a magazine, a physical magazine?

Leanne ElliottOur 9th theme, which I'm sure will come as no surprise, is that workplaces, physical workplaces, need to support inclusion. Now, when we talk about inclusion, we often jump to people with disabilities, but often we forget other demographics that can be overlooked, and one that we have touched on already is age. While it is about personal preferences, we also need to remember that the younger people in our organisations might not have the home set up to be able to work effectively. Perhaps they're still with their families or their siblings or in shared accommodation. Mick agrees.

Al ElliottIt's about personal preferences, and I think those who are more than happy to work in a hybrid or a split way will look for jobs with companies that also want to work that way. So I think some people are not as lucky as some of us. They don't have a home with views over the countryside or biofilia or comfortable settings or the right work settings. In terms of privacy, acoustics, etc., etc. So why wouldn't you want to work in a really high-end workspace?

Leanne ElliottI also spoke to Zainab, who explained how the workplace can help those who aren't able-bodied. Yes, so, um, technology— every second person is IT or something to do with technology. I think even here, most of our import, apart from, you know, other things, is the human component that provides the technology, so to speak, to have technology integrated into the functional spaces as well. So, in fact, one of the examples, I won't name the client, we use technology to sort of humanize spaces. We had an app developed for the differently abled. What we did was when somebody walked to a key area, Uh, there was— and they couldn't see. Uh, there was feedback loop coming in through their ears to, to kind of, you know, tell them, okay, you're at the reception, turn right for washrooms, turn left for the work area. Frances is from Homegrown Plus, which is all about building diversity into the architecture community. She explains that we need diversity on both sides, both in terms of, of how we design spaces for diversity and diversity within the design team itself. Architecture is about, like, placemaking and, um, kind of— I don't know, it's something that everyone experiences every single day, but the global majority are 80% of the population. But, you know, you get a fifth of them that are actually designing it. So, when people come from lots of different backgrounds and different experiences, um, you know, they, they also need to be the ones designing where they are every day. And, um, yeah, it's also just like to create more inclusivity and understanding and actually like cater for these people that, you know, I don't know, you don't otherwise. Every year in the summer, we bring 10 students from non-traditional backgrounds to New York and we visit the Pratt Institute. We do a 2-day workshop there and we visit different practices, like big and small architectural firms, um, and it's to inspire the next generation and, um, to show them that they do have a place in the room. We've gone through 9 different themes or interventions you could consider in redesigning your workspace, but all of them are meaningless without measuring the impact. I'm actually quite a big advocate of certifications or assessments or Frameworks that designers should follow. So on the well-being, we have WELL, FitWell, but we also could just pick up the principles that certain certifications have, like monitoring access to water, access to staircases, and really understanding what those kind of parameters are trying to bring to your design and incorporating them. I find really important that— I find it's really helpful for when we have dedicated budgets and resources and also a framework that will measure what we're trying to monitoring and what's going to be the impact. So at the end, the client could also claim it back, could understand what kind of carbon impact the project had, but also what's going to be the health impact on the users. So measurement, as you might have now understand, It's something that I find that is crucial for us to kind of keep moving in the right directions, but always against the right frameworks. Some fantastic advice from Anna there, and what a beautiful set of data to be able to feed into your culture and into your employer brand.

Al ElliottI think this is with any kind of intervention, as Leanne has taught me, that as a scientist, then if you're doing any kind of intervention, whether it be wellbeing, engagement, Recruitment, management, coaching, you need to measure the impact of it. Otherwise, you're just guessing. You're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. So really, really, really vital part of this. Leah, that is all 10. It feels like we started this podcast around about 2 years ago.

Leanne ElliottIt has been a bit of a movie of a podcast, hasn't it? But there is so many, there are so many amazing guests we spoke to and so much great advice. And an area that You know, it's, it's almost comprehensive now. I'm not sure we're gonna have to come back to this until there is an interesting development, or maybe check in how people are doing. It is really that one stop for everything you need in terms of encouraging employees back to your workplace office, if that, if that is what you want to do. So, you know, it might be thinking, Leanne, Al, that's great, but where do I start with all this? Well, we've got you. There are actually 3 areas that we would suggest you start with. And the first one may come as a shocker: employee voice. Here's Jim.

