The average person spends approximately 90,000 hours, equivalent to one-third of a lifetime, at work. The workplace can be a second home to adults, and spending multiple hours has fueled a longstanding desire for change within the workplace. Over the decades, various factors, including pandemics, economic crises, and changing generational preferences, have impacted the nature of work and the places people work in. The recent phenomena of the Great Resignation and the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work arrangements have accelerated the transformation of workplaces. In response, organizations are increasingly prioritizing the overall employee experience, recognizing the need to create environments that accommodate evolving work structures while fostering satisfaction, engagement, and well-being among their workforce.
Workplace architecture and design often evoke an image of vibrant open-plan environments retrofitted with recreational amenities. These aesthetic spaces are successful at meeting workplace trends and impressing clients and visitors but are often not optimal for employee success. With today's post-pandemic shifts in the workplace, where the business focus is on talent retention, space optimization, productivity, and hybrid work strategies, it has become necessary for architects to reject the more narrow focus of designing physical spaces to design more holistic and effective employee experiences. It has become more crucial than ever for companies to create an environment that attracts and retains top talent, a culture where teams thrive, and productivity gains lead to increased revenue and innovation.
Achieving exceptional recruitment and retention rates demands an all-rounded approach to the workplace experience, ensuring that organizations meet the daily needs of their workforce. In parallel with the tech industry's emphasis on user experience, design firms are now adopting a formal experience strategy for workplace design. Geniant, a next-generation experience consulting company, helps organizations shift their realities by shaping employee experiences through their data-driven approach. The firm strongly believes exceptional experiences lie at the intersection of physical space, technology, and people.
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The Future Workspace That Isn't the WorkplaceWith a multi-disciplinary team of architects, service designers, and software developers, geniant employs user research to fuel their data-driven outcomes. Working with a leader in Artful Acoustics to enhance their employee's productivity, geniant first sought to understand employees' challenges and potential solutions through a comprehensive workplace survey, team sessions, shadowing, and one-on-one discussions. Accumulating nearly 1,000 data points from their research, their analysis revealed work style themes and persona types that led to the creation of seven distinct zones in the office's previous open-floor plan. Each zone is defined around identified personas such as the "Focused Creator" or the "Supportive Mentor", varying in the work styles the zone supports. User research fueled the workplace design, allowing the created space to target employees' true needs and desires.
Drawing inspiration from user experience design and user research in the technology industry, architects can design spaces that meet not only quantitative but qualitative metrics. The traditional approach to designing workplaces focused on metrics such as seat ratio, cost per square foot, and occupancy rates. However, designing experiences requires consideration of qualitative metrics such as satisfaction and pain points that reveal insights into the personal experience of the space.
Traditionally, the greatest influences on workplace design were economic conditions and technological advancements. Shifting the focus towards experience emphasizes innovation, worker activities, organizational culture, and the facilitation of current and future technologies. "Experiences need to include areas that touch not just space, but culture change and digital touchpoints." David Dewane, CXO of Physical Space at geniant, mentions, "We're thinking about everything from the ergonomics of a chair to the cadence of meetings to their home office setup to create the best experience across the full employee journey."
Designing the ideal workplace experience has the potential to reignite purpose and motivation in the workplace. The transition towards remote work, influenced by events like COVID-19, has prompted a reevaluation of conventional workplace structures. There is an increased need now to understand individuals and teams, enhancing the workplace through a multifaceted approach rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. geniant advocates for identifying various touchpoints, ranging from low-cost cultural changes to larger-scale physical design alterations, to create a more effective work environment.
By unveiling employee desires from interviews and data collection, organizations can create experiences that drive innovation and productivity. CEO of Experience Institute, Victor Saad, introduces three pillars that contribute to employee motivation—Believe, Belong, and Become. The first involves finding purpose through intrinsic motivation and personal connections. The second emphasizes creating an inclusive workplace culture that fosters a sense of belonging, and the third pillar focuses on offering a clear path for individual growth within the organization. When considering the tangible aspects of workplaces, it is important to design touchpoints that contribute to employee satisfaction and align teams to a shared company vision.
Beyond functional needs, architects are now aligning spaces with a company's culture and values. Organizations like Experience Institute champion this approach, emphasizing the crucial link between spatial design and an organization's cultural identity. "Workplaces must be designed to reliably induce a state of eudaimonia every day", Dewane states, "This concept involves spaces for exposure to new ideas, deep social connection, knowledge management, collaboration, and pure contemplation." By fostering a sense of belonging and connection among employees, architects contribute to higher job satisfaction and retention rates.
The workplace is a pivotal factor in shaping the daily experience of the workforce. A user-centric approach is essential in today's multifaceted work landscape, demanding flexible, adaptable, and technology-enhanced environments that prioritize employee well-being. This evolved design practice is an investment in organizational success, with architects playing a key role in designing spaces that elevate engagement and productivity, reduce turnover costs, and enhance the brand image. Architects are now curators of dynamic experiences, leading the way in shaping workspaces that address current needs while anticipating future demands of the workforce.
