Insights from the forefront of future of work thought leadership

A strong ESG (environmental, social and governance) proposition can create substantial commercial value for your business, including attracting both investors and top talent, plus boosting financial performance. So how can you leverage your workplace strategy to support ESG?

Can you define what ESG really means?

“ESG can sound complicated, but it really isn’t. It’s essentially a reframing of what we mean by sustainability” – Jack Noonan.

Jack Noonan, VP at the International WELL Building Institute, recently spoke to us to delve into what ESG really is, the benefits of a strong ESG position, and how your workplace strategy fits in.

At a top level, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is a framework for assessing the impact of a company’s sustainability and ethical practices – in the past it has been associated with investors assessing business value.

However, Jack says this is an important framework for us all to use when thinking about sustainable practices: “We need to think about things that are good for the planet, things that are good for people and things that are done in the right way.”

“As someone who’s been a passionate sustainability advocate for over a decade, it’s been difficult to see that sustainability is often associated with this concept of doing ‘less bad’ or harm minimisation – it is often associated with needing to give something up. Because of this, it doesn’t always resonate with the broader community.”

“What ESG does is reframe sustainability as a concept in a more positive, holistic and standardised way so that people can understand what ‘good’ actually looks like.”

Investors and ESG

For investors, the ESG framework is about including non-financial indicators to investment decisions to help better inform potential risk and return.

Jack explained that previously, 70% of the information used to create valuations was financial, and about 30% was non-financial or somewhat intangible (Jessica Cheam, Founder and MD of Eco Business and ESG Committee Member for the Singapore Institute of Directors). That’s now flipped, so about 30% is financial, and about 70% is non-financial, intangible types of indicators like ESG. One of the key drivers of this trend is evidence that employers who focus on health and wellbeing have employees who are more engaged, productive and resilient. This typically results in better financial outcomes over the long term.

So while ESG used to be very niche, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, globally ESG assets may hit $53 trillion by 2025. However, in the early days of ESG frameworks and data, Jack says it is challenging to demonstrate higher social sustainability performance in particular.

“I think for a long time we’ve been able to say what good environmental sustainability looks like, we’ve been able to show what good governance looks like, but social sustainability has been to some degree a bit of a black box,” he explains.

Now it’s a different story: “Due to recent efforts in healthy buildings, corporate social responsibility and the acknowledgement of the positive impacts on human health and wellbeing, as well as broader societal impacts, social sustainability has become more prevalent within global sustainability benchmarking platforms and other frameworks.”

What are the benefits of a strong ESG proposition?

Attract and retain talent with a strong ESG proposition

There is an increasing expectation from employees that their organisation contributes to broader sustainable outcomes and a more environmentally conscious future. Additionally, there is an expectation that the organisation is demonstrating good governance and that the organisation cares about the health and wellbeing of employees.

Jack explains that “up to 76% of employees said they struggle with their health and wellbeing and that stress was a key factor in this, and that was before the global pandemic.”

Employees are increasingly looking to employers to support their health and wellbeing and that of the wider community: “If we spend so many of our waking hours at work, it makes sense to expect our organisations to have our health and wellbeing in mind. And I think another important aspect to this is that we have people increasingly demanding that organisations have the broader community and the health and wellbeing of the planet in mind as well,” Jack reveals.

Attract investors

In recent years there has been a solid focus from the investor community on ESG. Jack cites KPMG, who found that 86% of Australians expect their investments to be responsible and rooted in ethics, with another majority aiming to shift their investments into ethical companies in the near future.

“And they’re not just doing this because it’s the right thing to do; They’re investing because it has better returns,” explains Jack.

“This might sound like something quite obvious, but an organisation that values and supports the health and wellbeing of their employees is an organisation that has employees that are more engaged, productive and resilient, and this results in better financial outcomes for the organisation itself. This is why investors are looking at ESG performance because it just makes financial sense.”

ESG is good for the bottom line

Fundamentally, a strong ESG position has a material benefit to an organisation. Jack told us that “organisations are more likely to have better financial outcomes as a result of strong ESG performance.”

Illustrating this point, Jack explained that Dr Lawrence Loh at the National University of Singapore has found that more robust ESG performance leads to better market value and better brand value.

How can your workplace strategy support your ESG proposition? 

