Give me a health break!

(Pic credits: http://annazorzou.com/office-yoga/)

The trending discussions of workplace management seem to prioritize health and wellbeing of the work force over excellent technical performance of facilities or optimal working hours.

A recently developed WELL building standard created by Delos, reflects well the current state of the discourse. According to the Delos website, it is the first building standard that focuses on human health and wellness. It consists of seven basic naturally branded concepts: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Fitness, Comfort and Mind. The certificate claims to be grounded in a body of medical research that has been conducted over seven years. The aim of the certificate is to help create a built environment which would improve nutrition, fitness, mood, sleep patterns and performance of its occupants.

All in all, this trend indicates focus on soft and relative, humane factors of individuals as sources for more efficient and effective working environments. Optimization of spatial resources, ecological solutions, working hours, technical conditions of buildings or ergonomic performance of chairs and tables are shifting towards themes such as natural environments, well-being, fitness and mindfulness. Yoga and mindfulness exercises are increasingly common at workplaces, and employees are given opportunities to do sports or other hobbies during their office hours in search for better performance.

At the same time, also the importance of social well-being inside the community as a concept seems to be in the professionals’ highlighted sphere. Also the ways of commuting to and from workplaces have been on the table in terms of healthy workforce and ecological sustainability. For instance, Ramboll uses examples of IKEA’s free water bus and shuttle services in Brooklyn, and subsidized public transportations of WWF in UK as sustainable ways of commuting. So employees are encouraged to make healthier decisions even on the move.

So has the time come when we admit that doing more in a timely manner does not necessarily add quality to our performance but a well-spent break every now and then supports us more in the long run? Should the corporations increasingly create incentives for common sports exercises and alternative transportation methods?

The core of the development of working environments seems to thus currently be in encouraging personal development of individuals both physically and mentally. Performance of facilities is seemingly reaching its optimal state gaining lesser attention and individual well-being is highlighted more. Are we ready to implement these sorts of changes in Finland?

Is work fluid love made visible?

Maybe we could try to be more empathetic to each other. Would that make us perform better?

On the latter part of Worktech 2015, Kelly gave an inspiring show on the vibe at the workplace. She discussed the importance of hospitality, heart, soul and healthiness in the workplace culture. Commencing with a dancing session and a yoga show-off, she ensured everybody believed that yoga and mindfulness exercises are coming to the workplace. Kylie Bishop continued with focus on the health issues in her presentation of the user-engaging thrive journey they made in designing and relocating their Medibank staff into a brand new building. A more scientific approach to health was provided by David Dunstan who provided reliable evidence on the striking affects sitting has in triggering sicknesses and even death.

Is empathetic community facilitation the future of facilities management? Community and engagement were discussed by the last four presenters: Dermot Egan, Frank Rexach, Caroline McLaren and David Firth. All had the similar kind of main message: community is the core of any working environment and all we can do is to empower that core through facilitation and support. Caroline McLaren asked by the end of her Liberated work talk whether we would be willing to pay for our work day arguing that we are moving from workplace services towards workplace experiences. David Firth ended the conference in clichy but important words: “Work is love made visible. And in case no one has yet said it to you today, I love you.”

Are we really shifting from hard real estate to soft community business? All the presenters emphasized the empathetic and soft side of the traditionally hard engineering-based real estate and building industry. The decision power in the demand side of the coin seems to be extensively shifting to the individuals, who can find the services that match the demands of the personal networks they work in. The Hollywood model of working will enable individuals to shop between the jobs and fulfill their own demands on the go, which is why companies need to be alert and prepare themselves for fluid mobility, both in terms of real estate and staff.

If the presenters are to be believed in order for a company to succeed, an increasing emphasis should be put on community engagement and wellbeing of the workforce. Combined with the low vacancy and utilization rates of the current premises, does this mean a straight transformation of chunk of the facilities budget to human resources?

