Identifying the emotional significance of our workspaces
Places have meaning and symbolism. Up until the pandemic, the emotional connection we had with our workspace may not have been something we gave much thought; it was simply somewhere we sat while getting our work done.
But when employees were sent to work from home, many were cut off from the feeling of belonging that their in-office workspace provided. They were separated from that sense of regularity and predictability that a specific place offered them.
In response, employees all over the world were inspired to create that connection for themselves by setting up a more dedicated home workspace. In fact, since the pandemic, 42% of employees have reconfigured their home working space.
These reconfigurations allowed workers to recreate that connection to a dedicated workspace that so many of them had in the office prior to the pandemic. While employees were busy setting up a dedicated workspace at home, 49% of organizations have reconfigured their office space.
They’ve also been considering the best way to implement hot-desking arrangements in order to optimize space and give employees a dynamic workspace to return to. These changes were in many cases meant to reflect the new realities of the hybrid world we live in: lower daily headcount, more diverse space needs, and concerns over health and safety in the office
It turns out, however, that the return to the office was not as smooth and clearly defined as many had anticipated. We tried returning to the office on set days, only to find out that people want to manage their own schedule.
We tried hot desking, only to see employees sit at the same desk every day anyway. In many places around the world, workers have been floating between these multiple workspaces not out of choice, but out of necessity. Right as they begin to re-establish that connection to their workspace, they’re cut off from it by a change in guidelines regarding where to work. For a large portion of workers, this constant back and forth has left them without a sense of “place” in their work.
So, what do we need to do to restore – or rather, recreate – a more permanent sense of connection with our workspaces? How do we once again feel that we belong somewhere?
Your employees might not be returning to the office anytime soon, but they’ve still created a strong association between the office and their sense of belonging in the organization. Across all types of workers, there’s still a desire to have a dedicated personal space in the office.
In fact, almost 7 in 10 workers agree that if they didn’t have a regular, permanent workspace in the office, they’d still try to sit and work in the same spot every day. As humans, we’re drawn to consistent and predictable routines, and workers really want to know what their day is going to look like should they choose to go into the office.
We need to find a way to create a sense of belonging to a workplace that is virtual first. Give employees the power to choose their desired working space and offer them the technology, tools, and support to be productive no matter their environment.
The data also shows that not having a regular, permanent working space could be detrimental to employee engagement, motivation, and even retention. With almost 4 in 10 workers saying that they’d feel less loyalty and commitment to their company if they didn’t have a regular, permanent workspace, this brings into the spotlight the possible unintended consequences of hot desking arrangements in the office.
Much of the guidance around hot-desking addresses practical considerations, such as the number of desks necessary or whether employees should have individual lockers where they can leave their belongings. But as we see here, the emotional reaction to losing your dedicated space could outweigh many or all of these logistical concerns.
Leaders who wish to implement a hot-desking setup will need to think carefully about how to replace this sense of belonging with one that is more location-agnostic.
A first step in this direction is to build a “virtual-first” approach to work and culture, wherein physical locations have a role but are secondary to effective virtual connection.
If everyone knows that they can contribute on an equal playing field regardless of where they are, they’ll be able to be able to work in a space that responds to their needs while still feeling a sense of belonging within the team and the organization.
For the better part of two years, organizations have operated on the assumption that the traditional office space would be a place teams would gather for collaboration, while focus work would happen primarily at home.
But as our hybrid work routines have evolved, it’s become clear to both employees and leaders that their space needs are more complex than that. In fact, our data shows that employees’ two strongest desires for coming into the office are for collaboration and focus, truly highlighting the diverse range of tasks that employees plan to get done in the office.
However, there’s one group that definitively sees the home office as a better place for meetings, and that’s high collaborators – people who spend more than 50% of their time in meetings.
Indeed, as the amount of time a given employee spends in meetings increases, the likelihood that that employee prioritizes their home office space increases. This runs counter to the long-held belief that the office is more conducive to collaboration.
One explanation could be that 80% of all meetings are now either fully remote or hybrid. This means that instead of rushing from one meeting room to another, high collaborators can simply enter the next Teams or Zoom meeting at the click of a button.
There are also major productivity benefits to a virtual-first approach to collaboration, such as the ability to record and transcribe meetings.
The office will never have a singular purpose; its purpose is defined by each individual employee’s personal needs. As meetings continue to trend towards fully virtual and hybrid, high collaborators will feel more comfortable in whatever location is best suited for high virtual collaboration.
Currently, that location seems to be the home office. So, what does this mean for how organizations should approach their office redesigns? High collaborators must know that when they come into the office, they’re going to be able to easily access the right spaces and technology for both fully virtual and hybrid meetings.
To create a space where people feel they belong, they need to feel that the space was purpose-built for their workstyle. If rushing from one meeting room to the next serves as a disincentive from coming into the office, organizations should explore how personal collaboration technology can enable high collaborators to continue living their seamless virtual meeting experiences, while also being able to enjoy some of the other benefits of working in the office, such as socialization or focus.
Gen Z represents a generation not only of digital natives, but also of hybrid natives. To a large extent, these young employees were only beginning their careers as the pandemic struck.
Because of this, almost the entirety of their professional experience so far has been characterized by constant movement from one workspace to another. In short, the “anywhere office” is all they’ve ever known.
Entering a workforce where remote and hybrid work are commonplace has had a major impact on how these hybrid natives perceive the importance of location in work. So much so, in fact, that 10% of Gen Z report that their usual workspace is a third space (e.g. co-working space, café, library, etc.) rather than their home or traditional office.
That’s twice as much as Millennials and roughly three times as much as Gen X and Boomers. In addition to this, 64% of Gen Z says that they consider their “office” to be their laptop, headset, and wherever they can get a strong internet connection.
As leaders, we can’t expect that our Gen X and Gen Z employees will have the same motivations for coming to work – or any two generations, for that matter. To create a work culture that reflects, respects, and embodies the wide range of values in a five-generation workforce, it’s up to leaders to identify the shared values that bridge these groups and use those as common ground on which to collaborate and cooperate.
As we’ve already seen, the connection to regular, permanent in-office workspaces is strong across the workforce as a whole. But as Gen Z continues to take up a larger proportion of the workforce, this connection will fade away. Unlike their more experienced counterparts – particularly Gen X and Boomers – these hybrid natives don’t have as strong of an association between work and place.
For them, what’s more important is that they can get their work done from wherever they happen to be, rather than have to be wherever their work is. Because these employees have a less established connection to the office, leaders need to be more mindful of bringing teams together more often to create stronger ties and relationships. It also has strong implications for IT strategies and flexible working policies.
In order to prepare for the shift to a predominantly Millennial and Gen Z labor market, equipping teams with the right tools to work from the “anywhere office” will be crucial. It will also be an important part of attracting and retaining young talent in a future increasingly dominated by hybrid natives.
