NEWS
How to Create a Destination Workplace
When the working week was a standard 9-5 with 5 days a week in the office, the workplace had a bit of a monopoly. Without the competition from hybrid working and working from home, the challenge of drawing staff into the office didn’t exist as it does today.
As our ways of working have evolved, the working environment has had to keep pace with employee demands and earn their commute. With so much flexibility and choice in our working patterns, the amount of time we spend in the office is no longer a standard across all industries and organisations. Companies are looking for ways to make their workplaces more appealing and engaging for their people.
The offices that evolve into people-driven destinations will be the long-term winners in the game of attracting staff into the workplace. The compulsory mandates that some global organisations have implemented, can create friction and result in disengaged staff, which is supported by this market insight shared by HAYS.
It just goes to show that the process of luring staff back to the workplace is a delicate art. Now that employees have experienced greater flexibility, working environments must become highly desirable destinations that give employees multiple reasons for choosing to go into the office rather than work remotely.
What is a destination workplace?
Destination workplace is a term used to describe an enticing space that employees want to work in. Destination workplaces offer a variety of engaging and rewarding experiences above and beyond the regular demands of work which make people want to travel to them.
Return to office: Magnetise vs Mandate
There is no right or wrong way to get your team back into the office. Every company has different objectives and challenges which can impact decisions on where their employees should work. The decision to mandate a return is described as being ‘high-stakes’ in this article by Forbes but in reality getting people back into the office is only part of the debate as once people are back, you want them to want to be there or, at the very least, benefit from their time there.
An RTO mandate is a formal arrangement where staff are told they must work in the office for a specific period of time each week. Large companies like Amazon, Dell, Goldman Sachs and others have enforced a ‘5-day week in the office’ policy and this is known as a mandate.
The approach that we recommend is the concept of magnetising staff back to the office. This is all about generating choice and offering compelling reasons for staff to want to spend time in the workplace. There are several ways to do this, but the end goal is the same; create a destination workplace that benefits employees, and in turn, fosters engagement, satisfaction and productivity.
How to design a destination workplace
The workplace is now all about creating immersive experiences – engaging multiple senses and emotions to drive deeper connections with people and places. These experiences are often more associated with Retail or Hospitality and these sectors are fantastic sources of inspiration for designing the destination workplace.
If you think about it another way, our experiences of the workplace are similar to those of a hotel. When you book a hotel, you may already have a chain or even a specific location that you would book, due to experiences you have had previously. This all comes from things like how the receptionist treated you during your stay, what your room looked like and what amenities or extra touches were afforded.
Now obviously this is not all transferable into the workplace but what is transferable is that sense of experience and what it feels like to be in a specific place. By using these four design elements, you can create an immersive experience in your destination workplace.
1. Nurture a community
The role of workplace culture is a significant factor in people making their decision on whether they come into the office or not. The office is about so much more than how productive you are, it’s a space for your team to come together to collaborate, socialise and learn from one another. It’s also an opportunity to communicate your brand values, foster engagement and create a sense of belonging among staff. This comes from building and nurturing a community in the workplace and extends beyond the design of the space, into areas like promoting open, two-way communication with employees, fostering inclusivity, providing flexibility and support to staff when required and recognising good work.
Of course, the design of the workplace can also support community building. For an office to cater for a group of people, it’s important to design a variety of spaces into the office that will support multiple ways of working. Designing multiple purpose spaces that can accommodate full team meetings, training sessions or events can support a range of requirements. Other features like wellbeing rooms and social areas that allow for spontaneous connection are also good starting points. It’s about establishing a destination that makes employees feel like they want to be part of it.
To ensure your people feel immersed in the workplace, getting their ideas and feedback about how to improve the office is a great way to maintain engagement and make employees feel like they are listened to, and considered when it comes to the workplace.
2. Advanced technology
Workplace technology is evolving all the time and office technology should be looking to go beyond the foundational essentials of high-speed Wifi and video conferencing suites. If companies can use VR technology or hyper-realistic video effects through LED screens or projections, they can create ‘moments’ in the workplace for staff.
Advanced technology can also be used in other ways to support the company’s sustainability goals and employee wellbeing. Some examples include; the use of light sensors that monitor the levels of light in the space and automatically adjust to create more natural and comfortable lighting,
motion sensors to have lights switch off, saving power when no one is around, and air quality sensors to detect levels of pollutants or allergens in the air and trigger ventilation or filtration systems, to maintain healthy air quality, for example.
3. Beneficial features
The traditional confines of the workplace have been lifted and the types of features included in offices now can be beneficial beyond the working day. Designing an office with meditation spaces, games rooms, libraries, cinemas, indoor/outdoor terraces, gyms and other ‘third places’ can provide extra motivation to go to the office. This could mean we see features like in-house childcare or dry cleaning facilities introduced to offices as employers seek incremental gains to take their workplaces to the next level.
