Workplace Evolution
If there is anything the last few years have taught us, it’s that the old philosophy of work no longer applies.
But what’s the new philosophy? And how do we measure the success of the workplace in the post-COVID world?
Global Workplace Analytics President Kate Lister and HOK Director of WorkPlace Kay Sargent share their perspectives on remote and hybrid work, the role of data in the future of the workplace, design trends, and more.
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Max Chopovsky:
Welcome to the Future of Work Workplace Evolution. My name is Max Chopovsky. I help companies around the country find and negotiate the leases for their office space, ensuring that the space they have is the space they need and reflects and supports their company culture. Or as I like to say it, I help office tenants embrace the new normal. The Future of Work is a series exploring our evolving relationship with work, the how, where and why, the trends and tech disrupting and improving the workplace and perspectives from thought leaders on our new normal. It's been said that the pandemic might not have sparked any new workplace trends as much as it was an accelerant and a forcing function for those trends already percolating flexibility control over one's work environment. A focus on DEI and ESG health and wellness, the employee experience, the list goes on and on. If there's anything the last few years have taught us, it's that the old philosophy of work no longer applies. No longer can employers expect people to show up five days a week to a drab and down on endless cube farms. Sounds a bit extreme, but that is what many offices actually looked like not too long ago. No longer are people willing to give up all flexibility and comfort and get nothing in return. No longer can companies get by without intentionality around company culture, the built environment, and the experience of their employees. What was once the realm of Silicon Valley has scrapped into the mainstream. Granted, this doesn't mean that you're going to see blue chip tenants install slides and kegerators, but you will see them accommodate diversity in a way that may not have been at the top of executives to-do lists 15, 20 years back. What's interesting to me is that this really kind of feels like we're living Moore's law right now in the area of space design and the employee-employer relationship, and it's really an exciting time. Our two guests today are some of the leading minds on both workplace design and the broader hybrid work movement. Kate Lister is the president of global workplace analytics and is one of the nation's top experts on telecommuting in the U S and elsewhere. She has been studying employee work at home trends and consulting with companies about the development of their telecommuting programs for more than a She's written two books, dozens of articles, and numerous white papers, and has guided global employers in both the public and private sector through the process of developing robust work at home programs. Kay Sargent is the global co-director of the workplace team at design and architecture firm HOK. A recognized expert on workplace design and strategy with 38 years of experience, Kay was selected in 2021 to provide congressional subject matter expert testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on Federal Real Estate Post-Covid-19. COVID-19, a view from the private sector. Kay sits on HOK's board of directors and is an advisor to the HOK Diversity Advisory Council. Ladies, welcome.
Kay Sargent:
Hey Kate, how are ya?
Kate Lister:
It's good. Good to see you too.
Max Chopovsky:
So future of work is a term that has gone from relative anonymity to ubiquity in rather short order. How has the term and its meaning evolved as it relates to your work? Kate, why don't we start with you?
Kate Lister:
We're in it, the future of work. We're never going to get there. It's going to be constantly evolving. And like a lot of the things that you said in the beginning there was so many of the trends that were already taking place before the pandemic were accelerated. And that's just going to continue to accelerate. So the future of work is about change.
Kay Sargent:
So Kate, I'm gonna add to that because I think this isn't a new term for many of us. In fact, for a whole group of workplace strategists and thought leaders in this realm, we've been at this resort for a long time. Now just the rest of the world is joining us there because they've like just discovered, hey, maybe this is something that's important, but our entire careers really have been focused on not just how we work today, but how we should be working going forward.
Kate Lister:
And it's not just how, it's the who is changing in work. Contractors, gig workers, outsourcing, all of those kinds of things. The when, the where, the why, the how, the why, in particular, since the pandemic.
Kay Sargent:
I'm going to pick up on that just real quick too, because so many people are talking about the future, and Max, I love the way you said this. You didn't call it the future of workplace. You called it the future of work. And that seems like a minute difference, but it's massive because it is not just about where we work to what Kate was saying, it's about when, where, why, who, how, all of those things. And we need to look at it more holistically to really get this right as we go forward.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah, the holistic approach is so critical because I think as a result of the pandemic, people kind of realized that life is too short to do things that they don't love work with people. They don't enjoy working with go through a soul sucking commute that, uh, that, you know, drains hours from their day. Uh, and so as a segue to remote work, uh, Kate, what did our sort of very sudden shift to remote work reveal about our approach to work in general?