Jack says this is a question that many organisations are thinking about right now, particularly as we begin considering the post-pandemic future, where some of these more intangible aspects of organisational strategy have come to the fore.

“Ultimately, workplaces need to become people-first places, and they need to be focused on providing a positive and inclusive experience for all people, and one that supports all aspects of their health and wellbeing as well,” Jack explains.

What does this look like in practice? Jack says that workplace strategies should include provision for mental health programming, more robust community programmes as well as exceptional indoor environments: “That is, an environment with great air quality, lighting, acoustics, thermal comfort, and that encourages hydration, healthy nourishment and movement through the day.”

“These are all fundamental for organisations to provide a workplace that can support and demonstrate a strong ESG position,” Jack concludes.

Additionally, indoor environments which enable connection and efficiency whilst removing barriers and frustrations will serve to improve productivity and also better your bottom line.

Would you like to learn more about what the future workplace looks like? Explore the progressive leader’s guide to the future of work in Australia to find out more.

The workplace has changed forever and is continuing to evolve after the rapid transformation generated by the pandemic. Whether employees are working in the office or remotely, a successful workplace now needs to be a digitally inclusive workplace. But what does this actually mean, and what needs to be done? 

We posed these questions, and more, to John Corbett, Cisco Workplace and Real Estate Strategist. Our discussion uncovered how offices need to change for a new working world and revealed how Cisco is creating an immersive experience that levels the playing field for all employees – regardless of their location.

The challenges of the hybrid workplace

“We’re starting to notice that working from home has become the norm, and going into the office is ‘extraordinary’” says John.

He says that this in itself throws up some interesting observations. 

“Digital environments are frictionless – the transition between activities and engagement is smooth. By comparison, the office of old was rather clunky. The traditional office is architected to be fixed and time-bound and thus dynamically opposed to digital workflows. The office of now and into the future needs to catch up and we need to be smart at how we go about that.”

So if the traditional office is ‘hard’, how do we make the new workplace as ‘frictionless’ as the digital environment we’ve become accustomed to? 

John explains that this now means a reversal of what we saw 18 months ago, when we first got our stay at home orders. That is, looking at what we’re doing seamlessly and quickly online, and figuring out how we can replicate that speed and seamless efficiency in the office.  

“We’ve become very attracted to working in a dynamic digital-only environment. Meeting with ten people online is easy, but traditionally, at the office, it is complicated. So let’s make connecting the office, to the people in the office and the people outside the office, easy, on-demand and seamless.

“Let’s get the office to become an active contributor to our continuously evolving and transitioning workflow, rather than having to slow down workflow in response to the time bound, fixed nature of the office. 

“Why should we have to book a room to meet with someone? Do we book a laptop at home when we meet with someone? No. So the office should not be any different in our ability to seamlessly connect with other people or resources.”

This has been the focus at Cisco: seamless transitions and ensuring the built environment supports interaction in all its forms.

What does this look like in practice?  

“Say I want to have a video conversation with two of my colleagues. One is with me in the office and the other is remote. Traditionally, I would have to book a room to do that, and in doing, so I would roll around in Outlook, etc in order to do that. If we decided to have this meeting on-demand, I might hop into a room and then connect my laptop with a cable, or dial in and enter passwords, etc. What if I could just walk into the room, click the green button on my laptop to start my meeting like I usually would from home, and the equipment in the room automatically connected with me? What if it was fully automated, without touching a thing? 

“My environment should work for me, connecting to me, not me having to put all this effort into connecting to it. This is similar to you navigating across a digital workflow on your laptop. All the applications on your laptop know it’s you. You don’t have to tell them, and those software applications intuitively respond to your demands. The office workflow experience should be no different,”

Another challenge of the hybrid work environment is a lack of visibility. Whereas companies have a thorough understanding of their office’s physical space, they generally don’t have that same understanding of the workspace outside of that.

John says that “the physical office distributes a subliminal service that we take for granted. I.e. Your desk has an ergonomically assessed chair,  power, and competent network connectivity. 

“The distribution of this subliminal service needs to extend beyond the physical office. With 100 of your staff having to work remotely overnight, your office just went from one to 101 offices. If they were in the office you would have line of sight of the ability of the office and its infrastructure to serve your staff in order to help them get their work done. We need to be able to deliver the same level of service beyond the boundaries of a physical office and satisfy ourselves that our company is capable of intuitively servicing our employees’ workflow needs at a hardware and software level, at any time, anywhere.”

