Workplace Strategy

Workplaces that attract staff

The ability to recruit and retain top talent is imperative for businesses so they can implement key initiatives and remain competitive in the marketplace.

Many of the 2003 trends predicted by the Herman Group in the "Herman Trend Alert," are already common play:

- Employers will face the most severe shortage of skilled labour in history.
- Training and education will accelerate.
- Flexible employment will gain popularity.
- Casual is here to stay - despite some movement to return to more formality in the workplace, informality will dominate in clothing, culture, office décor, and workplace structural design.
- Advantage of agility - companies will re-create themselves to be more agile, nimble, and responsive to customers and employees. Relationships, resources, knowledge, and speed will become strategic weapons.
- More independent workers - more people will become independent contractors, selling their services on a project, contract, or set-term basis. This movement will stimulate emergence of specialised staffing firms and electronic communities to connect workers with employers.

So how does your workplace support these future trends? Through the work of American economist Richard Florida we are also becoming more aware of the "creative class," and what drives them.

The following summarises some of what drives the creative class and what they expect from their workplace:

- To develop oneself and find creative expression at work.
- Creative and energizing places.
- Choice.
- A relationship between work and life.

As the numbers of Generation Y in the workplace increase and Baby Boomers retire - either quietly or not so quietly - we will see further changes in the social and intellectual atmosphere in workplaces.

And as networked innovation and other more fluid, less-fixed models of organising people and work appear, the work environment will evolve even more rapidly than it is today.

We also know that by supporting the "four generations" (Vets,

Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y) at work; the workplace will need to offer greater levels of choice and comfort.

A comfortable worker is a happy worker and a more productive contributor to the organisation.

There are a wealth of statistics to bolster the argument that ergonomic chairs and adjustable work and input surfaces (especially for people who spend long periods of time at a keyboard) reduce costs related to medical claims and absenteeism.

The real news is that healthful support can increase productivity.


The Workplace and Innovation

Kate North

For more than 20 years Kate North, a former strategic business director at furniture company Matisse, has worked with company executives and design firms to create inspirational places to work. She writes about using your workplace as a strategic tool to drive innovation

Getting Ahead With Innovation

Collaborate and they will innovate - that's the mantra for many businesses today.

The emphasis is understandable given that 79% of the fastest growing companies focus on innovation as the key to getting - and staying - ahead.

And because two heads are better than one, when it comes to generating ideas, collaboration is getting more attention than ever.

Futurists predict knowledge workers will spend nearly 70% of their time working collaboratively, both physically and virtually.

Many organisations believe that helping people connect and share their ideas is the best way to get the most from their "intellectual capital."

So, if innovation is in fact a social act, does your workplace support face-to-face collaboration?

In his recent book, The Medici Effect, Frans Johansson points out that creativity and innovation take place at intersections - the physical (and virtual) places where people with very different backgrounds, experiences, values and views, come together.

Whether it's at the water cooler or the local watering hole, people like to gather and talk. What they talk about almost always comes back to work. Research shows that those who use these occasions to extend their social networks receive higher performance ratings and faster promotions than those who don't.

Early studies explained most of this as the advantage of being in the right place. Those who occupy go-between positions can bridge the gap between those who are less connected - they can facilitate the flow of resources and information across an organisation.

There is a deep reason why some people make the most of their connections: social networks are associable, meaning that social people gravitate toward other people who are social.

In social networks, where popular people associate with other popular people, information spreads quickly because a relatively small number of people are involved.

Some of the most fruitful and productive encounters in the workplace occur in common spaces, which until recently received little attention from architects and designers.

Researchers in Australia recently studied 102 work settings to determine the impact of innovative work settings on organisational performance.

They defined innovative work settings as those that people perceived to be ingenious in terms of their internal physical conditioning, facilitating work activities, and fostering staff collaboration.

Using the Kruskal-Wallis H test to validate three hypotheses, the researchers came to three conclusions:

- More innovative work setting is associated with increased possibilities for desk sharing practices (collaboration) among staff, a focus on effective space management, measuring of staff productivity and a higher level of productivity.

- Greater performance in an innovative work setting is associated with higher staff satisfaction with their work environment and their level of productivity.

- Greater interaction with innovative work setting is associated with increased possibilities for desk sharing practices among staff, a focus on effective space management, staff understanding of work setting and satisfaction with their work environment, measuring of staff productivity as well as a higher level of productivity with moderating effects of management control.

That's because creativity in the workplace depends on social interactions.

Judith Heerwagen, a US environmental psychologist, concludes in her research: Playing with ideas, having fun, and brainstorming all contribute to the rapid flow of new ideas that are the building blocks of creativity and innovation. Solitary reflection coupled with intense discussion and debate turns these ideas into useful products and services.

The physical setting influences these processes in several ways: first, by affecting the probability of encounters; second, by enabling conversations to develop easily, but without committing people to a long meeting; and third, by providing opportunities for intensive interaction and debate.

Many organisations are finding value in creating a more organic layout which not only creates a more interesting interior landscape than the Dilbert cubicles, it invites fortuitous encounters, allowing for more impromptu conversations and intersections to occur.