Kate Lister:
Almost a decade ago, Martha Johnson was the GSA administrator when they transformed their headquarter building in Washington from one that accommodated 2,400 people to one that accommodated over 4,000 people. And the difference was they used all activity-based working, no assigned seats, and recognized that people wouldn't be all working in the office at the same time. I say all that to say she had a line that I just love. remote work didn't create management problems, it reveals them. And it wasn't just management problems, it was all kinds of problems. It reeled that managers don't know how to manage. They were never taught mostly, right? They were just brought up from some position of doer. So this really exposed it, and the way it exposed it is in the reticence of managers to let go of those tethers and want to see. the back of people's heads in spite of the fact that they've just spent three years proving that they can be remote. It also revealed just how much people wanted something different, disliked the how, when and the where of work. And it revealed that the places and spaces of work largely didn't support the work that they did. It was just sort of this one size fits all. It revealed the underutilization of buildings. And if you follow the the CASEL data about the occupancy of buildings, and it's about 50% right now, or offices about 50%. But what it doesn't, what isn't obvious is that's 50% of what it was before the pandemic. And before the pandemic, it was about 50 to 60%. So we're really looking at 25% occupancy right now. A ghost town. It also revealed that we're not measuring success in the right way. and that we need all kinds of new measures of success in new ways of working.
Kay Sargent:
So Max, I want to jump in here because I want to challenge a few things here. And I'm going to start with that you said. I know Kate thinks I'm challenging. She said, let me start with Max, Kate. Max, you actually said life is too short. I'm just going to put maybe spin that around a little bit and say, life actually now might be too long. We're living a really long time. And I think there is a fundamental thing that everybody is ignoring right now that is the massive herd of elephants in the room. And I'm gonna use myself as an example. I graduated 38 years ago with a degree that was paid for the day I walked out of college in what I thought would be one profession that I would work in for 30 years. I couldn't really work in the evenings or on the weekends because people couldn't get in touch with me because we didn't have cell phones or the internet. And I had the prospect of being better off than my parents. We have a generation that is graduating with a degree that could take them 20 years to pay off. won't even lost their first career because things are evolving so quickly they're probably not just gonna have multiple jobs but different careers. They're not going to be working for 30 years they're going to be working for 50 because we basically are getting pretty close to that now. They can be reached 24-7 for the prospect to be worse off than their parents. That, I honestly believe, is something we are all ignoring, that work has become unsustainable because we are living longer and that the pushback that we're getting is not because I hate my office, it's because I... That's just too long to work and not have some balance because you can't live like that. You just can't. And I think that people are realizing, we have to think about this differently. And Kate, I think you said something really great. Yes, we absolutely can work remotely. Every study we've ever shown has proven that people can be very productive working remotely. But the question I think we need to ask is, Just because you can work remotely doesn't necessarily mean you should, doesn't mean you're a good candidate for it, it doesn't mean your job really allows you to do it, it doesn't mean it supports your company or your colleagues or anything else, and it also comes at a cost or a toll. And I think the problem in our industry is that everybody is looking for the easy button. There is no easy button. For years in corporate real estate, we've tried to design a space that would accommodate the average person doing the average task. But I defy anybody to tell me who is the average person today and what's the average task. You can't really describe that. And so we have got to stop creating environments or solutions, remote, in office, combination of thereof, that are average. Because that's just not good enough anymore. We have to acknowledge that we are complex diverse group of individuals doing complex diverse work with different needs that are going to be working a lot longer and we got to find some balance and what fits and be more tailored to me. It's like for years workplace has been a one size unitard that everybody was supposed to fit and now all of a sudden we get to pick out our own outfits. It's about time.
Max Chopovsky:
Okay, so let's dig in on that. So if you, if, if there's so much more complexity in the world right now, and that translates to so much more complexity within the built environment, how are you measuring the success of the spaces that you design? How are you gauging, uh, whether or not those spaces are achieving what they are meant to achieve, what metrics are you using?
Kay Sargent:
Well, I'm just going to tell you so. And I'm gonna let Kate take the metric thing because she can kill this with spades, but I'm gonna say something maybe a little controversial. Everybody says we don't have enough data. I think we have plenty of data. Most people don't know how to use it, apply it, or read it, okay? And I think it's quite frankly, sometimes we overlook common sense, okay? So here's common sense. A happy, healthy, engaged, empowered worker is gonna work harder for you than a pissed off, disgruntled, unhappy, unhealthy worker any day
Kate Lister:
Thank
Kay Sargent:
of the
Kate Lister:
you.
Kay Sargent:
week. If you agree with that, then you've just figured it out. Sorry to say that, but you have. But we can make it really complicated if we want to, right? And there are metrics that we can look at. But I think what we're seeing is that for years, it was real estate centric measurements, cost per square foot, things like that. We need to be thinking about human centric measurements. Do you have access to decision makers? Can you be seen? Can you contribute? Do you feel happy? Do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel your work is purposeful? Do you feel like you're living up to your potential? Is churn gone down? Is your health gone up? Is your mental health and well-being? Is your social capital building? Are you innovating? There's a variety of things that we need to be thinking about that, quite frankly, we've just always ignored. And I will tell you myself, my value. I'm going to, for the day I say this, my value doesn't come from what I produce. Okay, I'm not producing widgets or drawings. We've got plenty of people in our office that actually do do that, and you could measure how quickly they can produce drawings in different environments. You could do that. But. My value comes in what I am generating, the potential that I'm generating for my company, not necessarily what I'm produced. I could have a 10 minute meeting with a client that led to a huge opportunity. I've brought more value to my company than sitting at a computer jotting out documents for eight hours, right? And I think the other thing that's questionable is, how are people measuring this now? Because when most people talk about productivity, it's how many hours I spent on my computer. And I think if we've learned anything, doesn't necessarily mean I'm productive.