At Cisco, this means they are “levelling the playing field” by creating a digitally inclusive workplace

What is digital equality or inclusivity?

“It’s our responsibility to provide [our employees with] a first-class workplace experience whatever their location. And this creates a more inclusive environment,” John emphasises. 

John’s definition of digital equality has two primary components:

“One part is physical. You’ll often find pockets of competency in an office – so good tech in a boardroom, or large meeting rooms but nowhere else for example. It is inevitable that people will gravitate towards “better”, thus creating false economies resulting in uneven demand bottlenecks. A broader, more distributed delivery of seamless, consistent, and easy-to-use competency, in smaller sizes, increases supply elasticity and helps to balance out uneven consumption demand.

“The other part is equity beyond the physical environment. It used to be that if you couldn’t be in the office, you couldn’t work. And while we’ve seen this change during the pandemic, it’s still not good enough. We need to level the playing field further so that those who work from home aren’t viewed as passengers, but active members of the group. Why should a woman who has decided to start a family, be burdened with the uncomfortable choice of a potentially inferior place in the workplace, because she is not physically in the office?.

“For example, equitable equipment, such as the Webex’s background noise suppression AI, removes barriers to communication such as needing to mute and unmute yourself during a call. Therefore, the external environment now no longer impairs or disadvantages the external participant.”

How technology is levelling the playing field

We spoke with John about how technology is helping to overcome the challenges of the hybrid workplace and create a digitally inclusive environment for all employees. 

AI translation

“Instant translation tools are helping us manage differences that arise from cross-cultural connections and workplaces across geographies.”

Searchable meeting recordings

“I frequently work with people on the East Coast of the US who are having meetings at 2am my time. While we have a recording of that meeting, I don’t need to hear the whole thing, if I choose not to. I just need the snippets relevant to me. I can now search keywords and the technology takes me to each place within the meeting, where that topic was discussed… I can also see other areas of the meeting that were considered important to the meeting host, during that meeting. Additionally, I can also raise questions after the fact, too. This technology means, I can manage my time investments as I consider appropriate and I am not having to crumble my own work time boundaries to be an active participant in a global team while still remaining an active member.”

Smart tech used to diagnose connection issues

“Webex, Cisco’s collaboration platform, uses innovative technology to interrogate data and identify why you might be incurring an inferior meeting experience. It “sees” every bit of equipment (and related data) that is contributing to the engagement and can determine if, for example, it’s your headset that’s causing the problem, or something else.”

A look to the future 

What does John see on the horizon of the future of work?

Smart tech in the home office

“Smart devices, such as the Webex Video Endpoint, can continually collect intelligence to pick up on factors that create fatigue such as heat, air quality, or even environmental dangers like carbon monoxide for example.  All of a sudden, something as simple as a Webex video endpoint for the home could be used to help improve the environmental quality of a “workplace beyond the office”.  

Scaling digitally by leveraging the tech we already have

“We need to scale digitally. Technology needs to be distributable and singularly scalable across multiple platforms, devices and locations, including  the physical environment and “lean out” operational processes. We should be looking at how we architect this so we can leverage the technology we already have, and scale more on the “back end” rather than the front end, as an iPhone does for example.”

John concludes that you should “think of your office as one big device that connects people. Just because people are not there doesn’t mean they can’t be connected.”

As people begin returning and spending more time in the office, employers have to make sure that the physical workspace keeps everyone engaged and productive. They not only need to create a company culture that is safe and supportive, but one that also aligns with the company’s purpose and values. 

In this blog post, we look at how you can design a workplace that effectively communicates your values to your team, clients and customers, and why this is important.

How your workplace design can communicate company values

Company values are more important than ever—they set the tone for how employees communicate with their clients and each other and more—but if they’re not communicated well, businesses won’t be able to realise the benefits they bring.

The office is not just a physical space to do work. It’s not just an area with walls, desks, rooms and windows. An office is a place where people can collaborate, socialise and share ideas, views and aspirations. And the actual design of your workplace can have a significant impact in creating a supportive, engaging and productive culture. 

Workplace design creates an environment that supports your brand and tells your story. Each design element can communicate to employees, clients and customers the core values that represent who you are as a company. 

