Rules for Designing an Engaging Workplace

image:twitter.com
culled from:hbr.org

Most of us would acknowledge that good design has a powerful influence on how people think and behave. As today’s companies wake up to the value of workers who are truly engaged in their work — a clear case of trying to encourage certain ways of thinking and behaving – they should probably be paying far more attention to place design. Few things are more instrumental in boosting — or diminishing — levels of employee engagement.

Environmental psychologists are the design mavens of the scientific world. We’re the folks who concentrate our attention on how sensory experiences, psychosocial factors such as needing a territory, and basic psychological drives like having control over our physical environment, interact with personality and national culture to influence how attitudes and actions are affected by being in one space or another. Several dozen of us, working around the world, are moving what scientists have learned about how humans experience space from the dark corners of academia into the light of design practice, where it can make people’s lives better.

One of the things that environmental psychologists focus on is how design affects mood. Via a chain of psychological chain reactions, mood influences worker engagement; more positive moods link to higher levels of engagement. Designing for engagement is designing to make those positive moods more likely.

Workplaces where employees are engaged communicate to the people who work there — and anyone else in them — that their employer values them and the contribution that they make. The psychological lift that comes from feeling respected enhances engagement. It’s easy to publish mission and vision statements that go on, at length, about how much employees are prized by the people issuing their paychecks; so these proclamations are largely ignored by workers. Employees spend a lot of time “reading” the messages sent by the environments in which they’re asked to work. Physical workplaces cost money — think about all the times you’ve heard the expression “putting your money where your mouth is” — so the messages they send carry a lot more weight in workers’ minds that easy to generate verbal platitudes.

A place indicates respect for employees when it supports them as they do their jobs. Workers want to do their work well. Workplace performance has a big influence on self-identity; not many of us want to live out our life as the employee who just doesn’t work out.
You and Your Team

    Engaging Employees
    Best practices for keeping your team focused and motivated.

Generally, designers talk to the employees who will work in a space about their jobs and how a workplace being designed can optimize their performance. Often, the spaces that are built out don’t align with those conversations. A workplace gets designed that looks good, looks like the one the CEO of the client firm just saw in a glossy magazine spread, or looks like it may accomplish some ill-defined objective, such as increasing collaboration.

Workspaces should be designed so that each worker can do well whatever they do that adds the most value to their employer’s bottom line. That may be writing advertising copy or assessing financial plans or developing strategic objectives or something else entirely.

Most workers need to be able to concentrate on the tasks at hand, and that’s difficult in a field of cubicles or in a sea of faces when the cubicles are removed and all employees are asked to sit at long tables. And those open spaces aren’t spurring useful communication. Research consistently shows that constructive, work related collaboration doesn’t increase when work environments are made more open.

A range of workspaces can be provided for employees at a central office, and providing a smorgasbord of work locations is better than asking people to work in chaos, but people forget things, things that matter, every time they are asked to pack up what they’re working on and move to another place in their employer’s offices where they might be able to concentrate.  It doesn’t take any sort of special training to know that thoughtful work may be thoughtlessly executed in spaces where there’s continuous action. Plus, management is assessed in part on the physical environments provided and workers aren’t too happy with those in charge when their workplaces just don’t work for them.

So where does that leave us when designing an engaging workplace? Here are a few ideas:

Don’t underestimate the power of color. When people are doing work that requires hard mental work, the places where they’re working should be relaxing and when the mental work is relatively easy, more energizing spaces are fine. We’re relaxed in the presence of colors that aren’t very saturated but are relatively bright and that aren’t cluttered. Moderate visual complexity is best. That means the space should include only a few colors and patterns, and that decorative objects be carefully curated, for example. Stark is to be avoided; it’s alien to the environments in which we developed as a species and makes us tense.

Get outsiders to ask questions. Workers interpret their environments based on their national culture, organizational culture, professional culture (e.g., engineer or accountant) and personal experiences. Want to know what your employees think about where you’re asking them to work? Get someone from outside the firm to ask them, guarantee that all responses will be anonymous and kept confidential, and listen.

Let your workers have some of the control. Workplaces that support engagement communicate that employees are valued and also give workers some control over the physical experiences they have at the office. Employees have some input on lighting (even if only via a desk lamp), a say in temperature settings, and work in places where furnishings can be reconfigured on the fly, at least to some extent.  They can also have privacy when they need it. In many workplaces today, the only place employees can find visual and acoustic privacy is in bathroom stalls. All humans need privacy sometimes; when we have it we order our thoughts and develop a plan for moving forward.

Consider the chipmunk test. When you’re thinking about furnishings and architectural features in workplaces and engagement, keep chipmunks in mind. Humans are comfortable in the sorts of protected seats with a view over the surrounding area that give us the same secure feeling we’d have in a comfy nest nestled in tree branches. Similar spaces are easy to introduce into modern workplaces. Tuck small meeting spaces into alcoves off hallways or floors of workspaces. Give yourself bonus points if these spaces are raised a step and a tiny bit darker than the surrounding area. Next time you see seats lined up with their backs to a walkway, ask yourself, would a chipmunk want to sit with his back exposed like that? Is the positioning natural?  The answer to questions you might ask about chipmunk comfort — in other words, testing whether we would feel vulnerable or at ease — will direct you toward the development of spaces where workers are likely to feel engaged.

Workplace design can make higher levels of employee engagement more likely. Honest design, spaces that reflect employees’ needs and concerns (a subset of which are presented here), is something that employees notice, interpret, and value.  It can boost engagement, when given a chance.