Kay Sargent:
So Kate, I'm gonna let you go with the metrics.
Kate Lister:
Well, everything she said. But in addition, I think one of the silver linings to the pandemic is that the workplace change has been lofted to the C-suite. Prior to the pandemic, it was always some kind of tactical solution to the problem de jour. We want to fix attraction and retention, so it's coming out of HR. We want to reduce our real estate costs, so it's coming out of real estate. Now it's coming from the top and then that's causing the cross-functional cooperation that we need to make the changes holistic, to make sure that everybody's involved. The first thing I say to a client that wants to know how to measure is what is this workplace change is trying to achieve. If talent, attraction, and retention is what you're trying to get out of it, did it? doing exit interviews, doing your time to hire ratios, your quit rate at six months and a year, your glass door ratings, you know, all of those kinds of things are specific to that. Now the space, you know, one of the hard things is you can't say, oh, it's because of the space. But you can start to correlate some of this stuff. in more ways than just I feel, more ways than just surveys. Everybody, every company I walk into right now is worried that they're losing their culture, their productivity is down, collaboration is down, innovation is down, engagement is down. Every one of those things is wrong. The science proves that every one of those things is wrong. There are things to worry about. I mean, so let's just worry about the right things. And this is one of them. How do you measure the success of what you're doing? And.
Max Chopovsky:
Well, let's talk about the culture for a minute. So. Uh, one of the challenges from my conversations with different, um, CEOs and founders around hybrid work, remote work, and hybrid presents its own set of challenges, cause there's an inequality there sort of by definition. But one of those challenges is maintaining culture. A lot of these companies went through the same, you know, hiring sprees during the pandemic and for some of them, the number of people they hired during the pandemic actually outnumbered the existing employee base prior to the pandemic. think about that, what does that do to the culture? Right? So what are the most common challenges that companies face when implementing these sort of hybrid and remote arrangements, Kate, in your view? And then more importantly, what tools, you know, methodologies, philosophies work best for addressing those challenges. Now, I know you're going to say everybody's different. There's no one size fits all, but I'm sure you're seeing some patterns, right? And so I'm curious what you're seeing.
Kate Lister:
Yeah, but let me disagree with you first. They feel that culture is declining, but do they know? Research from Gartner shows that the decline in culture started to happen long before the pandemic. They were using place as a proxy for culture and for engagement. And culture is about people. It's not about places. Yes, you can reinforce. But In addition, the majority of managers think that their culture has been impacted. The majority of employees think that their culture has improved through a lot of the new practices and processes. So I really caution the leaders to just carte blanche say, our culture is declining. Prove it. How are you measuring it? And how are you going to measure that in the future? What does it mean to you? And so, in answer to your question, you know, the first is sort of that executive leadership buy-in. You know, if that's not there, the rest of it isn't going to work. And so, that's one of the first things that we're looking for when we go into an organization. Everybody has to understand the why, the whiff of what's in it for me. The top-down approaches that organizations are trying, they're not going to work. that the people, it's so different down at the team level than it is at the top. So maybe the leadership has to build fences, not walls, and the decisions have to be made down at the team level. Kay already said there's no one size fits all. We see this in the numbers across geography, culture, life stage, personality, job content. You're not going to get it right for everybody, and what that means is you've got to have different environments. and different places that people can work to do their best work. It's also, I think, about getting a focus on why, when somebody, a company says that this isn't working, understand why the people don't want to come back and fix that. I talked to a client last week. It was a very, very, very large company. They're just troubled over the people that aren't back. 8% of the people have come back in spite of a pretty clear mandate. And during the conversation, just as sort of an aside, they mentioned that the building Wi-Fi isn't very good. You know, that's one of the basic human needs, right, that got added to the Maslow's hierarchy a long time ago. Also not involving employees in the decisions. through surveys and focus groups and doing pilots. Companies aren't providing training. Only about 30% of companies have provided training for their people of how to work remotely. Poor communications. I mean, you think about the way Twitter introduces its policies versus like a Chase. When Chase came out in 2021, the CEO, he said, we're gonna do two days a week at home. And here's why. We've thought about this, we've thought about that, this is what we feel. But we're gonna have to learn as we go along. That's a lot different than the stick that was thrown down at Twitter and other places.
