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. 

Why is your office empty?

Various reports indicate that while office space utilisation has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic it is much lower than previously. For example, Remit Consulting’s ReTurn project, comprising of security access (swipe-card) data from 13 UK companies with 155 office buildings and circa 200,000 occupants, shows the current utilisation rate to be around 32%. Having two-thirds of office space empty is neither good for sustainability or creating a vibrant and enticing workspace. 

My recent research, with Dr Gary Raw, conducted in partnership with MillerKnoll, explores approaches to enticing the workforce back to the office (see the summary or full report). The research findings were presented to industry experts and their thoughts subsequently captured in an IN Magazine supplement. 

Are you or your clients planning an office relocation or refurbishment? Or do you need to review an existing workspace to ensure it still supports the organisation?

Unlike other sectors, architecture and the real estate industry do not automatically collate customer feedback to improve their current and future products and services. However, BREEAM, WELL and BIM all require a Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) to be conducted to achieve certification, and RIBA and BSI recommend them as best practice.

Back to Research

I recently completed a workplace strategy for a major investment bank and I’m now conducting some independent research, which I will share later this year. 

I genuinely enjoy carrying out research, it was my first career, but more importantly research informs my core services of workplace strategy and design briefing. My academic colleagues may disagree, but research must be applied rather than blue sky or theoretical. It should also be conducted in a reasonable time scale, at an affordable price, with a practical approach so that the results can be quickly adopted rather than wait years for complicated research to be completed, and out of date when eventually published. 

Standing up to stand out

I recently finished a stand-up comedy course and have now performed at a couple of gigs.

Why did I do it?

Well, to start it’s another of those itches that I needed to scratch, and get out of my system, just like the radio presenting and singing. I get bored of routine and I’m always looking for the next challenge in my work and my personal life.

To POE or not to POE, that is the question

It’s always exciting to finish a book. I am not quite there but I have recently approved the draft layout of “A Practical Guide to Post-Occupancy Evaluation and Researching Building User Experience”. The book is based on my 25 years’ experience of conducting POEs and I have completed over 100 evaluations during that time. The book will be out in September but is available to pre-order from Amazon.

Without conducting an independent evaluation of newly built or refurbished workplaces, we cannot be confident that they meet the needs of the occupying organisation and its people. 

The return to ROWI

Last month my paper on “developing the return on workplace investment (ROWI) tool”, co-authored with Matt Tucker and Hannah Wilson of Liverpool John Moores University, was published in the CREJ. The paper has been long in the making ...

It started back in 2012 when Adrian Burton of the AWE asked me to develop a means of estimating the productivity benefits gained from good workplace design. I responded to the challenge by reviewing 75 solid papers that reported a change in occupant performance due to improved environmental conditions, such acoustics, temperature, lighting etc. Initially the results of the different studies were so varied that they lacked any credibility. However, I worked with Paul Bartlett and the Office Productivity Network to weight the results according to the research environment, performance metric and type of activity so that they better represented a real office. The weighted results were more believable, were accepted by the AWE to use in their cost-benefit analysis of new workplace projects and we were accepted for publication by the JBSAV.