“I want you to imagine that you’re in a 10 person boat out in the harbor right now,” says David Haskin, Workplace Consultant and Manager of the Advanced Solutions Team at Steelcase, pointing out the window of the Steelcase offices at the impressive view of the Atlantic outside. David leads a team of North American Workplace Consultants who help clients discover how work and workers are changing, and how their workplaces might need to change because of those dynamics.
“It’s a row boat,” he says. “I want you to imagine that you and just two other people are actually rowing. Five people are just watching the scenery go by. And two people are actively trying to sink the boat. How scary is that?
“What if I were to tell you that that is the result of the latest Gallup research on global engagement?” he asks. Indeed, Steelcase found the same – 30 percent of U.S. employees are engaged (highest among the countries polled), while 52 percent are disengaged and 18 percent are actively disengaged, meaning that they are bad mouthing the company both at and outside of the workplace.
On Friday, May 20th, in the Seaport area of Boston, Mass., representatives from a number of influential companies around the area gathered in the Steelcase and Red Thread office to learn about workplace engagement. The event presented information from an extensive survey conducted by Steelcase, partnered with global research firm Ipsos. The survey polled 12,480 participants in 17 countries to measure relevant dimensions of employee engagement and workplace satisfaction – both powerful indicators of worker well-being and organizational performance. The goal of the presentation was to show the business leaders gathered that the look, feel, flexibility and culture of an office has a significant impact on worker satisfaction. And worker satisfaction has a serious impact on the bottom line.
“Place shapes behavior,” says Haskin, “And behavior, over time, is culture.”
Consider this: 8 out of 10 employees say the workplace can be an attraction tool, while 3 out of 10 say it is an attraction tool. 8 out of 10 would rather work from home, 6 out of 10 cubicles are empty each day, and on average we are interrupted every 3 minutes in the workplace. And it takes us 23 minutes to get fully engaged in what we were doing before the interruption.
Meanwhile, today 50 percent of workers are baby boomers, but by 2020 50 percent will be millennials, and by 2025 75 percent will be millennials. And these millennials and boomers alike are using smartphones and mobile devices, not the traditional landlines and computers, yet 86 percent of employees are equipped with landlines and 80 percent equipped with desktop computers. Finally, companies are looking for innovation and creativity, and need employees to collaborate and communicate to do so. These statistics helped lead Steelcase to five key findings.
The verdict: the way people work is changing, the type of people that are working is changing, and the tools these people use are changing. So why hasn’t the workplace changed? Steelcase says it should, and employee engagement will increase as a result. You’ll always have disengaged employees trying to sink the boat, and you’ll always have highly engaged employees that will row no matter what. But the right workplace can be the difference between having those five neutral people that are enjoying the view either take up an oar or start poking holes in the ship.
How is this done? By appealing not to employee well-being, but to human well-being. The resilient workplace will design for the following:
Design for Physical, Cognitive and Emotional Wellbeing
- Physical: Be healthier – Support movement throughout the day and encourage healthy postures that help people stay comfortable and energized.
- Cognitive: Think Better – Support the need for focus and rejuvenation through spaces where individuals and teams can think clearly, concentrate easily, solve problems and generate new ideas.
- Emotional: Feel Better – Support the social nature of work by creating spaces that nurture a sense of belonging and foster connections between people and the organization.
Create and Ecosystem of Spaces
- Posture: Movement + Variety – The workplace should encourage regular movement throughout the day and offer options for people to work in sitting, standing or lounge postures.
- Presence: Digital + Analog + Physical + Virtual – Spaces should enable quality interactions with teams that are both local and distributed across continents and time zones, supporting both digital and analog communication.
- Privacy: Focus + Rejuvenation – The work environment should provide places that offer varying ways to achieve privacy, in both open and enclosed spaces. Privacy is important to all workers and a vital component of both focus and rejuvenation, which are essential to employee engagement.
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