Why workplaces should focus on People, Climate and Society. Part 1: People

In early 2022 I followed my passions and combined my work psychology, health psychology and workplace strategy services to create Workwell PCS, alongside my fabulous co-founder, HR and Change Management expert, Kristal McNamara. This is the first in a series of three blogs to introduce you to Workwell PCS, sharing the ethos, passion and insights behind Workwell’s People Climate Society approach which we use when helping businesses to develop and apply new ways of working and workplace strategy.

Why ‘People’?

You might think it goes without saying — which business would develop ways of working without prioritising people? Why would any business design a workplace without people’s needs at the forefront? The workplace design term ‘people-centric’ or ‘human-centric workplace’ is not new. But in so many cases the new workplace has not prioritised people. They don’t support individual differences in workstyles or personality, nor do they encourage health or wellbeing. Despite it seeming obvious that frustrated, unhappy people tend not to be motivated or high performing.

Why now?

The sudden and wholesale switch to home working at the beginning of pandemic lockdowns resulted in the focus moving towards the individual, away from teams and wider businesses. They started working a lot more independently as they didn’t want to keep bothering colleagues via chat channels. Or they were totally ‘Zoomed out’ after endless video meetings. Cue the birth of the ‘micro silo’. Businesses used to see departmental or team silos as an obstacle. Going one step further, the micro silo is characterised by a move away from collaborative team work and towards independent work. People are increasingly working alone, consulting with others less, refraining from developing ideas or making decisions together, identifying less with their business and more with themselves. Great if you want a bunch of solopreneurs, but not if your business depends on collaborative creativity and culture.

As a result of all that solo working, people’s focus is set squarely on themself as an individual. They are more in tune with and assertive about what they want and need for their wellbeing. And if their needs aren’t met, they’ll go and work somewhere else.

On top of this, with the extra time gained from not commuting, and even with working an average 30 minutes longer a day (Bloom et al, 2022) they started getting more sleep, more exercise, cooking fresh food, and spending more time with their families. Cue the new era of worklife balance, with the emphasis now firmly in the ‘life’ camp rather than the ‘work’ camp.

And with rates of employment in the UK higher than ever, and businesses struggling to attract or retain talent, it is has become the era of the employee. They have a new confidence to call the shots, protecting their individual rights and creating the best future for themselves. It feels like, in many ways, there is a new breed of workers — the new humans. This may seem extreme. But it is a common dialogue in the focus groups we run when we ask about people’s attitudes towards office or home work.

The new humans

I’ll do my work.
I don’t need to go to an office with other people. Other people are just distractions.
I am efficient working from home.
I can work longer hours.
I don’t waste time travelling or talking to people.
I just sit here and do my work all day. Every day.
I can connect with people well via Teams, Google and Slack.
I don’t need eye contact. Body language isn’t important to me.
Jokes, banter, laughter are unnecessary.
I don’t want variety. I don’t want to experience the variety of life, of travel, of face to face human contact, of town centres, of shared spaces. Of shared experiences.
I’ll go to an office as a backup. Or if I have to, in exceptional circumstances.

Does this sound familiar? Have you met people like this? Or does this resonate with you?

Prioritising mental health

I am concerned about these ‘new humans’. Psychological aspects of work have come to the fore in this era. It’s not just depression, anxiety and burnout. Loneliness at work had already been identified as a major risk. In research carried out pre-pandemic 42% of people said they have no friends at work — yet this is the place where we spend a third of our lives (Oseland, 2019). Research shows that building a sense of belonging at work is vital for our wellbeing, productivity and loyalty to an organisation. Of the different work locations, home was the workplace where the highest levels of loneliness were reported. The impact of loneliness shouldn’t be underestimated. Workplace belonging leads to a 56% increase in job performance: 50% reduction in turnover risk and a 75% decrease in employee sick days (BetterUp Labs, 2018)

We also need variety and exposure to different environments in order to create mental balance and stimulation. This can rarely be achieved by sitting in the same place in front of the same screen all day and all week. Not to mention the physical health risks of long periods of sitting and lack of movement.