Al ElliottI think they've got to talk to their employees, their staff, and listen. And don't judge, because we're all right and we're all wrong. So don't judge, just listen and adapt it. And then if there's something you fundamentally disagree with what they're saying, just Maybe say, well, we don't want to have a massive Costa Coffee shop because we actually need to actually do some work, or whatever it is. So, yeah, we need to listen, but also maybe a little bit of mentoring and a little bit of guidance.

Leanne ElliottPat agrees that this more collaborative approach is likely to be more effective.

Al ElliottHow we get there is a really challenging question to ask, or to answer, I should say, because If you have a leader at the top that has their way, you mentioned Elon Musk earlier, if he provides a directive that is based on his philosophy of how to get things done, but you have 10,000 other people that have a different viewpoint, there is going to be stress and friction. And all of that takes away from a healthy, productive work environment. Yeah.

Leanne ElliottOne of the most effective ways of getting to where you want to be, whatever area of people and culture you're talking about, is to understand exactly where you are now. And the bonus of that, asking your employees about where things are now and how they feel about it, can actually in itself boost morale, as Libby explains. But very meaningful things where, um, management, your supervisor, whatever, is giving you accolades or showing you the opportunity to work your way, right? That empowerment. I think that that's probably one of the most important things you can provide an employee is being heard, right? And that is a validation that I'm important here, that if I feel like I'm contributing, I'm actually going to produce more than if I wasn't, if I'm feeling down, if I'm feeling like I'm not valued here. But when a person is valued in their work, in what they're doing, they automatically are more apt to give more of themselves and feel like they're contributing more.

Al ElliottAnd I think to round this off, we've got the don of workplace design, Dr. Craig. What did he have to say, Leanne?

Leanne ElliottDr. Craig took the idea of employee voice even further, and actually suggested rather than asking people how they want to design the space, actually giving them the tools and resources to do it themselves.

Al ElliottThe beauty of that is all we do is treat people like adults. Now, that's logically a piece of cake. Emotionally, it's really hard to do. Okay, so I realize there's this dichotomy of force going on because people said we don't do that, but they should. So the empowered space is, okay, Leanne, here's your space. Sit with your team and here's some tools that we've— that we would have used as, say, management, or we would have used as designers. You use them, they're yours. You decide how you want the space to look. And it's like that. And what's really interesting is that when we said this lean space is destructive and horrid, if that's the space somebody prefers, that's every bit as productive and creative and innovative as space that's covered in plants and pictures for somebody else. Okay, so number one, you need to listen to your employees, allow them to have an employee voice. Number 2 is the question of, can you do it yourself? I mean, this could be potentially very, very expensive. So if you've only got a small company, it may not be worthwhile. We asked Dr. Craig about this, about how you actually can do this without necessarily spending thousands and thousands of pounds. To find is that up to about 20 people, companies tend to work, generally speaking, pretty well. Because what'll happen is, if, let's say, you, me, and your boss, let's say we form a company, then what happens is we will work together and we'll decide who sits where, what color we want the carpets, what kind of furniture we want. Do we want anything on the walls? What about the windows? Where would you like to sit on Thursday? All of those things we'll decide between us. And that works beautifully. That's what we should be doing. But when we get to about, about 20 people, suddenly somebody starts to know better than everybody else.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottThat's when the problems start. There are 3 things for a great job. Okay? If you remember, you can remember ART, or you can remember RAT or TAR. It doesn't really matter which word, but let's stick with ART, right? If you give people autonomy, resource, and trust, those 3 things, you have given somebody a fantastic job. And resource is not just a computer on the desk. Resource is like time, access to people, access to that matter to them. So autonomy, resource, and trust. You cannot do anything but give somebody a great job if they have those 3 things.

