That’s a Wrap

Another year draws to a close and it’s time for a festive break. This year I have mostly focused on research, writing and presenting with a flourish of activity in the last month.

Why the Resistance to RTO Mandates?

 

The return to office (RTO) battle continues with large corporates mandating their employees work at the office for three, four or even five days a week. Despite the mandates, the resistance to RTO continues and office space remains underutilised. The reason is quite straight forward – a mandate is an official order or command and humans simply do not like being told what to do. As such, a mandate challenges fundamental psychological processes and our very being.

Being told what to do is perceived as a direct threat to the core psychological need for autonomy and our sense of agency – the hardwired desire for being instigators of our own actions and destiny. According to motivational theories, such as Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), having the ability to make our own choices and a sense of freedom increases intrinsic (self) motivation which is essential for maximising our growth and potential, resulting in enhanced mental wellbeing and happiness.

ADHD Everywhere

I attended Ideas Fest last week, a fantastic outdoor festival bringing together entrepreneurs and investors. There was quite a lot of discussion around supporting entrepreneurs and employees with ADHD and quite a lot of the delegates were openly celebrating their ADHD. As someone who shares most of the symptoms of AHD, but not formally diagnosed, I am curious about the subject. Consequently, I am continuously bombarded on my social media timelines with ADHD related posts. Furthermore, designing for neurodiversity is widely discussed in workplace circles supported by relatively recent published guidelines, standards and books.

Understanding occupancy levels – a core metric for business success

The BCO’s Review of Post-Pandemic UK Office Utilisation was published mid-July. I authored the review with data provided by three different sources of utilisation dataⁱ and input from a host of workplace industry expertsⁱⁱ. A key objective was to advise developers, architects and engineers on how lower occupancy levels and utilisation reduces occupant density such that a building’s infrastructure, based on an assumed higher density, may be over-specified and energy inefficient.

As a workplace strategist I am more interested in how utilisation studies can be used to determine the optimum number of desks and meeting spaces etc., informing the required building size, for occupiers moving to a new office. Since the COVID pandemic, office workers have literally voted with their feet with many not returning to the office full time. Not understanding future occupancy levels can lead to wasted space which both incurs unnecessarily higher property costs and is not sustainable, due to building, heating, servicing empty space. In contrast, it may lead to underestimating the required space, as recently experienced by HSBC with their 7,700 desks shortfall, which clearly impacts the success of any business.

I went to a land down under

I spent the month of March in Australia, and it took me over 45 years to get there. Just before leaving school in 1979, I wrote that I planned to become an electrician and emigrate to Australia (but ended up a psychologist in the UK after a short spell of medical electronics). My trip to Oz was long overdue, and my biggest regret is leaving it so long. Lessoned learned, carpe diem.

Isn’t biophilic design just good design?

I was at the first Biophilic Design Conference, hosted by the Journal of Biophilic Design, last week, an excellent conference and a question frequently raised by both the speakers and the delegates was “isn’t biophilic design just good design?”. I would say yes in general but, as I discussed with Chris Moriarty and Ian Ellison of Audiem, for biophilic design to stand alone there must be examples of biophilic design that is poor design and cases of good design that is not biophilic design. I believe such scenarios exist.

Alfresco Breaks Boost Productivity: Lessons from the Workplace Trends Conference

At yesterday’s Workplace Trends conference, NicolaMillard reminded us that the brain can only cope with four hours of intense work each day – see Pang for more details. It reminded me of Tony Schwartz’s Energy Project, which proposes we can work intensely for 90-minute periods, so long as we take a proper 20-minute break between them, and three such periods of intense work per day is more than most will achieve. Also, let’s not forget the Display Screen Equipment Regulations which recommends a 10-minute break every hour or so. Counterintuitively, it seems the key to productivity is to take regular breaks.