Max Chopovsky:
Well, what I've seen is actually, you know, um, very, very similar to Diamond's approach, which is, uh, if a leader and this requires for those leaders that were not like this prior to the pandemic, it requires a shift in their philosophy when a leader can be humble about what they don't know. And. Sort of open themselves up to their employees and say, look, I don't have all the answers, right? But we're gonna try this and we're gonna be on this journey together. As we think about... As we think about, you know, so you said it's about the people, it's not about the place. It's always been about the people. I agree with you, but place does play a role. And so what I'd like to talk about is as we think about design trends and can know you're you know, obviously really deep in this space when we, you know, we talked about earlier activity based working, right, which is which obviously helps people, you know, have more of a sense of control, sort of a menu of options to choose from as they go through their day. And we also think about sort of health and wellness that is obviously really important. So on a broader scale, what design trends have been sort of driven to prominence by the pandemic?
Kay Sargent:
I think there's some obvious ones that have come to light. So I think probably maybe the three or four biggest ones is that people are trying to create the workplace to be more of a magnet. And in many cases, they're offering better amenities and they're offering more gathering spaces and they're offering more options and choices and control. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's actually probably a really good thing. But I think we need to be really intentional about what we're doing and why we're doing it. So just as an example, I can design the most amazing amenities on the planet. If nobody is there, it's not gonna be a good amenity. So we say that people are the number one amenity today. And quite frankly, I'll take it a step further. Access to leaders is one of the biggest amenities today. One of the biggest reasons people are coming in. When we think about gathering, so in the beginning there was a period of time where everybody was like, everybody has to have their dedicated space. We didn't believe that then, we don't believe it now, but there are some people that need a sense of belonging, they need some kind of routine, they need some kind of consistency. So creating neighborhoods that have some choices and options I think is important. I think we also need to think about, yes, people might be coming into gathering, but that's not the only thing they're doing. You know, Kate said before how the statistics right now are showing that when people came back to the office, there was a drop in productivity. Okay, well if you're measuring productivity by how much time you're on your computer. then the answer is obviously there was, because people weren't sitting at their computers, they were meeting with coworkers, they were in training, they were doing things that they hadn't really been able to do for the last three years. And they're not just always gonna be gathering endlessly, we gotta get stuff done. So you gotta create the right balance, and really understand what is the short term, and then what is the long term needs, because they're gonna be different, kind of this evolving situation. There's also a lot more companies that are saying, hmm. Do I really need to dedicate a desk for somebody who is basically coming in one or two days a week, but then that desk is sitting empty the entire rest of the time? Is that, am I being a good steward of the environment? And is that fiscally responsible? And I think a lot of people are starting to question that right now. And I think it's quite frankly long overdue. I think it's interesting that a lot of our clients that are in this situation right now that they feel like they have too much real estate. Newsflash. You've had too much real estate for years. Just nobody really paid attention to it, so the clients that had already done some right sizing and already gone down this path were pretty well suited during the pandemic to enable mobility and to bring people back, et cetera. So I think that it is accelerant on the trends that we were already seeing with a little bit new twist woven into all of this.
Kate Lister:
Kay obviously is the exception. I mean, she knows that what's going on in the workplace better than most of us. But I think we also have to remember that, and Kay touched on it, that privacy is important. Right behind being available to see who's in, your leadership is in, the second draw is having a place that's private. So even if we're going to be the tasks that we're going to do at the office. are more social and collaborative, we still need time to get away. So, you know, I'd hate to see this pendulum go too far from assigned space to unassigned space or focused space to unfocused space. And we're still ignoring is the five reasons people hate the office to begin with. Heating and cooling, lighting, good coffee, noise,
Kay Sargent:
it's interesting that you say this because I think what's happening right now is that people have a heightened sensitivity to certain things. We have a heightened sensitivity to what we're touching, how close we are to people, what that smell is, but we also have a heightened sensitivity to acoustics because we've all been in basically our own little box. And so even people that were well used to working in a buzzy space, now you've been kind of deprogrammed from that for the last three years. And so when you go back in, you either are loving it, you're the people that work in a lobby or go to a Starbucks to work, or you're hating it. because you're even more acutely aware of just kind of the discrepancy there.
Kate Lister:
Yeah, so, like, it's not as much about breaking down walls and reconfiguring the space. Maslow's hierarchy, right? We've got to get these things right first, and then we work on the belonging and the autonomy and the mastery.
Max Chopovsky:
You have to have the good wifi before people, you know, want to go into the office. When we, so some people like it quiet. Some people like it loud. Some people like. Developers, for example, I'm talking about computer dev, so like programmers like it dark. Some people like it really light. So people seek this flexibility and control over their environment and also temperature. There are, I bet you this is a running war in many second generation offices. For some people it's always too cold and they have blankets on their knees. For some people it's always too warm and they have heaters by their feet. Right. Or they, it, they, for those, it's too cold. They have heaters in their feet. So how do you design for people's need for flexibility knowing that if it falls below a certain level, that's going to create the kind of friction that at scale prevents them from coming into the office. How do you do that, Kay?