Here are some steps to make your workplace design reflect company values.

1. Define your company values

The workplace design process doesn’t start with choosing the right colours, lighting or layout. It begins with defining and establishing your core values. This is an opportunity for your business to refocus on your mission as a company, determine your ‘why’, and review the values and principles that are essential for both management and staff.

This is a critical step in the process – and should not be skipped. It builds the foundation that guides the way forward. So, take the time to re-examine and define your company values before you start thinking about how to translate them into the physical workplace.

2. Design the workplace to reflect your values

When you have defined and established your core company values, it’s important to communicate them across the whole business. Conduct company-wide presentations and team workshops. Email your values to each employee, and have team managers lead the way in practising those values. 

One important aspect in this step of the process is to have a look around the office and review the physical workspace. Does your office interior design reflect your company values? If not, you’ve missed an important opportunity to communicate your values internally and externally.

Let’s take a set of example values and talk about how we could create a workspace to align and promote them. 

Company values: Empowerment, Real People, Innovation and Customer-Centric.

• Create a front of house area that is prominent and purposely designed to host clients and external visitors to ensure being customer-centric is clear to all. Continue on with this theme by choosing a higher level of finish and furnishing and mood lighting, artwork to emphasise the importance of visitors. More specifically, the choice and style of furnishings also need to portray the appropriate tone and language to anyone who visits your office, e.g. timber veneers and the use of a reasonable amount of glazing reinforces trust and transparency, but also may delineate front of house from back of house, assuring your clients that their IP protected when you work for them.
• Using seamless technology connections focuses on the values of customer-centric, innovation and making the design for real people. How does this work in practice? By designing a workplace where employees can drop into unbookable spaces to accommodate a client that has arrived unannounced and needs a quick meeting. The employee can book the space at the door of the room for 30 minutes with no fuss and hassle, making the experience great for the client. Need to connect to the AV and dial in a virtual team member? No problem. It’s all done at the touch of a button and intended to accommodate and facilitate the client’s needs empowering everyone to collaborate efficiently.
• Include ‘experience centres’ to address innovation and customer-centric needs by facilitating a curated experience for people. How? Design for creative sessions, change the lighting, allow writing and sticking onto all walls, use modular furniture and a variety of settings within a room to create a sense of innovation when combined with high tech solutions in lighting and VC/AV equipment.
• Include right-sized, placed and styled collaboration, entertainment and social spaces to empower employees to host client-centric meetings and workshops that treat everyone like real people.
• Design social spaces that accommodate employee activities – keeping it real for them in how they connect their support services, reinforcing that real people connect with their real needs being met. It might be as simple as a functional kitchen layout with enough recycling bins, sufficient microwaves placed correctly and free access to the filtered water tap without having to impede the packing of the dishwasher.
• Provide choice in work settings i.e. flexibility about when you are in the office to choose the most productive work setting in order to empower and enable customer-centric responses by cutting down response time.
• Include sufficient focus and quiet spaces – this again means real people are getting their real needs met and enables high performance.

3. Consider employee habits and work preferences

Building a values-based workplace and culture would not be successful without the input and support of your employees. Engage them in the workplace design process. Ask them what works, what doesn’t, if the workspace communicates the right mood or perception, and how to best implement any changes. It’s also important to consider work habits and how teams collaborate and work together. 

Designing the best physical space where employees feel comfortable and energised, can do wonders in enhancing work performance and productivity in the long run.

4. Partner with workplace design experts

Let’s face it – creating an environment that reflects your values would require a lot of time planning, coordinating and building. Consider working with workplace strategy and design experts to help you do the job properly and efficiently. Companies like Axiom can help you strategise, design and build a physical workspace that reflects your culture, communicates your core values, and improves staff well-being and performance.  

Why company values are important

Now that we’ve seen how to make your workplace design reflect company values, it’s essential to understand why your core values matter in the first place.

Your company values matter especially in these times of uncertainty and change. They build the foundation of your company culture and serve as a guiding force for both management and employees. Here are a few reasons why company values are important:

Values keep your business unique

Core values not only create the culture within the organisation but also stay consistent with the company’s overall identity. They help communicate the brand story and build on the ‘why’ of the business – why you do what you do, why you’re different from the competition, and why the company was established in the first place.

