The DNA of Work
The DNA of Work
Workplace experiences aren't a one-time fix
This is part two of our exploration of workplace experiences - thinking about how to deliver them day in, day out and adapting them to changing circumstances - so they continue to be relevant and to satisfy the needs of individuals, teams and the organization as a whole.
Covid was a big test for everyone's ability to adapt and ensure that people's experiences of work continued to serve each organisation's purpose, and hybrid is the next opportunity to fine tune and refine the degree to which your workplace experiences support your corporate objectives.
Here's a quick overview of the topics in this episode:
- The recruitment process - a vital illustration of who you are (08:19)
- Adapting the workplace experience when things change (15:53)
- Reward Gateway's story - part 2 (18:14)
- Where to next for RG's workplace experience (27:33)
AWA Host: Karen Plum
Guests:
- Andrew Mawson, Founder and Managing Director, AWA
- Brad Taylor, Director of Consulting, AWA
- Catrin Lewis, Head of Global Engagement and Internal Communications, Reward Gateway
AWA Guest details: https://www.advanced-workplace.com/our-team/
Reward Gateway additional materials:
- London office ways of working and office tour
- Project Meadow YouTube video, sharing the story of the London office
CONTACTS & WEBSITE details:
AWA contact: Andrew Mawson
AWA Institute contact: Natalia Savitcaia
Music: Licensed by Soundstripe – Lone Canyon
Want to know more about AWA?
Thanks for listening to the DNA of work podcast
00:00:00 Karen Plum
Hello there! How much effort does your organization put into ensuring people have a great experience at work? And I'm not just talking about the office environment or how great the coffee is, but what the experience says about who you are as an organization; what you value; what you want the experiences to do for people. In the fierce war for talent, you can't afford to leave this stuff to chance, because people will much more easily just vote with their feet.
Let's get on with this episode and find out more.
00:00:32 INTRO: Welcome to AWA’s Podcast, which is all about the changing world of work and trying to figure out what's right for each organization, because we know that every one is unique.
We talk to people who have walked the walk, who've got the T-shirt, and who've learned lessons that they're happy to share with us. I'm your host Karen Plum, and this is the DNA of work.
00:00:56 Karen Plum
If you're a regular listener, hopefully you'll have listened to our previous episode where we introduced the topic of workplace experiences - what they are, why they're important and how to start thinking about them.
This episode continues our exploration of the topic with our guests, Founder and Managing Director of AWA Andrew Mawson; AWA's, Director of Consulting Brad Taylor and later we'll hear more from Catrin Lewis about Reward Gateway’s workplace experience story.
Before getting into more detail, I asked Andrew to recap the four stages that are involved in the conscious delivery of workplace experiences.
00:01:33 Andrew Mawson
I think there are four stages. First one is defining what are we trying to achieve through the experience? You know that's an important area, because quite often people go off and start designing things without being clear about what the design is supposed to deliver. So I think that's the first one.
The second one is design and then how do we translate that definition into a lived experience, second by second and sense by sense. A lot of designers when we're talking about the design of a building as part of the experience, a lot of designs will focus a lot of attention on the things that are associated with feel and look, but how often do we think about, well, what does this place need to smell like?
What is the smell of our company? What is the sound of our company? Do we want quiet? Do we want noise? Do we want music? How can we all orientate that sense to give us some positivity and value.
So define, design and then delivery. How do we deliver this designed experience on a day-to-day basis regardless of which department is delivering it, involved in it? How do we do it through rain or shine, or when the business is going well or not, or when there's turmoil, or there isn't turmoil.
And then the final part of this is really thinking about monitoring it and evolving it, because it shouldn't be a static thing. I mean, you've constantly got to be thinking about, what is the experience that our people are having compared to the experiences that other organizations are giving their people?
00:03:14 Karen Plum
Yes, I think what struck me in the define stage, it would be very easy to rush through that and to come up with something quite superficial, you know where everybody's keen to get moving, aren't they? But if you don't know where you're heading, then you're very unlikely to end up in the right place.
So I guess Brad that define stage is something that organizations should really spend a good amount of time on and get the right people involved?
00:03:43 Brad Taylor
Definitely, and it's a bit like strategy really. It calls for a lot of hard thinking and it's so easy just to come up with sort of glib statements like, well, we're going to be the best company and the most resilient in the marketplace, and that's our strategy. And it's the same for designing and defining what a workplace experience will be like - it doesn't work like that.
You know, it can't be blue sky. It's gotta be something that is very, very clear that you can explain to someone and they would get it. They'll be able to visualize it as to I can see what this is gonna look like, feel like in the future and I can see how that will enable us to achieve all the things that we're trying to do as an organization and why that's important.
And that's the bit really then that locks in the buy-in from the senior team and all the other teams that have got to deliver on this - the ability to visualize what you have defined so it's worth getting all the right teams involved. It's about bringing in the right sort of level of expertise to really help stimulate the thinking. And bring to life what's out there, what is available, what's doable, so that you can then build the rest of your experience around that to a very clear blueprint.
00:04:50 Andrew Mawson
Just to add to that, if you believe that the design of the experience is primarily about making sure you're recruiting the right people and retaining the people you've already got, I think the first place to start is by trying to understand who your population are. For me it's quite interesting. What do we actually know about our people in terms of their demographics, their interests, their pressures in their lives, and so on.
Can we in some way draw conclusions about the kind of people that we have and therefore can we also draw conclusions about the kind of people we want to recruit? Because if we can, then we can be a little bit more precise in terms of the goals that we set out for ourselves in the early stages.
00:05:39 Karen Plum
But inevitably, I suppose you'll have a broad Church of people, in many senses, and the individuals will, because they are individuals, they will experience things in different ways and have different things that will light them up or turn them off or whatever.