Kay Sargent:
Okay, so anybody see the movie WALL-E? We are dangerously close to that. We have over-convenience people. I don't think anybody has a trash can next to every single chair in their house, but for some reason we feel like we have to have one at every desk in the office, which is absurd and ridiculous. I think most people who have a single family home have different rooms that they go into for different tasks, right? And I think when we try to give everybody the same solution and homogenize it, it's basically we're getting to this one-size-misfits-all. settings that really address not only different tasks, but how we process sensory information. And I mean, I could come in on a day that I'm in a bad mood, but I have to write an RFP and I don't want to be bothered and I need to focus and I'm acutely aware of sound. Other days, I'm going to be right there in the middle of everything and I like that buzzy space. And so we need to create different zones. And I think one of the things we've done really poorly is just made everything so generic. level across the entire floorplate, the same acoustic system across the entire floorplate. There's no undulation or fluctuation in it, so that if I want to be loud, I have a place that I can go and feel comfortable doing that. And if I need quiet, I have a space that I can go do that in. And so again, it's much more complex. And I think... Sometimes global guidelines and standards are over prescriptive to becoming super generic to make it easier to roll space out, not necessarily easier for the user to use the space. And I think our priorities in that regard are flipped. We need to prioritize the long-term occupant's ability to function and move. And I'll give you an example. Let's take the temperature. Okay. So let's go back to the Wally thing. Forever, we've designed spaces if people were potted plants. Here's your desk, stay here all day, never move, like you're tied. But we talk about flexibility, right? So we try to make the walls flexible and the furniture flexible. The only thing in that place that is inherently flexible is the people. We have legs that can move. Nothing else does, okay? But we design like we're never going to move. And so I would say the sun moves, so should you. We should take all those sensors that we have now in spaces. They should be pulled down. to be able to tell me where is it warmer, where is it cooler, where is it quieter, where is it louder, where is my colleague, where is it not, where is it darker, so if I have a headache or a migraine, I can go sit there. Where is it less populated versus more dense, so that people are empowered with information to make the right choice for what their mood or their task or their job function is at that given time.
Max Chopovsky:
I love that.
Kate Lister:
Okay, when was the edge building built?
Kay Sargent:
So that was probably in 2016, 15,
Kate Lister:
Yeah, okay, so eight years, ago, seven years ago, well yeah, but a lot of these problems were solved then. The edge building in the Netherlands,
Kay Sargent:
Yep, it's in Amsterdam.
Kate Lister:
it was the most sustainable and smartest building in the world when it was built. And it would know when you come into the garage, who you are, and it'll park you near where you need to be that morning because it knows your schedule. And it'll... it knows what's on your schedule so it take you to a room because you're going to be working on that RFP this morning where it's quiet and it'll give you your karma macchiato at the machine and it'll adjust the temperature and it'll adjust the seat height and it'll adjust the lighting, it'll adjust the sound. I mean they had a lot of this stuff that long ago uh... it it wasn't used as much as they thought it would be because it was kind of creepy. You know, I really don't want my my building or my employer to know all this about me. But I think we have technology now that allows us to give that kind of customization to people. So that they can, I mean, the whole point is to help them be their best self and enjoy their job, right? Make them happy and they're going to be more productive.
Max Chopovsky:
It's, it's so insightful. I haven't heard this before. Okay. I love the comment of, um, designing the right kind of space is more complex, but the complexity should be, we should be over indexing on the kind of space that accommodates the users versus the kind of space that's easy to roll out. Right? So it takes more work, but it reduces the kind of friction that prevents people from coming in. I had somebody from Lutron on the show a few months ago and we talked about the temperature of light, not air temperature. But Um, going from, you know, 5,600 Kelvin closer to the windows, because that's the natural temperature of daylight to, you know, 4,000 Kelvin closer to the core of the building, because that's a more tungsten oriented temperature that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable. And that changes as the sun sort of moves in the sky. And the point that she made was. You know, If you've ever. stayed at a hotel where you don't notice the small conveniences, but you just notice a lack of frustration. That's what offices should be because by the time you're noticing that the wifi is shitty and I'm gonna go.