They unite staff with a common purpose

People want to be inspired. They want to know that their work contributes to something bigger than themselves. Company values can help create that bond between individuals and teams to work together to achieve common goals and fulfil a shared mission or purpose.

They drive team performance

When employees are working together for a common purpose, they feel more engaged with their work; more energised and motivated. Team productivity and performance, therefore, significantly improve. 

Want to learn more about creating the best workplace that reflects your company values? Read our Future of Work guide and see what’s in store for employees, employers and workplaces in 2021 and beyond.

**Collaboration**,

/kəˌlabəˈreɪʃn/

noun

the action of working with someone to produce something.

How do we innovate for collaboration in the workplace? If we had written an article on 'collaboration and the evolving workplace' just six months ago, it probably would have started like this:

The rise of new and emerging workplace technologies over the last few years has not only changed the way we work but also the way the workplace looks and operates. Zoom meetings, Slack channels, Microsoft Teams, and the never-ending array of other remote working platforms and tools have allowed us to work together, without physically being together. It’s a trend that is growing…

But now, in an era of flexible working and advanced workplace technology, the conversation is no longer just about faster internet speeds or the launch of 5G enabling high-quality video connections. With a growing emphasis on flexible working arrangements and the integration of cutting-edge workplace technologies, the dialogue has shifted to HOW we can work most effectively and collaborate successfully in this new age. Technology is no longer merely the driver of the future of work; it’s the enabler.

Although collaboration-enabling technology isn’t new, there is a lingering association between physical proximity and collaboration. And while this association is partially valid, collaboration is a lot more than being in the same room—opportunely, our new ‘normal’ is shaping up to include a lot less of this.

Given effective collaboration is a booster of employee satisfaction and happiness, we’re looking forward to a future where collaboration is a seamless experience for everyone involved. Let’s explore the challenges we’re facing and what the future has in store for collaboration in the workplace.

**Out with the old (style of collaboration), in with the new**

A fundamental shift we’ve noticed is the adoption of, rather than the investment in, the tools needed for remote or virtual collaboration. This is because most organisations already had the means; they just weren’t using them. Companies are recognising the benefits of flexible working, and with benefits come challenges, which we’ll explore a little later in this article.

First, what could collaboration look like in the future workspace?

**Collaboration in the future workplace**

With close-proximity discussions by the water cooler, large-scale meetings, and chatter-filled shared spaces abandoned for the foreseeable future, collaboration has become even more critical—because the requirement for intelligent and effective co-created work has not gone away.

The future of work is here now, and thanks to technology and economic shifts, the workplace is undeniably evolving. So, what does collaboration look like in the future workspace?

Remote work may be the new normal, but it’s not always the choicest way for teams to engage. Yet to succeed in today’s dynamic, connected world, teams need to master the art of successful collaboration—whether working remotely or not.

We foresee the future workspace as a hybrid of in-office and remote work. With collaboration straddling safe physical proximity and virtual connections, don’t be surprised to see a virtual-first prioritisation of communication channels and methods.

The flow between the experience of physical and virtual spaces will be central to success. The workplace will converge the physical and virtual worlds, centred on supporting workers to communicate clearly and effectively—wherever they are located.

Many companies are already investing in meeting room acoustics to ensure those not physically at the office can participate and experience a meeting just like an in-person attendee. Others are holding 100% virtual meetings with in-person staff scattered around the office on video and headsets to level the playing field between remote and non-remote staff. The goal is to ensure that those who are not physically present don’t have a different or subpar experience of a meeting so they can contribute fully to the collaborative effort of the team and stay engaged.

And to preserve precious time for collaboration (rather than tech wrangling), plug-and-play technologies that require minimal setup will be expected. Ease of use is essential. And on a more futuristic note, 3D telepresence (or hologram) technology, once thought of as far-flung sci-fi stuff, is on the horizon. We’ll be watching closely.

**The challenges of collaboration in the future workplace**

Companies are recognising the benefits of flexible working, and with benefits come challenges:

**Dispersed teams**

While dispersed teams aren’t new, they are the new normal. Regardless of the structure, having a team spread across multiple locations presents a considerable challenge. Aside from managerial problems, creating an organisational culture is immeasurably harder without a central location.

**Conflicts in working style**

Understanding and respecting each individual’s working style is critical for successful collaboration. Even when working in the same physical space, conflicts in working style have always existed. Add a little distance and less face-to-face interaction, and you have a recipe for small conflicts to become seriously damaging to relationships and productivity.

