Insights from the forefront of future of work thought leadership

Does a strategically placed fiddle leaf fig plant really help your employees to work smarter? Technically, yes, although a plant won’t achieve this on its own. More on the fiddle leaf fig later. The ultimate workspace design combines several key elements to create an environment where productivity, creativity and wellbeing thrive. A well-designed workplace is one that’s seamless; your employees interact harmoniously with their surroundings. One that facilitates focus, energy and efficiency. So as we begin to embrace the hybrid working model, there are ways you can optimise your workspace to not only bring your employees back into the office but increase their output at the same time.

Ask your employees

The first step is to speak to your employees – what do they like about the current workspace and what do they need to feel more motivated and operate more efficiently? At Axiom, our wrkx^TM data and strategy toolset measures the impact of workplace design on an organisation. We begin this process with an employee questionnaire – developed in collaboration with behavioural scientists – to assess how the current space could be adapted to help people work smarter. These insights tell us what is most important to the business, and what changes are needed, to deliver an intelligent design that motivates your workforce.

Place not spaces

Armed with your all-important employee intel, it’s time to focus on places, not spaces. Drawing on the principles of agile working, your design should offer a variety of purposeful places to suit the task at hand and/or individual preferences. In order to work smarter, sometimes we need a quiet place to think, while at other times we need a large, open place to collaborate. And after extended periods of working from home, employees are looking for an informal place to reconnect, relax and feel part of their workplace community. A workspace that pays homage to different styles of working can boost employee engagement and improve the overall enjoyment of office life. 

Engage, entice and thrill your employees

In addition to creating the right settings for tasks, collaboration and socialisation using the principles of agile working, there are other fundamentals to keep in mind. It’s all about designing dynamic workplaces which create the perfect environment for productive thinking. Here are some other elements to consider:

• Create the perfect atmosphere through a look and feel that is not only engaging but also aligned to your brand. Consider what feels welcoming and inviting - spaces you want to be in. Trends like resimercial design are especially pertinent as we return to the office from WFH.
• Bring in nature. This is where the fiddle leaf fig comes in; plants have many benefits including producing oxygen and adding colour to the working environment, bringing the outside in. Access to natural light is just as important and while facilitating this might mean a complete overhaul of your workspace, it could also be as simple as moving impediments such as office furniture blocking a window. Enhanced ventilation, essential in our pandemic recovery, has also been shown to help employees work smarter with direct links to alertness and cognitive ability. Increasing access to the natural environment is a key element of your intelligent workspace design.
• Design for intrigue and interest. Give your employees a brain boost by including elements that are a little unexpected: an outdoor BBQ area, game zones, a specialised lab or a tech zone.

So as people crawl out from under the ‘work from home’ shell, how do you create the workplace of the future? A place where your employees can reconnect, be efficient and productive, yet feel just as comfortable as they do in their homes? 

Gathering feedback is critical, asking your employees what they need will help make them feel valued, bring them on the journey and ultimately embrace their working environment. An intelligent design is a humanised design that recognises people need different places to work smarter – a diversity of purposeful places reflects the diversity of your workforce. And connection to the outside world, and the all-important benefits this brings to productivity and wellbeing, is just as essential as your floorplan. 

Find out more about the workplace of the future in Leading the Future of Work in Australia: Insights and Strategies

The percentage of Australians working from home has jumped from eight per cent to forty per cent and productivity has endured. Many organisations have reimagined the way they operate which presents its own set of unique challenges. When implementing an effective hybrid workplace policy, striking the right balance between working remotely and in-office requires careful consideration.

The hybrid working model affords greater flexibility and freedom for staff but it’s essential that productivity, engagement levels, and inclusive working culture is maintained, in and out of the office.

There are many questions that employers have relating to hybrid workplace policy, implementing the right tech for efficient and effective workflow, and ensuring that productivity levels are upheld.

To help answer these questions we spoke with business and leadership expert Mandy Holloway. Mandy is the Co-founder and Owner of Courageous Leaders and her empathy-based approach to business leadership has helped mobilise different organisations to boldly rise to challenges and embrace them in their stride.

Through meaningful communication and understanding of employees, Mandy believes that organisations can inspire successful working environments, both face-to-face and virtually.

Striking the perfect balance – do what’s best for your company

When employers actively trust their staff, they are more likely to perform better. Mandy believes that leaders “have to embrace what it means to be a leader, which means empower people, trust people. You don’t need to see that someone’s sitting there to prove that they’re actually working.”