Max Chopovsky:
too cold or too hot, that is, uh, then it's too late. Then the problem is already obvious enough too, to cause friction. As we talk about Amenities there's it's it's a term that's now ubiquitous, but I'm sure both of you are familiar with it Amenitization of Workplace right mean now everybody's familiar with it But architects have been dealing with it for years as you think about amenities people's the premium that people pay place on amenities has increased during the pandemic because they, you know, to the points we were making here, they wanna have a space that gives them flexibility and freedom and different types of environments to choose from. What are some of the amenities that your clients are talking about most often today? Okay
Kay Sargent:
So let me put a little caveat on that. I'll answer your question first, but then I'm gonna put a caveat at the end of it. There's a lot of discussions about better, more purposeful, driven meeting spaces that are also hybrid ready. There's cafes and baristas and the whole coffee experience and or the food experience and or pop-up areas so that you have different vendors that are coming in. There's a lot of amenities around wellbeing, whether it's gymnasiums, nap rooms, yoga spaces, walking trails, access to outdoors is a huge amenity, specifically just because of the biophilic, the fresh air, and just the opportunity to move. There's a whole variety of concierge type services that make your life easier that people are talking about as well. But I think there's something that I think people are missing. I don't quite frankly. I don't think people really want to own all those things. Access is the new ownership. If I'm in a downtown area and there's five gyms within a block of me and 20 restaurants and everything else, is it really a good use of my money and or resources to create a duplicate in my building? Now, if you never want people to leave, and there are some companies that don't, so they create everything on site to keep you there forever, okay. But if you want people to step out or participate, then you can't. You should leverage that. And I think what we're seeing is an increase in creating connected communities or precincts, where my building might have the gym, the one next door might have the food court, the one across the street has the MAG conference center, and it's all connected by this outdoor workspace, and we all flow in between. So even if my building isn't super populated, have two or three other buildings I can pull from to get enough critical mass and it's worth wild and why do I want to pay for a crappy smaller version of all those things when I could have the kick-ass version that I share with a few other people that really thrives and so we've got to get out of this I have to own everything mentality and get to a leveraging the shared economy to have better experiences that are accessible for more people.
Max Chopovsky:
Now I will say this, I agree with you on that front. I think it's probably a little bit easier to implement in a place like the Bay Area, where the temperature is generally pretty nice. If you've been in Chicago in the winter, leaving your building to go to a gym...
Kay Sargent:
skywalks.
Max Chopovsky:
totally, but they don't connect every building, right?
Kate Lister:
Hehehe
Max Chopovsky:
They don't connect every building. You have to have the landlords talk to each other, put those in place. Having said that though, having said that, it's interesting. There was a recent episode that I did with a deputy mayor of Chicago and we talked about neighborhoods. And the point I made about neighborhoods is sure, there are some buildings downtown Chicago that are really struggling and are either going to turn into residential with the help of TIF money or might have to be, you know, their highest and best might have to be rethought differently besides residential. But for every job that leaves the CBD, for a neighborhood to become more prominent. Right. So if the coffee shop, if your neighborhood coffee shop takes the role of your company cafeteria, it creates a really, really wonderful alternative to, um, you know, to everybody being sort of crammed in these high rises, not to mention the impact on traffic and everything like that. So I do think that, uh, in. in a maybe not utopian world but certainly in an ideal world, right, you would be able to do that. I do think it's an interesting approach.
Kate Lister:
Yeah, it's a social good, which is something that employees
Max Chopovsky:
Totally.
Kate Lister:
are looking for. It sort of uses the ecosystem approach, which I think we're looking at more in terms of the where of work, in terms of the who of work. That's all being pulled apart.
Max Chopovsky:
Kate, what's the data telling you about how companies are approaching bringing people into the office? So obviously a lot of people are still remote. There's a lot of companies are taking the hybrid approach, but for those organizations that are saying, you know, we see the value in a sort of central, a town square for people to come together in person. But we also understand that people aren't just going to, you know, go through a long commute to go hang out with each other, just for the sake of hanging out with each other. What's your data telling you around? that.
Kate Lister:
Well, there's a lot of things that they have tried that aren't working. Pizza Fridays, parties, Gorilla Grams, all that kind of stuff, all
Max Chopovsky:
Wait,
Kate Lister:
that
Max Chopovsky:
what's
Kate Lister:
hype.
Max Chopovsky:
a Gorilla Graham?
Kate Lister:
That's when somebody does something special and you send a dancing gorilla in to
Max Chopovsky:
Splendid,
Kate Lister:
congratulate
Max Chopovsky:
I love that.
Kate Lister:
them.
Max Chopovsky:
Amazing, that would bring me into the office.
Kate Lister:
cooking classes, those kinds of things. Actually, they're doing a little bit better, but those sort of false fun things just don't
Max Chopovsky:
Mm-hmm.
Kate Lister:
work. And, you know, getting again to the higher level needs, they want to feel, they want to belong. The special interest groups have proven somewhat successful. And having your peers come in and talk about maybe their travels or maybe their latest recipe or whatever. But fundamentally it comes down to creating a workplace that supports the work that's being done in it. And you can offer all the party amenities that you like, but if the place doesn't support your collaboration, your need for being with your team, your need for privacy, your need for team privacy, your need for a walking trail so you can be creative. It's a non-starter. I mean, you can't say, I want to bring people in just because. They're not going to come. It has
Kay Sargent:
Well,
Kate Lister:
to support the work.