**Trust**

While also an important overriding business principle, trust is expressly significant to successful collaboration. Trust builds the foundation for productive, constructive conversations. On the other hand, distrust due to transparency issues and misunderstandings will damage collaboration within and between teams. But building trust across time and space can be slower coming or even inhibited by poor communication channels.

**(Mis)communication**

The impact of the coronavirus on our society has been far-reaching, some changes were temporary and others had a lasting effect. One area that has been significantly affected is the workplace environment and our expectations for the future of offices.

In previous discussions about the future of work in Australia, we have emphasised the challenges posed by skills shortages, the competition for talent, and the need to manage a diverse workforce spanning multiple generations.

These challenges have thrown up a need for organisations to: 

• Increase employee benefits and flexible working options to attract talent
• Compete more readily for talent on a global scale, and
• Reduce focus on degrees, skills and experience in favour of talent and purpose.

In terms of workplace design, we’ve seen businesses adjusting to employee expectations by creating diverse and flexible workspaces, such as quiet zones for deep work, or meeting areas for collaborative teamwork. For employers, this involved an intentional shift to consider the needs of their employees with workspaces that accommodate different types of work and working styles.

3 years after the global pandemic, how has the future of work changed and what can we expect the office of the future to look like?

It’s worth noting that disease and the fear of infection has influenced architecture and the form of our built environments many times in the past. Cholera prompted the introduction of sewerage systems, the bubonic plague in China led to rat-proofing buildings, and tuberculosis is at least partially responsible for the white, clean modernist aesthetic. 

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has also changing the way we use our workspaces.  

Contactless design

Base building architects and workplace designers are prioritising hands-free and contactless pathways through offices, using technology such as voice activation, sensors, facial recognition and smartphones. Ideally, we will be entering our buildings through sensor doors, calling the lift on our smartphones and using facial recognition to enter your office suite, making it to your desk without the need to needlessly touch surfaces. Embracing these technologies will further future-proof workspaces and increase visitor and employee engagement within the spaces.

Flexibility as we’ve never known it 

Not-withstanding the negative impact COVID-19 had on the world around us, most of us were empowered with trust from our employers overnight – and most responded in an exceptional manner.  Working flexibly and remotely was suddenly normalised and the stigma attached to it has disappeared.  

This period has been enlightening, giving us a fresh perspective on the way we work; a reset of work-life balance as we have not experienced in the recent past. We need to remember that with enlightenment comes responsibilities for us as employees, to work proactively to make the new environment work. As such, we’ve identified some success factors for individuals and teams working in the new normal: 

     1. The ability to work with autonomy

William Shakespeare, as always, makes this point with the least verbiage:  “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.” Organisations will benefit greatly from team members that are self-directed and who manage up and drive results rather than being passengers on this journey. 

     2. Physical distance requires – and often builds – trust 

Stronger bonds have been built in teams as we prove to ourselves and to each other that we are reliable and available – despite being physically distanced. 

     3. Flexibility requires an outcome focus 

Work is not a rigid time schedule, but rather is about goals you achieve and tasks you master. Our forced work-from-home time has shown us what we always knew, but were frightened to demonstrate: that it is the output and outcome that matter, not that you were still at your desk at 7pm on a Thursday. 

     4. True connection comes from knowing the people behind the work 

We’ve come to know each other on a deeper level now – being let into each other’s sanctuaries. We’ve seen changes in the way colleagues interact. Emotional barriers have been broken down as we’ve witnessed each other on Zoom calls, managing our work and home lives alongside one another. We’re meeting each other’s pets, kids and housemates; seeing inside their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. 

The clear boundaries between work and home have become blurred and this is often for the better, creating more genuine relationships and greater flexibility in response to different employees’ needs. Our relationships are no longer transactional and will hopefully never return to being just that. 

Managers and business leaders have also been innovative in how they support their teams from a distance, with many showing greater concern for employee mental health and wellbeing. As remote workers make up a greater portion of their teams in the future, employers need to continue to facilitate engaging employee onboarding, collaboration and connection.

So what happens next? 

