Lately I can’t seem to escape discussions about wellness in the workplace. In the past few weeks I’ve received several wellness related articles  from colleagues, witnessed real life issues onsite with clients and helped kick off a firm wide wellness initiative in my own firm. There are definitely enough issues surrounding this topic to turn this into a series of posts, but for now I will focus on sitting and walking in the workplace.
A colleague recently sent me these great infographics: Sitting is Killing You, highlighting some interesting statistics on the detriments of sitting for prolonged periods of time, fueling the argument to get up and walk around throughout the day. Personally, I hate the idea of sitting at a desk all day. I jump at any chance to walk across the office to talk with a colleauge. Not only does it add a few extra steps to my day, but often I can be more productive by engaging with a coworker face-to-face as opposed to long email chains which I’ll eventually have to go back and delete when cleaning out my inbox.

Adding to this discussion, HOK recently launced on Facebook what we are hoping to be The World’s Largest Workplace Survey. This is a great open forum to provide input on how well or not-so-well your workplace is performing. Join the dicussion by taking the survey here. The chart below shows some recent realtime survey results, indicating that an overwhelming amount of people complain about some physical discomfort in the workplace.

And in [...]

All that is old is new again?  True for fashion (not too long ago – I was able to “dress up” for a show by 80s cover band The Legwarmers by shopping exclusively at H&M and Forever XXI…cue embarrassing photo – please note most excellent crimped hair).  Fashion may come back around, but is it true for work, too? 
I just heard a new podcast….about an article I wrote for Building Operating Management (click here to read: Managing Change-BOM).
Listening to the podcast and rereading the article, I realized that these principles still hold up (even better than jelly shoes and armfuls of Swatch watches). So, without further ado…here are seven key principles of Change Management…it worked for Sprint – could it work for you too?

Executive support – get buy in from the top levels!
Communicate!  Get the word out – openness and honesty go a long way.
Develop an integrated team – Human Resources, Information Technology, and Real Estate all have to work together to make workplace change work.
Develop a vision – without a clear set of goals, it is impossible to succeed
Acknowledge staff – celebrate even the small victories!
Plan – change doesn’t happen overnight; it requires planning for the big and little items.
Exercise patience – every change requires some adjustment, and people are going to need time to adjust.

Share+Enjoy

Have you ever seen a sign such as the one above and thought, “Hrm, someone must have done this in order for management to feel the need to post signage.”  I have had this conversation several times recently – so many rules and laws are in place because someone failed to be considerate of others. 
For me, the one that really gets me is the parks that do not allow dogs.  If only people with well behaved, healthy dogs and good doggie manners (i.e., poop scooping) went to the park, maybe there wouldn’t be a need to have a no dog rule. But some jerks didn’t pick up their dog’s poop, so now I can’t take my dog to the park.
Today I was cruising through CNN’s homepage and ran across a great article that applies this concept to the workplace and human resources: Why I fled the office cubicle.
This post suggests that there are two basic types of employees: people and human resources.  People are assumed to have a brain. Human resources are treated as though they are robots that must have every action explicitly programmed (through rules). 
He argues that offices have policies, procedures, and rules because staff is assumed to be “human resources” and not actual “people.” 
I have to say, if all employees acted like “people” and respected their colleagues and surroundings, maybe we wouldn’t need the rules.  But we don’t…so we need the guidelines for good behavior.  Even if we sometimes ignore them.
Please don’t pee in the sink!
Image source: [...]

What happens when a company gets too big to be an exclusively virtual company?
I recently came across an article on inc.com: 4 Tips on Managing a Virtual Workforce, which featured Michael Sappington, CEO of gloStream, a company that provides software solutions for electronic medical records. In the piece, Michael notes some of the obstacles to maintaining a virtual environment as his compnay grows as well as the decision to move to physical office space.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Michael to dive deeper into the pros and cons his company is seeing as they transition from a virtual office to a physical office. Michael was gracious enough to answer my four questions below.
1. As your company grows and you shift your strategy related to flexible work hours and a virtual workforce, have you encountered any personnel issues with new ways of working and, if so, how are you managing this change to keep employees happy and engaged?
Overall, the shift from a virtual electronic medical records company to one operating out of a physical office has gone very, very well. Our team members have welcomed the change and they are much more productive since they can find each other and quickly meet face-to-face, instead of having to spend time tracking each other down before finding a time for a meeting. Our team members are happy to be in an office and really excited about our new work environment.
2. What workplace trends (i.e. technology, furniture, new ways of working) do you feel [...]

For several years our industry has pushed for the shift from ownership of space – as in your own office / workstation or your department’s conference room – to the sharing place.  In large part, this has been driven by the need to reduce the cost of real estate for organizations by trying to increase the utilization of  space used.  However, in my experience, there’s been significant reluctance due to our culture of ownership(especially here in the U.S.) . 
Last May at TEDx Sydney Rachel Botsman presented “The Case for Collaborative Consumption” and how several factors, including the proliferation of sharing websites, are having an impact on shifting our behaviors  from individual ownership to sharing.  She identifies 4 key drivers that are “fusing together and creating the big shift towards collaborative consumption”

A renewed belief in the importance of community
A torrent of peer-to-peer social networks and real-time technologies
Pressing unresolved environmental concerns
A global recession that has fundamentally shocked consumer behaviors

She also attributes the increase in this phenomenon to the “digital natives or Gen Y” and the ease of mobile collaboration – “they are growing up sharing…it’s second nature to them…moving us from a culture of me to a culture of we”. 