Kay Sargent:
forced socialization just feels awkward because it is. But one of the things that we've done with a lot of our clients is created what we'll call lifestyle studios or opportunities. So we need to think about what can't people get at home that we could provide them with in the office? And why don't people want to leave their house? What is it that they've gotten into that they feel now that they're abandoning? music or makers or you know dogs or cooking or plants or anything else. How do we introduce some of those things into the office so that you're not abandoning those things but you're taking it to the next level? So can we create a conference room that also then serves as a library that is where you have book club on certain nights and people can bring in the books that they read and put them in there and then there's a switching off and you know on Wednesday night. Or for instance, we have model shops in our offices that were purely for making models. But now all these people have gotten into crafting and they don't have a lot of that equipment at their houses. We've got it all in that model shop. So if we open up the model shop on Wednesdays for people that want to use that for their crafting, etc. Now there's a purpose for me to come in. I'm getting something out of it personally forced way with other colleagues who share my same interest, whether it's a cooking kitchen, turning something into a podcast room, a music room, whatever it is that can create kind of a special opportunity for you to take that to the next level can really be seen as a positive and a benefit.
Kate Lister:
But ask your audience, right? I've seen companies put in these kinds of things for the wrong audience. Okay, we're gonna put in this gym and we're gonna have these rah rah kinds of gym things and their average population is 60 plus. More likely, it's the younger population and so they really don't care much about life planning. So you really have to know your audience.
Max Chopovsky:
earlier in the pandemic, I say that as if we're still in it. I kind of feel like for all intents and purposes, it's kind of behind us. But people would talk about how, you know, the objective of the office, its purpose is to bring people together, to collaborate, to create, to build relationships or social capital. But then I started hearing something different, which is so fascinating, makes so much sense. most people who were forced to work from home as those who actually had the room to have a quiet space. But what if they were somebody who is younger and has four roommates and their work from home is somebody takes turns at the kitchen table and somebody works in their bedroom and it's super loud and so actually for them going in the office is going to a quiet space and
Kay Sargent:
A lot of young moms
Max Chopovsky:
yeah.
Kay Sargent:
who are like, get me out of this house, I can't focus with 20 kids running around, or one kid that feels like it's 20 kids running around.
Max Chopovsky:
100%
Kay Sargent:
Or we often hear, well, everybody that's neurodiverse, or minorities, or whatever, they feel more comfortable working remotely or from home. You're avoiding the problem. not addressing the problem. And just because you're neurodiverse doesn't mean that you're anti-social or you wanna be isolated. And just because if there are microaggressions in the office, the solution is it making those people leave, it's fixing the microaggressions in the office because all you're doing is allowing that to continue and penalizing the people that it was hurting in the first place. And there might be times that that is the best solution. Okay, that's a choice, only choice or the default.
Kate Lister:
And buildings, offices have been built for extroverts. And more than half the population, or at least half the population, slides toward the introvert side of the scale. And so not only do places need to help support introverts as well as the neurodiverse, as well as the disabled and everything, the practices and processes have to change too. And this is one of the things again, I think was a silver lining, the pandemic. In meetings, it introduced the potential to have asynchronous contribution. Introverts think more slowly than extroverts. People that don't speak the language think more slowly. Using polls, using chat, using a variety of the new technologies to even the playing field. I think it is something I really hope we're going to institute in work going forward.
Max Chopovsky:
So as you think about the last few years and some of these revelations that we've had as a result of the pandemic, what sort of lessons have you learned about our relationship with work over the last few years? Kay, why don't we start with you?
Kay Sargent:
So sorry, I didn't hear the question.
Max Chopovsky:
What
Kay Sargent:
You
Max Chopovsky:
lessons
Kay Sargent:
cut out for me.
Max Chopovsky:
about our relationship with work have you learned over the last few years?
Kay Sargent:
I think what we've learned over the last few years is that there needs to be some balance. And that quite frankly, I think we were all on a hamster wheel just treading along and we got to step up for a minute and a lot of people saw something a little bit differently. I actually don't believe that people are as resistant to change as we think they are because people change pretty quickly. I think what people are resistant to is transitions. If I told you you were gonna have a new house, you'd be like, oh man, I don't wanna go through that transition of moving. But if you could instantly wake up there tomorrow morning, we'd all be in, right? And so I think what's happening is we are in an extruded transition with no clear end in sight. There's been a total lack of leadership to be brutally honest, we asked a really stupid question at the beginning of this pandemic, and it's what do you want? And it's not that I don't care what you want, but if you asked me honestly what I want for dinner, I'm going to tell you I want chocolate. Okay? I think that there's a lot of people that don't necessarily understand the consequences of some of the choices that they're making right now. I think we are all thinking very self-centrically, almost as a survival instinct, and that we're not necessarily thinking about what's right for the business, because if the business is successful, we don't have a job. or what's right for our colleagues, or what's right for our even long-term, you know, professional career. I think we are waking up thinking, what do I personally want to do today? And that has some ramifications. There are some people that are very, very well suited to work remotely and should continue to do it. But it is not right for everyone, and it is not right or the right solution for a lot of companies. And so rather than asking, what do you want? I think we should have been asking, What is your job need? What do your colleagues need? What is your job function? And are you a good candidate for this? If you're a procrastinator and not a self-starter and you need feedback, you are a horrible candidate to work remotely. And unless you have something in place that can adjust for that, right? Most companies don't. And I think the other thing right now... is that people are assuming that they can just say, okay, we're gonna work one or two days from work, or from home, that's our hybrid policy. That's a grossly oversimplifying hybrid. Hybrid is the most complicated model, and I don't think a lot of companies are putting in the hard work to really counter proximity biased, the lack of development, the lack of leadership, the lack of clarity, and it's gonna go off the rails, if we don't do the hard work to make this right. And I'll give you the opposite. If people are commuting to an office to sit on a Zoom call all day, that's the worst of both. So we need to totally rethink how we work and how the workplace
Max Chopovsky:
Kate,
Kay Sargent:
can be a tool or a
Max Chopovsky:
what
Kay Sargent:
support
Max Chopovsky:
about you?