Leanne ElliottThe effects of when you do do something can be incredible. Here's Jess. But if you're not nurturing them, if you're not showing them, and you're not giving them the tools to stop making those mistakes, if you're not communicating, and you're not listening, then how are you going to get the best out of them, because then they'll move on. They'll go somewhere that does care, and they'll get the results that you want. And you think, why didn't they do that for me? You know, I've got Gary. He's fantastic. You know, I've just— I've been so lucky, like struck gold really, when we sort of paired up. Because through my life, with my career, with OBOZ even, I've had a few things go awry.

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottAnd he's just so supportive. And if I need anything, because I can't— I'm flustered, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm stressed— he'll just say, just stop, you know, take a minute, understand that it's, you know, you're human, you need a minute, you— nothing needs to be done right now, this very second. So just— And it's that kind of help, and it's that kind of empathy, you know, that understanding from another human being that helps you So if you are a small business, workplace design may be important, but it needs to be coupled with, with a broader design and consideration of your culture. We spoke to Kent from Knowhow, and he explained that if we are looking at our workplace, just being thoughtful about placement and how we use our spaces is a great place to start.

Al ElliottThoughtful placement of things like communal areas, Breakout areas are really important for those sort of spontaneous conversations and other things that we can't measure, but we know those sort of interactions really add to the team's innovation, knowledge, and the teamwork of a group. Paul, who works with Kent, agrees. That's a really important part of building culture, building bonds with the other people that you work with. And it really does promote that and promote the culture, and it empowers employees to choose where they work and where they do their tasks and where they do their activities.

Leanne ElliottAnna also explained that there are loads of free resources available. There's so many available resources online at the moment. I feel that it's kind of like a minefield, to be honest. Where could you find so many tools. I think what I always say to anyone usually that is involved with the design that is not an expert, it's quite important that if you are trying to really go and create kind of sustainable or mindful design, that you have the right experts around the table. And for small businesses, often those right experts, as we've, as we've heard, are going to be your employees. But of course, if you do have the funds available, engaging an expert is always an excellent way to go.

Al ElliottI don't have the design eye. That's what designers are for. I walk into a room, I see 4 walls, a ceiling, and a floor. That's what I see. A designer can come in and imagine what's possible in that space. And I'm grateful for that because when I walk into a space, and everyone that's listening to this, they can think about an experience. They walked into a place and they felt a certain way. That's what designers do. And I think it's exceptionally hard and it is exceptionally powerful at the exact same time. I'm envious, by the way, of designers that have ability to do that.

Leanne ElliottMe too, I can barely dress myself in the morning, Pat. But anyway, Henry also agrees that engaging experts is important, but it doesn't always have to be a design company. Sometimes just finding a great designer to consult with can be really valuable.

Al ElliottI think the first, if it's a company that hasn't got a perhaps internal designer, to get one, because even if they don't need— they're not actually a design company, because that designer will know, um, you know, the trends and things to put in the workplace to boost morale in that workplace. Second of all, I think they probably need to know about, you know, sitting times. You know, you've got the adjustable height desks and things. I think that should be almost the standard desk now. It should be a height-adjustable desk, really. Not that I use mine very often, but, you know, it's there if I need it. If I get a bit cramped, I can stand up. Yeah.

Leanne ElliottWhat we have heard throughout this episode is that great design is human-centered. I know that can be a bit of an ick term for some people, especially maybe the British contingents of our listeners, but being human-centered really is the point. You can design the best workplace office in the world in terms of functionality, in terms of fancy chairs, but if it doesn't work for your people, then it doesn't work. Let's round off this episode by more from the incredible Dr. Craig.