Treat individuals as individuals

Different sociodemographic groups and different personality types fare differently when working from home. Of the personality types, introverts tend to prefer it, and those with invisible disabilities and the neurodiverse have generally found it easier as they can tailor their environment to suit their needs. In contrast, many people stagnate at home by themselves, needing others for motivation and stimulation.

The younger generations, and those starting out in a new job or career, need significantly more IRL (in real life) work time in order to learn, build relationships and generally thrive (Microsoft 2021). And this group are far less likely to have a dedicated work from home set up which has been shown to have a negative effect on performance (Leesman 2021).

Those who are more established in their career, who are more self-motivated, have less to learn, and bigger networks, find that there are less distractions at home. Coupled with the likelihood of having a good work from home setup, they are often more productive.

Parents, particularly single parents, find it easier to juggle childcare when WFH. Cost of commute and distance to office plays a key role in interest in working in the office, as does availability of public transport.

Designing workplaces for different needs

While businesses will benefit from happy, healthy employees, there may need to be some readjustment to ensure that organisational cultures remain strong, that collaboration does not die, and a shared sense of purpose and belonging is built through good teamwork and working relationships. So we support those who either like to or need to work from home, but still encourage them to come to shared workplaces regularly. Because humans are social animals. They thrive off being together for learning, creativity, support and companionship.

But they are all different. A large proportion of knowledge workers have spent at least two years working from home where they have been able to tailor their own environment. Acoustics, privacy, thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, furniture, biophilia and overall aesthetics — all under their own control. Bringing people back to a shared workplace takes them out of their comfort zone and requires them to re-adapt. They might be more sensitive to noise, so the open plan desk farm really won’t cut it (not that it ever did anyway).

Let’s think about that ‘desk farm’, those rows and rows of ever smaller, ever closer desks, or with more chairs squeezed together at the ‘collaboration table’. Offices had been getting increasingly dense. Some are quite happy with the physical closeness but it makes others feel uncomfortable and the high density office now seems less attractive than ever. People have become more aware of their personal space, and don’t want to be squeezed into small desks within a sea of people. And this applies to other spaces too — staircases could often do with being wider, kitchens and breakouts more spacious. Meeting room size is particularly important here, with so many workplaces having significantly reduced their capacity during the pandemic.

They may feel they need places for quiet focus or refuge, to escape from the crowd when they need a few minutes, or hours, quiet and calm. They want more places to collaborate and socialise, after all that’s why they’ve made the effort to travel to the office in the first place.

Getting employees back into the office

We’ve shown that while hybrid working can be highly beneficial for individuals, too much remote working can often be unhealthy for individuals, teams and organisations. Businesses need to lure people out of their homes but to do this their workplaces need to feel like a destination, not an obligation. They need to offer things that people can’t get at home such as seamless hybrid meeting technology or great coffee, as well as the companionship of course. The new hybrid offices need plenty of places for video calls and meetings. They need touch down spaces. And a wide variety of types of spaces to suit different personality types and different ways of working. Importantly, it shouldn’t be all about collaboration. People need calm spaces, quiet focus spaces, as well as the sociable ‘together’ spaces. In our employee surveys across a wide range of businesses, many talk about wanting plants and greenery, good air quality, height adjustable desks, and well equipped kitchens and breakout areas.

Look after your people and they will look after your business

We’ve given some insight into why people’s needs should rise to the top of an employer’s priorities. Creating the right conditions, the best employee experience, will mean you are looking after your people so that they will look after your business. Or it could be simply because you want to do the right thing. Whatever your motivation, let’s take this seriously and not just pay lip service to how workplace and people are intricately entwined. We know how we can support people and enable them to be their best selves at work. But we need to do it in a balanced way, while also thinking about the affect our behaviours have on the climate and on our society.

Keep an eye out for the next in this introductory insight series, Part 2: Climate. It will provide a fascinating, crucially important, and as yet rather unexplored view, into the wide reaching implications our working lives can have on our planet.

References:

BetterUp Labs, (2018). The Value of Belonging at Work: New Frontiers for Inclusion. US: BetterUp.

Bloom et al (2022) Stanford University. Key Decisions About the Future of WFH

Leesman (2021) Workplace 2021: Appraising future readiness.

Microsoft (2021) Worklab Work Trend Index Report.

Oseland et al (2019) Loneliness Lab: Workplace Loneliness report.