 

Kiire luo illuusion tehokkuudesta

Miltä kuulostaa ajatus kiireettömästä työpäivästä? Kun sinulta on kysytty ”Mitä kuuluu?”, milloin viimeksi olet vastannut ”Todella hyvää, ei ole yhtään kiire!”? Tällainen vastaus ei tunnu olevan edes hyväksyttävä, sillä se antaa kuvan laiskottelevasta, vastuuta kaihtavasta työntekijästä. Tämä mielikuva pitäisi rikkoa ja pian!

Kiire luo illuusion tehokkuudesta. Tämä on helppo selittää hukka-termin avulla, joka on lähtöisin lean-johtamisfilosofiasta. Lean-kirjallisuudessa hukalla tarkoitetaan sellaista työvaihetta, joka ei lisää arvoa asiakkaalle. Teemme siis turhaa työtä. Myös turha työvaihe on mahdollista tehdä nopeasti ja tehokkaasti. Vielä tehokkaampi tapa olisi kuitenkin olla tekemättä turhaa työtä. Usein työntekijä itse ei voi välttää ainakaan kokonaan turhan työn tekemistä. Esimerkiksi työntekijä ei voi olla tekemättä työvaihetta, joka on turha, mutta joka perustuu lainsäädäntöön. Samalla tavalla työntekijä ei voi välttää turhaa työtä, joka johtuu esimerkiksi työtiloista ja -välineistä. Meiltä työntekijöiltä menee paljon aikaa hukkaan muun muassa huonon viestinkulun vuoksi, mihin saattaa vaikuttaa toimimaton työympäristö. 

Oli syy kiireeseen mikä tahansa, kiireestä pitäisi pyrkiä eroon vähentämällä hukkaa eli turhaa työtä. Kiirettä ei pystytä poistamaan tekemällä samoja asioita nopeammin. Työympäristö ja -välineet voivat auttaa hukan poistossa eli kiireen vähentämisessä. Työympäristöä ja -välineitä kehittämällä on jo parannettu teollisuudessa työn tuottavuutta, joten miksi tämä ei olisi mahdollista myös tietotyön osalta?

(cc) Jaime Fearer

A masterpiece called project work

Worktech 2015, Melbourne, Deakin Theatre

Worktech 2015 in Melbourne was held in the iconic Deakin Edge theater facing the Yarra River on 4^th of March 2015. A variety of presenters provided a wide spectrum of ideas and insights to future of work: from gadgets to workplace vibe, spatial typologies to unworking, sitting as a killer to sensoring people flows. The themes that were most on the table were related to mobility and recruitment, wellbeing of the workforce and community engagement.

Are we heading towards a Hollywood model of work? Harold Becker from Microsoft painted visionary scenarios of how technology could help us to collaborate in a 5-10 year timespan. His team at Microsoft interpret that the socio-cultural change taking place increasingly in the near future derives from three major shifts: connected development, replacement of hierarchies with networks and the break down of corporate offices with less than 60% vacancy rates. He suggested that we are heading towards a Hollywood model of working with which he referred to movie production-type of team recruitment and project-like approach resulting in a demand for services enabling fluidity of both real estate and HR. Consequently, he envisioned manager roles to shift towards more team empowerment and humanization of work. He saw that in an attempt to support the evolution, we need to bring people together, live smarter through focus and flow, and enable friction-free creativity and fluid mobility.

Can there be a united culture for the mobile work force? Phillip Ross talked about Jelly bean working and the internet of things, providing scenarios of buildings as physical networks, quantified self and quantified offices. Tony Armstrong from CBRE discussed the increasingly temporary nature of workforce and highlighted the wellbeing of teams and the role of managers in empowering them through culture and trust building. He also put emphasis on workplace solutions as supporters of teams and a relatively recent standard called the Well Building Standard.

So how can supportive services answer these shifts? Are effective recruitment services and extremely flexible project room leases on-demand the way to go in the worklife of high performing super talent teams? Would it make sense to integrate LinkedIn and Liquidspace to serve the directors and producers of a masterpiece called project work?