Al ElliottIf you really want to create a space like that, then just ask the people within it to create it. You know, if you're a manager, then one of the most important things, as we've said, is to treat people like grown-ups. Trust them. You know, let the group decide. Let the group go and do its thing, and the group will come back with a solution. And what you get when you do that is something called congruent identity, because the group bonds Because you've let it, so it goes away and does its own thing. But it also bonds with the organization that has trusted it to do those things. So instead of us and them, you just get us. We've never found a situation, for example, where that is better than a situation where people are empowered. That's one thing. That's why your question is really good. But when instead of having the design-led solution, which is the apotheosis of brilliance, at the moment, where you suddenly have a led design solution, where the skills of the designer become submissive to the organization, submissive to the team, rather than leading it. When you psychologically apply design, in other words, that's when you get that 60% increase. Just against the empowered bit, it's about a 35% increase. Design is a fantastic thing, but it's just that it's not properly used or understood. You need, you know, psycho— I don't understand why people don't use psychology as a default in design, because it affects people. Because people, as we see in this post-pandemic world, are scared of change, right? So even companies like Yahoo, which are held up as these burnished examples of good practice, are not good practice anymore. We see Elon Musk and the appalling way he treats his workers. They're very hard to find. But I do recommend some, and I'll give you one, and that is Gore-Tex, which is the, the all-weatherproofing company which produces fabulous stuff. And they look after their people first. Virgin do something similar. And Gore-Tex say that they look on money as a form of applause. It's something that they get for looking after their people who then do the job well. If all companies did that, it'd be a fabulous working Interesting what Dr.

Leanne ElliottCraig says there, that these tech companies that once were the gold standard of best practice just aren't anymore.

Al ElliottSo let's just conclude. That is everything. You can relax, you can go and get a cup of tea. But before you do that, let's just finish off with the future of work. We asked some of our experts what they think the future of work is going to look like. Here's Pat. So me, I'm on the old end of things. I love the office environment. I love the energy that happens in an office, the creativity that comes from the power of a group of people that have a shared objective and different ideas on how to get there. I think that what we learned in COVID is that we can still get work done and perhaps create quite a bit more work-life balance than we've ever had before. And certainly in the States, where we tend to be annoyingly aggressive, and it's really quite absurd sometimes of how go, go, go we are. We learned because we were forced to learn how to do things remotely. I think that the answer is in the middle. What we're used to. We're never going to always go back to that. At least I don't think so. And what existed during COVID I don't think that's sustainable for everybody, if for no other reason that some people don't work well by themselves, even if they want to. So it's a combination of 3 or 4 days of work together and 1 or 2 days at some point on your own. And if those— that want to come to the office, such as myself, 5 days a week, have at it. We asked Jim, who's one of London's largest furniture dealers, what he thought the workplace was going to look like. I think it's just going to be less and less work desks as such, but maybe a bit bigger to make it more enticing, more height adjustability. So we catch up with Holland and Germany, which have led the way on height adjustment. In the workplace, and then collaborative areas and more pods and booths, just things which give life to an office rather than just walking in and you— oh God, there's a sea of 200 desks. It may in the future be 50 desks and much more relaxed environment with lots of lovely little breakout areas and meeting high benches and so forth.

Leanne ElliottI ended my conversation with Dr. Craig by asking him if you had a magic wand, what changes would you make? What would the future of work look like?

Al ElliottIt would be to give people those levers of control, to trust the people that work for you and give them what they need. Then you'll have a great company. One rider to that, if I may. There has never been any such thing as a place where people are too happy in their job. The happier they are, the better they perform. The happier they are, the better they perform. What a way to end this bumper episode. Leanne, I think we've got nothing more to say apart from links are in the show notes.

Leanne ElliottLinks are in the show notes. Thank you to all our incredible guests. Again, we will leave links to them as well. I think this is definitely our most ambitious episode ever, so I hope you enjoy it. I think it's definitely given us some points of reflection being very remote first people. But I think to answer the question in our title, is the office making a comeback? No, not the office as it was. But could the office claim a place at the centre of how the future of work will look? Abso-freaking-lutely.

Al ElliottOffice 2.0, that's the future. We'll see you next week. Bye.

Chapters & timestamps

Show notes

Is the Office Making a Comeback? Redesigning Spaces for Well-being

🔥 Stories Covered

🧠 What We Learned

💬 The 10 Ways to Get Employees Back to the Office

More From Our Guests

Connect With Us

Full transcript