Forget about designing offices with free beer, running tracks, beanbags and all the other so-called perks that come with the office of the future and just stop people e-mailing.
That was the message from Bruce Daisley, EMEA vice president at Twitter and host of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast, to delegates at EG’s Offices & Workplace summit today.
Daisley said the smartphone had transformed how work affects us, with the average working day increasing from 7.5 hours to 9.5 hours because of our increasing propensity to check e-mails outside of traditional working hours.
With an increase in working hours comes an increase in stress and exhaustion, not productivity, said Daisley.
So what can the built environment do to make workplaces more productive?
The trend of developing open-plan offices has had the opposite effect of what it was trying to achieve, he told delegates.
“Work used to be so much more fun than it is today. That has been lost. There is no chat anymore in modern offices,” he said. “You have developed these horrible, wretched open-plan offices where no one can get anything done.”
He said the consequence of that was massive and that in a future where automation could take all but the most creative jobs, the need for face-to-face interaction was paramount.
Work used to be so much more fun than it is today. That has been lost. There is no chat anymore in modern offices
“Creative organisations are those where people chat face-to-face. The idealised vision of open-plan was that it would encourage this but the evidence is that it has led to less chat
“We presumed that interactions would just happen in these vast savannahs. We have to look at how to create interactional places.”
The best thing that businesses, including the built environment, can do to encourage interaction and productivity is to make sure that workers are happy.
Alongside getting 7.5 hours of sleep a night and having happier friends – stay away from drains and flock to the radiators, is Daisley’s advice – and turning the notifications off on your e-mail, giving employees presumed permission to do what they need to do, not having them work more than 40 hours a week, and allowing them to be themselves will translate into higher productivity.
According to a study from the London Business School, just letting staff be themselves, however weird and quirky that may be, can lead to a 15% increase in productivity.
From a physical workspace perspective, installing coffee machines and large lunch tables can have the same impact, said Daisley.
So, for the future of workspace, developers and occupiers need to think more about the how the brains of the people who will occupy that space work and what makes them happy.
Noisy, open spaces, beanbags and running tracks, the ping of an e-mail every few seconds and the ability to work anywhere, everywhere at all hours may not be the solution.
Stay tuned to EG for more from Twitter’s Daisley and a host of other experts on the future of workplace.
To send feedback, e-mail Samantha.McClary@egi.co.uk or tweet @Samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
