Conference: Call to action
Academics, workplace designers, FMs and HR professionals told the third Leesman Index conference that the workplace has to be seen by companies as an asset.
Words by Cathy Hayward
Academics, workplace designers, FMs and HR professionals told the third Leesman Index conference that the workplace has to be seen by companies as an asset.
Company leaders, workplace designers and managers need to start seeing the workplace as an asset -- a tool to improve recruitment and retention, to increase morale and productivity -- and not as a liability to be calculated on a balance sheet. That was the message from the third workplace conference organised by the Leesman Index, the world's largest independent measure of workplace effectiveness, in partnership with HOK and Veldhoen + Company, held in London this summer.
The event, which heard from academics, workplace designers, HR professionals and facilities managers, was interspersed with the latest statistics from the 100,000 respondent Leesman database, including the dispiriting news that just 54 per cent of those questioned agreed that the design of their workplace enables them to work productively.
Founder and director of PTHR Perry Timms was surprised that it was that high, describing most offices as 'concrete-encrusted sarcophaguses'. People go to work, 'sit in a cubicle for eight hours and die. They only become themselves when they leave at 5.30pm.' He urged HR and workplace professionals to rethink the workplace and 'take a wrecking ball to some office carbuncles'. He argued that workplaces should be places of solace, safety, comfort and belonging. Instead they are places focused on getting too much out of people - 'mechanised hedonism' - a place where overwork is celebrated. 'We need to make the c-suite understand that happy people are productive and profitable.
We should create places for people to be happy, and celebrate human endeavour, creativity, joy and laughter.'
Rather than bringing in workplace designers and HR consultants, Timms urged organisations to ask staff to create their own space. 'We have "bring your own device", we also need "bring your own design". Why don't we say to people, here's a blank space, invent your own design. Nobody ever asked me if I like beanbags. We need to get people interested in the physical design of their space because that will have a major impact on how they interact with that space, and the organisation.'
Much of Timms' focus is around creating a collaborative environment, which he believes is fundamental to innovation in all industries. He urged the audience, which featured HR leaders and heads of estates from a host of different sectors, to create environments that 'promote conversation, human exchange and proximity. We need collisions of people'.
Asked afterwards by a delegate whether the workplace is that important, as people rarely state in exit interviews they are leaving because of the poor quality of the working environment, Timms questioned whether HR teams actually ask people what they think of the workplace.
Part of the challenge in the way we manage the workplace is that we're not taking lessons from the right people, said Ian Ellison, senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. He presented the initial findings of his research: a critical study of knowledge workspaces exploring provider and user perspectives. 'We spend too much time rehashing old arguments, such as new ways of working, multiple generations in the workplace and productivity. This is stuff we've debated since the Seventies,' he said.
There has been no ripple from philosophers, human geographers, critical management theorists and sociologists into workplace thought. 'This feels like a disconnect,' he said. 'We know that space is a social beast; you cannot create social interactions without space and vice versa.' The interim results of Ellison's study indicate the importance of themes: such as the value of coffee, cake and social interaction; access to nature through the sky, trees and fresh air; the symbolic value of the building entrance sequence; and the encroachment of work into life that contributes to the erosion of self.
'We must change the workplace's asset/liability equation,' urged Tim Oldman, founder and CEO of the Leesman Index. 'Let's move from conversation to action and engage with everyone involved in the workplace.'