Policies for flexible working

The hybrid model is effective in future-proofing the workplace. Many studies conducted since the pandemic began show that working flexibility catalyses employee engagement, productivity, and positive wellbeing. 

Organisations that welcome hybrid workplace models are more likely to retain staff through giving them the option to work from home or in the office, or even allowing them to modify work hours. What’s more, creating a safe office environment that adopts adequate social distancing is paramount for organisational leaders and promotes the health and safety of everyone in the office.   

Incorporating flexibility into workplace policies by giving employees options provides them with a sense of empowerment. Through doing this, you’re “giving people accountability. So as a leader with responsibility, you want your people to take accountability for what you’re empowering them to achieve. There must be a high level of trust and belief from the top leadership team,” says Mandy. 

The right tech to support staff and aid productivity and efficiency

Organisations need the right tools to successfully manage change. Staff will need support when implementing new technology into working practices and to revitalise collaborative working cultures. 

Encouraging learning opportunities will give everyone the chance to understand the tools and tech they need whether they decide to work in or out of the office. It is essential for organisations to address any gaps in understanding the technology involved in creating seamless, hybrid working environments. It’s also critical to review existing tech and processes.

Employers need to ensure that every staff member has exactly what they need to work effectively and to organise or stagger their in-office working days, all the while supporting digital inclusion. For example, implementing flexible desk/space booking platforms helps to carve a smooth path to hybrid working for organisations. 

The importance of change management in establishing a successful hybrid workplace

Change management is a work in progress. Once people have settled into the new way of work and balancing days in and out of the office, it’s important to evaluate the hybrid model’s impact to see how your organisation is tracking and to sustain the model’s long-term benefits. 

Employers should consider the individual, team, and organisational impacts. Are staff able to successfully complete their work? Are teams able to communicate and collaborate easily? Are the organisational changes working as intended? What areas can be improved? 

Mandy believes that change management is as much about processes, as it is about bringing compassion “as well as information to support staff to transition from where they are now to where they need to be in the future. This creates a safe and powerful team.”

“And as leaders, we need to lead people to be able to make the best decisions to create these outcomes.”

The future is here and now. Australian workplaces are transforming at a rapid pace and the significant changes that come with this historic time are testing the ability of organisations to tackle challenges. The changes are gaining momentum and that’s why being prepared is more crucial than ever. 

So evolve, be open to transformation, and understand what the future of work means for everyone. Read our eBook: Wellness and Wellbeing in workplace design and strategy, to help you better navigate through these revolutionary times in the working world. 

We see the current climate in Australia as ‘yoyoing’ between working in the office and remotely, all dependent on something largely out of our control. So how can businesses build the necessary resilience to overcome these challenges and come out the other side stronger and more successful?

To answer these questions and more, we spoke with resilience expert, Heidi Dening. Heidi shared some valuable insights on workplace resilience – what it is and why it is important in the current working conditions. She also provided practical strategies on how to build resilient teams and explored what to focus on when designing the office to support workplace resilience.

Resilience has often been defined by the ability to bounce back…but is it?

“I believe resilience is really defined by somebody or a place’s ability to bounce forward, to be able to learn something from the challenge that we have gone through, be able to adapt it to what the new norm is going to be for that workplace, and be able to progress forward, to move forward, to bounce forward.”

– Heidi Denning.

Workplace resilience is often defined as the ability to bounce back from setbacks and handle difficult experiences or events. For the past 18 months, many organisations have been focused on resilience and in building resilient workplaces. They want to navigate through the challenges and changes brought about by the pandemic – until things go back to ‘normal’. If they can survive and bounce back, then the business would be considered a resilient business.

However, Heidi has a different view on resilience. She doesn’t believe we should “measure a person or a workplace by their ability to bounce back.” We all go through fundamental changes when experiencing challenges or adversities in life and at work. Even at a cellular level, we don’t really go back to the way things were. 

We have to adapt to the changes and keep moving forward – to learn from what we, our customers, employees and partners are going through; and not crave that stability and safety we felt before the pandemic began. 

The ‘yoyo’ working environment in Australia

With all the lockdowns over the past 18 months, the climate in Australian workplaces can be described as ‘yoyoing’ from between working in the office and remotely. How is this affecting workers? 

“It’s chipping away at them. Without a doubt,” says Heidi. The current ‘yoyo’ climate is forcing people to adapt to the new normal – working at the office when allowed to do so, and going back to remote working when lockdowns happen. To survive and still get things done, most employees need to change their lifestyles and implement new working habits. The bottom line, everyone is feeling overwhelmed, stressed and exhausted. This makes resilience in the workplace more important than ever in the current yoyo environment.