4. Support a variety of working styles
We all work in different ways and the destination workplace should reflect this by providing a range of spaces that appeal to everyone. People want to be able to work in a variety of ways and need access to flexible collaboration spaces, soft seating areas for casual meetings and phone booths for private calls. If people feel limited within their working environment, they’re likely to get frustrated and not see the value of coming into the office.
If you’re unsure of the types of work setting your people need to work efficiently in the office, a workplace consultancy is an effective way of learning about your organisation in detail.
How can a destination workplace help businesses?
The concept of a destination workplace is more than simply getting people back into the office. The benefits of designing an environment that staff are willing to commute to
can significantly improve business performance in several ways. One of the main areas that has suffered from remote work and distributed teams is the human element of business. When we’re not in the same physical location, there can be a knock-on impact to our development, socialisation and overall engagement with colleagues and the wider business.
Employee engagement
It’s important to remember that the workplace is a tool to enable productivity but it also needs to fuel collaboration, creativity and engagement. Remote work has created a shift towards monitoring performance and output, but this can overlook key metrics like employee engagement and happiness. A destination workplace needs to be an environment that helps people be productive and keeps them engaged so that they can see the benefits of coming to the office.
Employee engagement is crucial to productivity, satisfaction and development – without that desire to feel involved with the business, there is a risk of low productivity and even loss of talent. For a deeper understanding of how to engage employees, interactive workshops will help people to feel like they are being listened to and developing a strategy together.
Learning and development
One of the key tangible benefits of having all, or a majority of, your people in the office is the opportunities it creates for osmosis learning. This is the way in which we learn skills and techniques about our job roles by sitting in close proximity to colleagues and peers.
By having less people in the office together or working within much smaller teams, there can be a negative impact on peer-to-peer learning and mentoring opportunities. This is particularly significant to the younger generation of workers who are missing out on chances to learn by asking questions and solving problems in real time.
PWC Ireland released a report in 2022 that talked about the 18-24 year old workforce feeling less satisfied with their jobs and stated that the “younger generation needs a more proactive and supportive approach to their performance management and career development.”
Building these connections within teams can be much slower and more difficult when done remotely. This puts more focus on creating a destination workplace that attracts both younger and older team members into the office together, not separately. The workplace needs to accommodate different generations and working types for companies to begin seeing the benefit of internal learning and development of younger workers. If you can develop a strong understanding of your employees, and how to deliver on those requirements, the workplace will become a destination they actively benefit from.
Improved collaboration
There are certain industries and job roles that don’t require as much collaboration between teams but for most businesses, collaborative work is the key to growth, creativity and greater productivity.
With hybrid work being so ingrained in many businesses, the office must merge the two worlds of physical and digital. It’s important to think of collaboration as being both in-person and digital. A destination workplace gives staff access to an environment that has a good selection of meeting rooms, fast Wi-Fi and video technology to ensure they can collaborate with their team wherever they are.
Collaboration is not only in-person anymore and businesses must consider the need for multifunctional environments that enable different ways of connecting with employees.
Talent attraction
With remote work becoming the norm, having a great office can be even more of a deciding factor when it comes to attracting talent. The workplace is a physical representation of a company and allows companies to demonstrate how they support their people. Even in the world of hybrid working, the office is a key asset that can be the difference for a candidate and sway them to choose one company over another.
An article in the CIPD publication People Management talks about the role the office has to play in the fight for talent. The article mentions that “done correctly, the office is a physical, safe space where colleagues feel they belong” and this is the type of mentality the destination workplace can reinforce.
If the space doesn’t suit the people or give them a reason to commute, they will choose to work somewhere else. Employees are seeking out ways to maintain their new working patterns so if your workplace can support health and wellbeing, collaboration and better flexibility then you can build a strong value proposition around the office. Plus, you will want to ensure that once you attract talent, you can retain them and keep developing them.
Getting the destination workplace right
The destination workplace is unique to each and every business and designing it in the right way starts with aligning your business goals with your people. With distributed workforces, the physical office has taken on a new meaning of binding teams together and represents the workplace culture and brand of a business. This means it is crucial for the workplace to be as inviting and welcoming to your teams as possible.
Drawing people back into the office is not an easy task but companies have to recognise that the office design is only part of the strategy. Employee engagement has a big role to play in this and engaging with your people will help you understand what it is they want to see from their workplace. Setting a workplace policy and communicating the value of synchronised working patterns is also part of demonstrating the value of the workplace. When you know the types of facilities or features that will make them want to commute to the office as well as the barriers they have to making the commute, you will be able to create a destination that magnetises your people.
Looking for ideas and advice on how to design the destination workplace? Get in touch with the Calibro team today.
Download
Thank you, your resource has opened in a new tab. If you do not see your resource please allow pop-ups or click the View Resource button.