IOur workplaces will always play a crucial role in maintaining cultural placemaking and binding teams together.  This means that organisations will look at their facilities in a different light and not calculate their required office space based on a rough 10 sqm/FTE (full time employee) which has become the norm. The thought that organisations may now appreciate wider thoroughfares and distancing workstations more spaciously is simply a more exciting and human alternative to the dense population approach of 2019. 

Now with hybrid working becoming the norm, focussed work can be done at home, and allowing the workspace as a hub for social connection, incidental conversation and collaboration. The golden moments that are not scheduled and often lead to innovation, happen in the office when no one plans it. By providing an activated, engaged hub which caters for various activities, a new workspace provides a variety of accommodation for staff counts way beyond the traditional 1/10 sqm calculations, whilst decreasing the density of bodies in space at any particular moment in time.

This has lead to some organisations keeping their current leased space but increasing their alternate accommodation, or indeed, decreasing their required space all together. We anticipate that this will need to be assessed for all organisations, based on their unique needs.

COVID-19 accelerated the future of work and the future of workplace design. To help businesses plan their workplace strategy for the future, we have assembled the most crucial future of work knowledge in one place. Check out all you need to know about the future of work here

The workplace is changing around us as we speak. With more and more people working remotely or with flexible work arrangements, employers are facing new challenges daily in how they create a positive company culture, enable collaboration, attract new talent and plan for growth.

Because of this, there is a serious conversation happening all over the globe about what the future of work and its workforce will look like. We’re in the middle of a massive overhaul of the workplace as we once knew it. The questions we are constantly being asked, and asking of ourselves, is how we can better shape workplaces to accommodate these shifts, while also future-proofing and facilitating these new ways of working.

With this is mind, we invited Cindy Lenferna De La Motte, Future of Work Strategist and Head of Customer and Community at Harvest Digital Planning, to join Annelie Xenofontos, Axiom’s Senior Workplace Strategist, to lead a conversation on company culture, how to create intelligent workplace design outcomes and the future of the workplace. The answers below are a summary of both their responses during the event.

What are the key challenges of the future workplace?

It’s here, it’s arrived and we are already working in this ‘future’ workplace. The key challenge here is the pace of the evolution, and how businesses and employees are keeping up.

Professional development, once considered a 'nice-to-have,' has now become a critical 'must-have' in the evolving future of work. Future of work strategists emphasize that individuals should dedicate three hours per week to enhancing their skills, ensuring they stay relevant and adaptable in the workplace over the next 25 years. By prioritising continuous learning, professionals can future-proof their careers and remain competitive in an ever-changing job market.

Upskilling and innovation play a massive role; businesses alone cannot afford or accommodate the pace of upskilling that individuals need to keep up with the digital evolution that’s happening. Employees need to take on this growth mindset and responsibility for themselves, and employers need to wholeheartedly support and facilitate their learning.

Those in senior roles, leading business change and growth, cannot rest on their tried and tested measures. Instead, they must lead the way in updating their knowledge and learning so as to drive innovation both in their businesses and in their staff, ensuring their business remains competitive and up-to-date.

There are numerous meet-ups, short courses, podcasts, reading material and forums to meet up with other people, learn and share information. Gone are the days of doing a university degree that will see you through a job for life and into retirement. The lifetime of learning in degrees is now estimated to be three to five years post-graduation, so adopting a new approach and mindset to lifelong learning, even into retirement, is part of the future of work evolution.

From a workplace perspective, customisation is now a baseline requirement. We don’t want to fit in a box anymore. We are working in more sophisticated ways, and we want and expect a customised work environment that supports innovation, creativity and efficiency.

Businesses need to constantly think about what is next and their workplaces need to be conducive to thriving in this evolution.

What are the top skills needed for the future workplace?

Diversity and inclusion are topics that have been talked about for a while and are certainly on the HR agenda, but they need to be highly prioritised in the workplaces of the future. Workspaces need to be designed to facilitate the collaboration of employees of different ages, cultures and backgrounds, and to enable spontaneous conversations, innovation and learning to occur. The evolution of business practices doesn’t only come from business leaders anymore. It comes from every person in the workforce.

Young people coming into the workforce have a wealth of information to bring, while the current working generations have significant experience to draw on. Encouraging collaboration between generations through smart workplace design and technology allows a business and its staff to bolster and flex its knowledge base for now and into the future. This is where the magic of a diverse workforce happens.

