Businesses often jump-start a workplace redesign by looking at the immediate problem.

They are looking at the fact that they are running out of space, or that they've got too much space, or that their space is no longer serving them and the company. It's no longer facilitating the way that they need to engage and create work,  And with many employees no longer people even coming into the office, this is creating new and different challenges for many organisations.

“Businesses are missing this very first critical step in understanding how their organisation functions and what they need to do, in order to create their next workplace. What's happening, is that they are not taking that bigger view.”

As businesses begin to plan for their next workplace, there are key factors that they often miss. Three of these factors include considering what their future looks like, understanding where they are right now, and bringing a team together that is going to help them get there.

To avoid...

If there’s one thing that we have learned in the past few years, it’s that change is inevitable. 

As our workplaces evolve and adapt to respond to the new environment that we are operating in, the rate of change can be overwhelming. With many businesses testing hybrid work arrangements, new work rituals and technology rollouts, change is being imposed on us at a rate we have never experienced before. Both at work and at home. 

That is why we were thrilled to have Dr Meg Hooper join us in the Work Life Lounge, taking us through how we can take control to navigate change, especially in the work environment. As a registered psychologist with a PhD in Organisational Psychology, Dr Meg highlights the extensive change that is happening to us and what we can do to manage our own emotions and experience of change. Let’s get started.

How do you want to experience work?

The first question Dr Meg posed is how and what do we want work to look and feel like? There is no right or wrong...

WOW!  I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be back in a room filled with such passionate, kind and enlightened people working to do good in their organisations. 

I’ve been in Sydney this past week at the annual Thriving Workplace event hosted by Sophie & Claire from The Serenity Collective.   

This is NOT your typical “conference”.  This is a community of people having deep, meaningful and life changing conversations on the future of work and our responsibilities as leaders to create the change from the inside out. 

In true heartfelt connection to the people in the room and the ground that we stood upon, we were warmly welcomed with a beautiful traditional ochre ceremony, by Susan Moylan-Coombs.  This ceremony invited us to;

• consciously reflect on our connection to one another;
• to be open to the ways and beliefs of others;
• to listen with the intention of hearing;
• and to speak words of kindness and wisdom.

A powerful way to open what was a deep 2 days of sharing ide...

Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future. – Robert L Peters

 

Purpose-driven organisations are understanding the power their workplace has in communicating their intentions and impact, creating thriving workplaces. The ability to communicate this purpose lies within the organisation’s existing business intelligence; its values and strategy. This intelligence, forms the foundations for the functional planning and aesthetics of the workplace, influencing the behaviours that instill this greater purpose.

Organisational values can be much more than the words that get stuck up on the wall. Typically, these values are informed by the brand story of the business and show up through the behaviours of its people. A brand story is not just the logo and the suite of colours, it’s the narrative that illustrates the history of the business, where they came from, who they are, what they do and what they stand for.

The communication of this brand sto...

Despite our best efforts, none of us are immune to the feeling overwhelm... myself included!  

With the start of another year, I felt that black cloud closing in as I navigated the first week back at work, juggling the many demands of work and life on my time.  

Fortunately, over time, I have established a well prepared toolkit to help me dissolve its effects when this feeling starts to creep in.  

My word this year is SPACIOUS.  The intention of this is that I intend to live a spacious and expansive life.  One that enables me to prioritise my own health and wellbeing.  I've found that sticking to these 5 things on a weekly basis has also helped to manage the inevitable feeling of overwhelm and feel more in control of my days and my time.   So much so that I have scheduled Slow Mornings in my diary, twice a week. 

#1. GET OUTSIDE

A growing body of research and even a new stream of science called Ecopsychology have shown that spending time in nature is good for our health and we...

In case you didn't know, the other part of my day job is designing spaces where people can thrive. My passion is to help clients create workplaces where their people feel at home, to ensure they reach their full potential.

My team at COMUNiTI and I were recently recognised by the Design Institute of Australia for  a workplace we completed for the team at Davidson. It allowed us to take stock and understand why this workplace was such a success. We realised that it goes right to the heart of how this came about; how the purpose, values and behaviours of this organisation informed the process. What Davidson required the design of the space to achieve, informing the employee experience and providing cues for behaviour, encouraging top talent and cultural alignment.

Here’s how we transformed a brief for a functional workplace into an award-winning space ideal for collaboration, connection and experience.

THE TASK

For the first time in their 30-year history, Davidson was investing in cr...

The most remarkable things happen when you least expect them. 

In January of this year, I shared my process for setting my year up for success, a workshop called Live a Life by Design; centred around finding your purpose, creating a vision of the life that is authentic to you and setting the goals to make it happen. 

It was such a beautiful workshop, and l loved sharing how I lay the foundation to living the life of my dreams, every year.  The feedback I received was amazing and participants immediately saw a shift in themselves.

And then in May, I heard how transformational that workshop truly was, and how it had changed the life of someone I’ve never met.

One of the gorgeous women who did my program, Nik, decided that her life wasn’t ticking all the boxes she desired. Her work and personal life were going fabulously, however on reflection it wasn’t quite measuring up in the area of personal fulfilment; hobbies and joy.  Deciding it was between lawn bowls and pottery, she started ...

Creating a new workplace for your business is a team effort.  You will need to enlist the expertise and know-how of a wide variety of people to ensure that you invest your time, energy and money in an outcome that will work for your business. 

Often clients can get swept up in the excitement and want to dive right, on, in, or feel that by going the DIY version they’re going to save themselves a few dollars.  In my experience, this is not going to end well.  There are reasons why these professions exist and depending on the scale and size of your business, you may not require their entire suite of services, but their advice is likely to see you create an outcome that you couldn’t, had you gone it alone.

You are going to require different people along this journey, each with their own specialties, and super powers, all adding value to the end product, a workplace that performs.  These people may be within your own organization or the same set of consultants, not necessarily individual ...

There has been a lot of focus recently on the shorter term, more immediate changes that workplaces have needed to put in place to start to return their employees to the workplace.

We can’t predict how much of an impact the pandemic may have longer-term, but nearly all signs are leading to an acceleration of the “future” workplace. With this in mind, and looking beyond the more immediate changes that have been implemented, we can start to consider other aspects of the future workplace that businesses can start planning for.

Here are some of the areas that will have a significant change and require a fair investment to bring workplaces into the future.   

Expect more from our buildings

Creating Healthy buildings will be a focus. Think biometric hardware sensor-operated temperature scanners, more gesture responsive hardware and building management systems for monitoring ventilation and air quality requirements. We also predict we’ll see a return to operable winders as a way of letting...

No longer are our workplaces the place that we must go to “work”.  Within the first quarter of 2020, the corporate world was forced to demonstrate that we can, in fact, work from anywhere in the masses. This has posed the question for many organisations, “what is the true purpose of our work environment?”.

We spend more time at work than anywhere else so it makes sense that this space should accommodate a variety of our social needs and provide us with a sense of community.  It should be a space to facilitate professional social connection, to enable us to connect with our colleagues and our organisations, to collaborate, brainstorm, innovate and problem-solve, together. 

So what is it about these communities that give us a collective sense of meaning, pride and belonging, and ultimately drive loyalty? It’s the shared values, experiences and stories, and more so, it’s the environments that facilitate these connections.

Before we look at the role the physical workspace plays in creat...