Kay Sargent:
for that and really think about the people.
Kate Lister:
I think that the pandemic and Kay sort of said this, sort of pointed out how toxic and how unsustainable the way we were working was. Doing more, constantly being asked ever since the 2008, 2009 recession to do more with less, do more with less. Oh, but we want you to have good work-life balance. We want you to be healthy. Well, I can't be healthy if you're giving me more work than I could possibly handle. That's just going to totally stress me out. And where it's bragging rights if you were at work until 11 o'clock last night. We've just had our head in the sand about those practices and processes that we've just sort of let happen. And what their impact is on people's productivity and their health, it's just not sustainable. The other thing we've, you know, we had our head in the sand about is, is training and skills and talent shortages and goal alignment and purpose. We all knew all this before the pandemic, uh, and we weren't addressing it. So those are the things that need to be addressed. Um, and you know, it's people, people should be able to, shouldn't have to make the choice between earning a living and having a life. Um, we need to find a middle, middle ground.
Max Chopovsky:
I like that. Shouldn't have to choose between earning a living and having a life. So let's, let's get out the crystal ball for a minute. I know, I know Kay especially is going to love this. So what is, if you have your crystal ball, what is the office of the future? Okay.
Kay Sargent:
I think it's an ecosystem of spaces that really truly are better suited for how we actually work. And I think that we're going to get to a point that there's going to be not just, what do you want to do? There is a science to who could and should and how, et cetera. And I think that HR has to catch up, and corporate real estate has to catch up to this whole new reality of what we're living with and really do a deep dive assessment. We're in the wild west of this right now. We haven't even worked out half the policies of people working from one state versus another versus the tax implications and all of those things. It's complicated. to some degree is here to say. I do believe that the office, the attendance in the office is going to continue to rise. Primarily because I think we're going to start to see some of the ramifications, whether it's people are getting passed over for promotions or they don't feel as connected to their colleagues or we start getting silos in organizations. We've had clients that have been working remotely for over 30 years. There's a lot of really great lessons learned for people that failed and people that succeeded. We need to leverage those lessons to create a more robust process of how we go about all of this. create that balance, to create more purposeful spaces, and I think we're going to have maybe a little bit less square footage allocated to an organization, but those spaces should be better spaces, and they're going to have to address a greater variety of needs.
Max Chopovsky:
I love that. I love it. Now, let me, let me flip that question on its head for Kate. What is in your mind, the future of the office?
Kate Lister:
So the office of the future and the future of the office. I like that. Again, as Kay said, it has to support an ecosystem of players, of environments. We need to think beyond buildings and walls. we need to take into account the virtual office. I mean, what's the culture there? What's the glue? How do we, right now, it's a bunch of squares on the screen, but how do we make that more vibrant? Holograms will probably be part of the future. They're installing them in some WeWorks now. And it'll be a collection of symbiotic spaces, and I think... Kay described that earlier, and we can't do that right away. We can't turn it on and off overnight, but it's going to be healthier. It's going to be more social. We're going to see more use of event spaces where people come together, not necessarily to work, but to reinforce the trust bonds, and that's gonna require a different kind of space. So the space of the future is, I think it's exciting. I think I'm just... We're completely excited about the potential for technology to make it even better and to allow for the consumerization of your work and your workspace.
Max Chopovsky:
Well, if of all the things the pandemic left us with, excitement for the future is one of them, then sign me up.
Kate Lister:
Hey.
Max Chopovsky:
Ladies, thank you so much for joining. Kate Lister, the president of global workplace analytics and Kay Sargent, the global co-director of the workplace team at design and architecture firm, HOK. Thank you for your time.
Kate Lister:
Thank
Kay Sargent:
Thank
Kate Lister:
you,
Kay Sargent:
you
Kate Lister:
Max.
Kay Sargent:
for inviting us.
Kate Lister:
Great conversation.
Max Chopovsky:
and thank you for listening into the future of work and the workplace evolution. I'm Max Chopovsky, talk to you next time..