Workplace Trends: Wellbeing & Performance

As usual I pulled the programme together for this year’s Workplace Trends conference. The theme for this year, the tenth annual conference, was wellbeing and Performance. I selected this theme simply because during the last year of attending conferences the subject of wellbeing was raised, but not really discussed, by the audiences and a few speakers. I was intrigued, is wellbeing genuinely a different issue to performance, or is Wellbeing simply a rebranding of the whole productivity agenda?

Happiness
Not only are wellbeing, performance and productivity mentioned in the same breath but we can also add happiness, satisfaction and motivation into the mix. Nic Marks opened Workplace Trends presenting his happiness index. Nic presented research which revealed that positive emotions both a) broaden our thoughts helping us to pay more attention and be more creative and b) build psychological resources such as resilience/coping mechanisms and social skills. Both are useful attributes in the workplace and clearly happiness is a positive emotion but the link to performance is only implied and a direct causal link is not demonstrated by the research.

 

Quality and Motivation

I was recently asked by S&PA Professional, a bi-monthly magazine for members of the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA), to write 500 words on whether "the quality of the facility impacts on the motivation of staff". My response is below:

What appears to be at first glance a straightforward question suddenly becomes complicated when attempting to provide evidence for a demonstrable link between quality and motivation. This is because both variables are quite subjective and therefore can be difficult to quantify. A canter through the internet reveals that quality has many definitions but fulfilling the requirements of end-users to meet their expectations is a recurring one. In terms of facilities, quality may also refer to the standard of the environment, the accompanying (facilities management) service provided, and the robustness and longevity of products such as desks and chairs.

Benefits of Flexible Working

I am currently helping an occupier create a new flexible working environment by facilitating the change management process to ensure the staff buy-in to the new working arrangements. I presented my usual list of the benefits of flexible working (to both the organisation and the individual) but was told to go away and collate hard evidence. The client is an engineering practice and their staff includes analysts and planners; as a consequence their nature is to challenge and not accept consulting recommendations without detailed and rigorous data to back it up.

Fortunately I have access to case studies that I have collected over the years as a workplace consultant, and I also found quite a few published on the web. You can read through the case studies in my occasional paper on Flexible Working Benefits.

An Afternoon in the Pub

Some of you are aware by now that I have become a bit of a fan of an Afternoon in the Pub(AitP). According to the website:

"an Afternoon in the Pub was conceived as a ‘business social’ event to bring together local businesses to chat and have a drink in an informal, friendly setting with no rules … it is most certainly NOT a business meeting, nor is it a networking group. It’s a place where you can feel relaxed in the company of like-minded local businesspeople in an informal environment with no pressures at all. You won’t see a name badge or hear an ‘elevator pitch’, nor will anyone thrust their business card into your face for no apparent reason whatsoever."

Thanks to Si, Matt, Tom and Chrissie for coming up with a simple but great idea. I have become so much a fan of AitP that I have offered to help organise their first Berkhamsted event. So what drew me to AitP?

Afternooners meeting on a sunny afternoon in the pub.

The Shed-working Life

The lexicon describing the choice of places to work is ever increasing. The now familiar terms home-working and tele-working have been supplemented with hub-working, co-working, central-working and shed-working. Alex Johnson refers to shed-working as “the art of working from home in a shed-like space separate from the house” [1].

My office

Since taking redundancy and setting up my own business six months ago, I have gradually migrated from the kitchen table to the shed. I do not intend to discuss the merits of shed-working in elaborate detail here. Alex has already done that and he has done it well using beautiful images of“shed-like” spaces from all over the world that illustrate his thesis. I can only offer a personal account of why I prefer shed-working.

The Workplace Zoo

I visited Colchester Zoo over the Christmas holidays and was really impressed with the quality of the animal enclosures. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into their design and a great deal of effort made in meeting the animals’ needs and making them comfortable. This was evident in the way the animals behaved and through the success of their breeding programme.

It got me wondering whether any lessons learned in zoo design are relevant to the workplace. However, I am not the first to make this comparison. Judith Heerwagen suggests “For insights, it is useful to look not at buildings, but at zoos. Zoo design has gone through a radical transformation in the past several decades. Cages have been replaced by natural habitats and geographic clustering of animals. And, as in nature, the animals have much greater control over their behaviour. They can be on view if they want, or out of sight. They forage, play, rest, mate, and act like normal animals”[1]. She continues “A key factor was concern over the animals' psychological and social well-being. Zoos could keep animals alive, but they couldn't make them flourish”. Heerwagen proposed that we learn from the new philosophy of enriched zoo enclosures, providing for well-being rather than simple survival, but can we also learn from the basic design principles in zoo enclosures? 

The Office of the Future: Smaller & Distributed

This is a blog I recently made on behalf of 2degrees.

We all know the old adage “work is an activity not a place”. Due to emerging technology, particularly wireless networks and digital storage, we are no longer dependent on attending the office and can work at home, in arbitrary places – such as the café, library, clubs-hubs-pubs – and on the move. But the technology we have seen so far is just the start. Computing power is increasing exponentially and dramatically reducing in price, while the internet, wireless networks, cheap laptops and smart phones mean that we are now all connected in and out of work, locally and globally.

But work is not just about computer usage, it involves networking, meetings and creative thinking. Currently most of us in the UK work within the service industry, but we are entering a new industrial age, one of creativity and innovation. For UK plc to stay ahead we have to move towards an innovative and creative based industry.