Her talk makes a strong case (using several internet examples like Zipcar, Swaptree and Landshare) that our consumer behaviors are changing due to the 4 points listed above that are being enabled by technology, mobility and a younger generation where sharing is second nature.
I believe Rachel’s presentation provides our industry with a few related examples, benefits and ideas for future opportunities around the idea sharing in an effort to reduce real estate, space and resource consumption faced by many [...]

I recently had the opportunity to write a guest blog for Virtual Office. The blog focuses on personalization of the workplace, and how new workplace trends could potentially limit our sense of individuality. With more and more mobile work styles emerging, and less and less people “living” at their desks in a traditional 9-to-5, forty hour work week, I question whether the or not people will also start ditching all of their personal knick-knacks in favor of  more streamlined, flexible work environments. 
Check out the full blog post here: A Home Away From Home Away From Home. The blog even makes a brief Office Space reference. Enjoy.

Share+Enjoy

Last year the HOK Chicago Interiors Group completed an office relocation project for Millward Brown, a leading global research agency. One of the main goals of the project was to make sure the branding of the space worked with the overall brand values of the company but also maintained a local identity to the Chicago market and their specific location. Millward Brown is a very youthful, creative and highly collaborative organization, and the physical space, amenities and branding all needed to reflect that culture.
The final workplace soultion is a very open plan with a variety of collaboration spaces,  reduced amount of materials,  youthful, energizing graphics and several areas for employees to kick back and relax, including a fully loaded Wii Rock Band area. It’s a great mix of a laid back, jeans-wearing culture with some very slick, sophisticated amenities for clients and visitors of all varieties.
The project was recently featured in an article in Interiors & Sources Magazine. Check out the article here.

Share+Enjoy

I don’t mean work in the sense of the location you travel to everyday for your job. I mean work by definition “to act or operate effectively” (v). A friend of mine posted a link this week to an article on CNN.com by Jason Fried called “Why the Office is the Worst Place to Work”. Fried went on to describe the modern office as an interruption factory filled with short windows of time for work moments.
One point of particular interest to me was Fried’s comment about how people responded to the question of where they work best. Very few respondents said the office… most replies were along the lines of the porch, the coffee shop, the house.
Earlier this year Jodi Williams + I co-authored an article for World Architecture News titled “Why Working Anywhere Works”. The article encouraged employers to expand their views on where work could happen based on what people actually need to “act or operate effectively”.
The truth is we all “work” differently… recognizing, acknowledging, and accommodating that is the workplace of the future.

Share+Enjoy

Welcome to the next installment of our work+place history. Today’s feature is by Claire Whitehill and Leigh Stringer.  Last year, Leigh and Claire contributed an article to Contract Magazine as part of Contract’s HOK-edited July 2009 edition.
Following our current economy based on information and knowledge work could emerge a new economy that is based on creativity. How would one be able to cultivate creativity? Some say the ability to collaborate effectively with other creative types is key. And just how can collaboration be maximized?
Leigh and Claire interviewed four business experts on the topic of collaboration and published a summary of the exchange in the July issue of Contract magazine. According to the experts, three main drivers that support collaboration emerged: transparency, globalization, and technology. The experts said that those who succeed in a creative economy must acknowledge that collaboration is the lifeline to competitive advantage – ideas will have to easily thrive anywhere and everywhere – all the while being exceptionally transparent.
The experts included: Robin Kaiser, Director of Global Business Strategy, American Express; Jim Rottman, VP of Human Resources, American Express; Martha Hirst, Commissioner, The City of New York Department of Administrative Services; and, Peggy Stritch, Manager of Workplace Resources and Design, Cisco Systems. All of the experts in their roles for large organizations are responsible for real estate, technology, and workplace policies.
Read the article here: Collaborative Workplace
If you have some time to read some more HOK workplace history, check Work+Place History (2): The Leader or Work+Place History (3): Facilitating Change.

Share+Enjoy

As promised, here is the first “true” installmentof our work+place history.  Today we will focus on an article published in the beginning of 2010, featuring HOK’s Steve Hargis, one of the braniacs behind Work+Place.

In this article, Steve shares his path to greatness (and workplace wisdom) – beginning with designing soulless (but sexy) spec office buildings, through to his present day position as a global workplace leader for HOK. Along the way he took a detour onsite at Sun Microsystems, which taught him that the value of buildings was really in the people: how do they use space and technology to be more effective at their jobs.
The key to successful real estate, he argues, is in creating agile and green workplaces – not just building and managing space.
Read the full article in CoreNet’s online Leader Magazine - HOK’s Steve Hargis: People in the Workplace

Share+Enjoy