Hybrid Working: Engineering Culture Across Distance

The next frontier of employee experience is intentional design which builds belonging. So what actually builds it? For years we told ourselves that culture lived in a building. That collaboration happened in a conference room. That connection was a by-product of proximity. An organisation can have a stunning culture anchor, say a world-class headquarters that beautifully expresses its values. However without adequate culture touchpoints across remote, hybrid and third-spaces it may still fail because the culture travels with the person, not just the postcode. The most sophisticated workplace strategies therefore need to address both, deliberately designing anchors and en…

Everyone wants a more productive employee, however few meaningful key performance indicators exist to help organisations track impact of workplace setting on employee performance & productivity. Interested to share observations on ways hybrid working has positively/negatively impacted productivity, both at organisation / employee level. Do we need to redefine 'productivity' for the Hybrid Era? ... Is social connectivity key to 'productivity'? What are your hybrid working 'productivy' metrics? ... Is your work environment still a key determining factor in productivity? Let's brainstorm ideas!

Planning for peak capacity and accepting empty floors at each end of the working week clearly not a winning formula! To thrive in a hybrid working environment, organisations need empathetic and motivated leaders, followed by agile places, empowered employees and technology to bridge the digital / physical experience. What advice would you would give to organisations seeking to improve efficacy of hybrid working, incl social connections and hybrid working flows ? Is a better understanding of employee flexibility requirements the secret to successfully balancing fluidity between working in the office and working from home ?

Interested to hear other occupier thoughts on new priorities and criteria for inclusion in future workplace design briefs. What are your key priorities for workplace design, workplace technologies and essential amentities over the next 2 to 3 years? Are you targeting improvements in employee centric performance criteria and employee well-being ?

As the futurologist and writer Alvin Toffler once said, 'The future always arrives too fast .. and in the wrong order'. The opportunity for reinvention and reimagination is significant and we clearly need to embrace our new hybrid world of work. I believe over time hybrid work will be the best thing to ever happen to our office environments ... until then, balancing physical proximity against emotional proximity may determine success today. Interested to learn experience of other end-users on how organisations are adapting their space strategies and forecast models to account for hybrid working. Do you anticipate employee WFA / flexibility expectatio…