In Australia, we are relatively good when it comes to creating a diverse workforce, particularly in larger cities, however inclusion of a diverse workforce still requires attention. We need to be choosing skills and capabilities over age, location and culture to keep our businesses at the forefront, and upskilling current team members into new roles to keep them relevant.

Is the war for talent real?

We have a skills shortage in Australia and the war for talent is real and fierce. According to the Australian HR Institute, there are almost one million more job opportunities than there are employed people in Australia.

The top companies are offering impressive compensation and benefit packages, which the most talented individuals are honing in on. And businesses are getting clever with what they are offering—thinking not just about more dollars, but also about the ways their staff want to work and live.

Your culture, mission, purpose and workspace have such an impact on your employer value proposition (EVP). From the moment someone walks into your office space, they think about whether it feels like a good company to work for. Is your office representative of your culture and attractive to talent?

A workplace that embodies the culture, mission and purpose of the company lives out its values and starts to hand back autonomy to staff, one of the biggest motivators for top talent. Invest in your employees through creating a space that’s meaningful to them and allows them to do their best work. Creating a comfortable work environment and reducing employee frustration are key metrics in your workspace design, as are:

• Green spaces
• Personalised spaces
• Quiet spaces
• Environmentally friendly processes
• A focus on health and wellbeing
• The opportunity for connection, creativity and deep work

Cindy says, “At Harvest Digital & Planning, we made a conscious decision to source the best candidates for skill and capability regardless of location. The world is literally our oyster and right now our team is 100 percent remote.”

Remote working comes with new challenges, but ones that we are working through, finding new ways to be inclusive and find the emotion in our day-to-day interactions as face-to-face teams do. With remote and flexible working becoming the norm, businesses and workplaces need to find new ways that work for them and their own cultures to address inclusion for remote teams. We don’t have all the answers but we are experimenting together.

What kind of technology and processes can you use to bring remote workers and workspaces together?

This will differ from organisation to organisation depending on your workplace culture and the type of work that you do. But at the heart of it is asking yourself what your team needs in order to stay connected at a human level, as well as at an operational level.

Some businesses initiatives that have worked for businesses we know are:

• Ensuring that all new employee onboarding is done face-to-face, even if that means flying someone to head office for an induction. Ensure that all managers of new staff make the time to make that face-to-face connection as this is the start of inclusion and sets the tone from the outset of the employment relationship.
• Connecting people back in through regular town halls or team-based meetings.
• Communication is critical so have a real-time tool like Slack or Skype for chat. This also helps reinforce culture.
• The “cupcake experience”: always consider who isn’t in the office to receive the cupcakes brought in by a team member. What can you do for those not getting a cupcake? It might seem like a small thing, but it goes miles when it comes to making a remote worker feel included.
• Pizza hour: bringing everyone together to eat pizza.
• Using emojis or gifs in communication allows emotion and sentiment to come through in email and internal comms.

Workplaces can evolve and flourish in businesses with lots of remote workers with some innovative thinking.

At Axiom, we encourage businesses we work with to think about how they might be innovative with their space depending on the outcomes they require. How much space do they really need? How can they reduce their environmental footprint, waste and cost by thinking about the way their staff will use the workspace?

Solutions such as agile working environments that chop and change according to business fluidity, spaces for technology that connect staff members both in-house and remotely, flexible working so spaces might be used differently on different days depending on who is in the office and the outcome they want to achieve, and even lending out space that is not used all the time—not only can it spark creative partnerships and collaborations but it’s also commercially viable.

Where do I start to futureproof my workplace?

Teaching new ways of work requires teaching individuals a growth mindset. For organisations and business owners, start with a small experiment or collaborate with a new partner to challenge your current ways of working.

Ask yourself, am I still doing the right thing? How could I reimagine my workforce connecting, thinking and innovating? Try something different that aligns with your business. Listen and engage your people and implement.

What are the top 3 things that a modern office should have for a thriving environment?

It’s a feeling thing! Each business has a different identity so it’s not a one size fits all approach. You have to tap in and consider what space and technology you need to create the feeling that you want your employees to have when they step into the office. You want staff to love going to work because it feels good.

Although we’re living through a period of rapid change and unprecedented uncertainty, there are still things businesses can do to future-proof their workplaces. Find out more about the future workforce in the Future of Work: A Progressive Leaders Guide To Staying Ahead