Rytkönen
Campus dude, PhD student, an inspired adventurer surfing the waves of randomness

Access granted

Underutilized assets could be taken into better use through providing access

A large part of any organisation’s value lies in its people and access to silent, accumulated market knowledge. Due to internet and technological advancements in IT, all knowledge has become increasingly accessible for the public and transparency is increasing from an individual perspective if only one knows what to look for. This shifts the power from massive organizations towards individuals which can be seen ie. as an increase of smaller firms and their network-like structures.

The described shift has opened market opportunities for new service providers which provide access to pools of underutilized resources. Eckhardt and Bardhi underline in their recent HBR article that access economy is more precise a term to describe the phenomenon than the inflated buzzword sharing economy that has been on the table for quite a while. They argue that sharing includes a perception of empathy and engagement without monetary advancement, whereas access better describes the nature of the phenomenon where transaction but no actual sharing is necessarily included at all. Which ever the definite term, both individuals and organizations have access to an increasing amount of resources.

Larger organizations are challenged by this shift that provides individuals with more options and decision making power. This was a topic largely pinpointed in Worktech conference 2015 in Melbourne by basically all the speakers. The demands become more heterogeneous and the overall picture more chaotic – individuals need to be attracted to the workplace, or other alternative processes have to be applied to take the silent knowledge of organisations in use. Controlling the environment becomes harder from the organisation’s perspective and proactive, serendipity-searching individuals who actively network are able to generate more value in the access economy.

So could access economy be considered a killer of massive organizations, corporate headquarters and hierarchical structures? We don’t think so. Rather, we think that large organizations are overflowing with talented individuals, potential assets and silent knowledge that could be taken in more efficient use. This can best happen through supporting the proactive individuals inside the organization who use the available resources flexibly. Seemingly, traditional management principles such as command, control and standards are not as valid in the access economy but should rather be replaced with softer principles such as support, facilitation and applications in order to succeed. The access economy provides heaps of agile collaboration opportunities and flexible use of resources for organizations that accept the new economy and are willing to evolve along with the changes of the surrounding world.

-Eelis

Campus dude, researcher, PhD student, an inspired adventurer surfing the waves of randomness

Work of today - do we still need face-to-face contact?

Flexible workspaces and the development of mobile technologies allow work to be done wherever and whenever. This should increase employee flexibility and satisfaction. However, recent studies discuss the problem of decreased communication and interrupted information flow. Probably the most well-known example of the phenomenon is Yahoo Corporation and its CEO Marissa Mayer: the decision to give up their WAH (work at home) strategy in order to boost up productivity. The real work was claimed to happen at the office, and innovation to take place only when employees are co-located. Eventhough the development of technologies changed the way we all work, and we are becoming available “at any time”, nothing was claimed to replace face-to-face interaction and information sharing in the kitchen during lunch or common facilities while having a short break.

During my Master’s thesis interviews with international corporations the same idea was expressed multiple times. Employees would not use traditional offices that much, they’d rather work from home and everywhere else, and that would affect the information flow around different teams. Large office buildings where everybody had a dedicated personal workspace would feel empty, and the motivation and inspiration to work and be innovative would decrease. Employee satisfaction surveys would show worse results, and mobility of workers would be the main reason behind that.

The idea of remote work is a “work of yesterday” and has its limits. Remote work allowed doing tasks in remote locations from time to time but the work and employee itself was anchored to the main physical location which then caused problems and lack of information flow due to employees working remotely and not bringing information back to the office. It might have been the case in Yahoo and it was definitely the case in my Master’s thesis’ organisations.

The “work of today” is more mobile and physically-free, where employee is able to fully participate in the organisation’s workflow from any place at any time. So what was missing in the organisations that I studied? Was it the lack of employees at the office that interrupted all information flow? No. It was the lack of understanding that work is done differently nowadays, and mobile technologies allow us to crunch the data, share the information, reach colleagues and take actions in minutes while being on the other side of the world. Face-to-face contact does not bring as irreplacable value anymore as it used to, because alternative options for collaboration exist. Employees need to be proactive and understand that they can collaborate in other ways than sitting next to each other at a meeting or standing next to a coffee machine.