Why workplace resilience is important

Heidi highlighted that resilience in the workplace allows for creativity and innovation. The future is definitely unpredictable and unknown – but resilience enables you to move forward and think outside the box. It empowers you to do something new, different and unique. 

Resilient teams adapt quicker to the new ways of working, and figure out ways to be more collaborative and productive in a virtual environment. And when leaders build resilient workplaces, it’s a lot easier for them to create new business models, adopt new technologies, and develop new and innovative ways to deal with customers. All these help the business not only survive, but thrive in this uncertain and ever-changing world.

“When you have developed your resilience muscle, you’re actually developing your creativity and innovation muscle. I think this is the greatest benefit for a workplace.”

Building a ‘culture of care’ to help teams be more resilient

Now that we know how important resilience is in this current climate, how can leaders deliver a positive support experience for employees working remotely? Heidi has provided us with a number of ways employers can create a ‘culture of care’ to help teams be more resilient.

Be vulnerable and authentic

As a leader, you always want to appear strong, happy and confident. And sometimes, you need to be but during these uncertain and challenging times, your team also wants to see the ‘human’ side of you. Be vulnerable and authentic enough to admit that working from home is not always easy – that homeschooling and being locked in with your partner is sometimes difficult and can drive you nuts. This way, your team can feel that they’re not alone when they feel stressed and overwhelmed. So others feel okay to say, “I’m not okay.”

Bring a sense of calmness

Yes, you can be vulnerable and say you’re not at your peak at certain moments, but as a leader, you also need to show the team that you are calm and in control. Heidi stressed that “bringing that sense of calm in a world that’s feeling very unsettled is definitely important.”

Deliver relevant and accurate information

In times of crisis, most employees are inundated by news that they get from the media and from friends, families and even colleagues.  However, this information can be inaccurate or totally untrue. Leaders need to be able to disseminate information that is relevant and accurate. They have to figure out what’s real and what’s not – and deliver that information to the team in a timely way. 

Be a visionary

Your team will look to you for assurance and guidance. They will depend on you to create a path through this crisis. As a leader, you need to be a visionary – not in such a way that you can predict the future – but in a way that assures the team “we have what it takes to adapt and we’re going to be okay in this new world.”

Stay connected with your team

Heidi highlighted the need for leaders to “know what to look for, to make sure the team’s doing okay, virtually.” You have to know how people are going. So, make sure you stay connected with your team, through messaging, text or phone. If you would like to learn more about whether your team are resilient enough to cope with all the stress and uncertainty, take this short quiz.

How the office can support resilience

The long-term view is that most workplaces will have a hybrid working environment, where employees divide their time between the office and working remotely. So, the physical workplace may look different in the future, but would still play an important role in building resilient teams.

According to Heidi, there are a number of factors that impact resilience in the office:

Lighting

Light decisions in the workplace can make a huge difference in a person’s ability to sleep well. And sleeping well helps employees to be more productive and perform better during the day. Of course the opposite is also true, and a person will feel tired, exhausted and unable to perform his/her best, if he/she gets even just one bad night’s rest. 

Noise

“Sound is another one, because distraction at work is something that really chips away at our ability to work well.” Heidi noted that when people get distracted, whether it’s because of the sounds around the office or colleagues talking, it can really stress them out. Some are good at zoning out by wearing headphones or simply focusing intently on their work. But the majority of people struggle with sound distractions.

Technology

Technology has a big impact on resilience in the workplace. Whether employees are working at the office or at home, they need the right tools and technology to be able to do their jobs properly. Having the wrong type of tech or if things just don’t work, this can be a source of frustration and stress. “If you’re ambitious, and you want to get things done in a particular time without mistakes, then you need the tech to do that. And if you can’t, again, it’s just chipping away at someone’s ability to work.”

Social spaces

When designing your office, it’s important to create spaces that build connections between people. “Social health is so crucial for a team’s culture.” Heidi mentioned that employees go to the office to connect and collaborate with colleagues – to have a laugh and share life stories. “For many people who live by themselves or in really bad relationships, or, you know, lots of things going on in the background, the workplace can be such a sanctuary.” So, the office needs to be designed in a way that it allows social connection between teams and employees.

Axiom recently worked with ELMO, one of the fastest-growing HR tech companies in the Asia-Pacific region, to build a workspace that would foster connection and community engagement. The office design included a café and community space where staff can relax and socialise, and a wellness room where they can practise yoga and meditation.

If you’d like to learn more on how to better prepare your business and workplace for the future of work, read our Progressive Leader’s Guide to the Future of Work in Australia.