So inevitably, you'll end up with some averaging or smoothing, much like we do today. But I guess if we know more, then at least we have a chance of doing more.
00:06:09 Andrew Mawson
Well, I think so. I think you're absolutely right that every human being is different and they will sense things in a different way. But I think you can get a bit tighter on it. You know if we're thinking about our audiences and our populations from a market research standpoint, we'd have a lot more data about them than most organizations do at the moment.
So kind of an important first step. You know, we gotta be thinking about the employee as a consumer and clusters of consumers who may have particular homogeneous needs that we may want to try and satisfy.
00:06:44 Karen Plum
Yes, bringing us back to our employee as a consumer which we covered on the podcast a few weeks ago.
00:06:50 Brad Taylor
I think there's an important element as well that in doing that and if we get it right, we're helping people who either work with the organization or who think about working with the organization to make a decision themselves as to whether, is this the right organization for me?
So that there's an element of self-selection, or self-deselection with an organization because you have a much clearer understanding of what the company stands for, what the culture is going to be like, and how the environment is laid out to do that. So you know some people may like a particular workplace because it's convenient, locally they can walk there, they can jump on the bus and get there and. It works for them.
But perhaps they're not as engaged about the mission of the organization. So do you want to be an employer that is great for local convenience, or actually are you looking for the types of people that want to innovate be creative all the time. And therefore perhaps they don't have a desk when they come in, it's all just loads of collaboration zones, perhaps a slightly noisier environment, who knows what.
It's saying as much to people in helping them to make a decision, as it is for you as an employer in helping you to get the right people that you need, both in terms of diversity and capability, and all of those things that matter, but people that can help you achieve what you need to be doing as an organization.
00:08:05 Karen Plum
It's really interesting because if you think about people making a new job decision, perhaps it's going to help organizations not attract the wrong people and have better recruitment success.
00:08:19 Brad Taylor
And that recruitment speaks volumes to how you'll be treated as an employee in the organization as well. So I think as a prospective employee, you should be taking a lot, you know, how easy was it to do the interview process, particularly if it was virtual? Were they familiar with using that type of technology? Were their processes in place to make the whole interview through to agreeing a salary and getting the offer out - was that seamless or did it feel a bit clunky?
Because the chances are it felt like that in the recruitment process, then the whole organization runs that way and they haven't quite got the act together in terms of the overall experience as well. So a lot of signals being given off even at such an early stage.
00:08:57 Karen Plum
And we might gloss over those things and think, oh well, that's just the HR function, or it's just this or it's just that and it'll all be fine when I get there. But probably it won't be.
00:09:08 Andrew Mawson
The additional side of that is who am I trying to recruit? If you take a lot of young people these days want to have a job that doesn't tie them to a desk. They want the freedom to be able to go and work wherever it's appropriate. They want to do maybe a little bit of travelling at the same time and living in different places. So those sorts of things I think are quite potent as ideas.
But I think just innovating around what the experience is in all its dimensions, it's got to be the way to go and to understand first of all, who might I be trying to recruit? It's really quite an important simple stage, but something that perhaps we don't always think about.
00:09:55 Brad Taylor
And it gets us away then doesn't it from designing for presenteeism, but instead for designing for outcomes orientated employment.
00:10:02 Karen Plum
Yes and trust and trusting people.
00:10:05 Brad Taylor
Exactly, yeah you can go to an environment, whether it's working from home or going to an office or wherever that might be and everything is there for you to define how you want your day to look, for you to be as successful as possible, but it's not based on clock watching and managers walking around and seeing people sat at desks.
And imagining that that's what productivity it – it’s not, it's about outcomes, being clear on outcomes and then ensuring that you've put everything in place through your workplace experience as possible, you know the people, the technology, the environment, to help them get on and do that with as minimal disruption as possible.
00:10:40 Karen Plum
So just to carry on our theme of thinking about an organization that wants to really focus on its experiences, providing better recruitment and retention outcomes. We talked about some aspects of recruitment, but what about perhaps on the first day that the individual comes to work for the organisation? How might we think about the experience that they're going to have on that first day?
00:11:10 Andrew Mawson
Through the early stages of the recruitment process, they will obviously have gained some sense of who we are and, well, I guess we have to assume that they like what they saw or heard or whatever.
And now they're coming to the reality as opposed to the promise. So you'd want them to have a good experience, wouldn't you? So thinking about that if they're going to come to a physical place, and of course, not everybody will do on their first day - what do we want that experience to look like?
How easy is it for them to get to work? When they get to the reception, what is that experience, what does it smell like, what does it sound like and what does it look like. It's no good at all if you've sold them an organization that's leading edge and you know contemporary and stuff and then they get to the reception, they find it looks like an old-fashioned merchant bank.
00:12:03 Karen Plum
And they're queuing for half an hour.
00:12:05 Andrew Mawson
And they're queuing for half an hour because it's a Monday and there's a lot of temps come in and the organization hasn't put enough people on the reception desk and so they're sitting there waiting.
They eventually get to the reception. They ask for the person that has recruited them and then they can't find them, maybe the directory is not up to date or something and they just sort of see a little bit. And so these are important impressions, your first day impression sets a marker really, you know confirms what you already thought you were buying into or it confounds it.
So all these little things. And some people say, oh, these are just hygiene factors. And I say to those people you may have thought about that in that way in the past, but I don't think you can think about it that way in the future, cause these are fragile relationships we’re now dealing with.
00:13:01 Karen Plum
Yes and I think that people are far more willing these days to move on more quickly than perhaps they would have done in the past. It used to be years ago that if you made a bad decision, you’d got to stay there for a good few years so that it didn't look bad on your CV that you look like somebody who was, you know, flitting from one job, to the next to the next. But I think those expectations have really changed.
00:13:25 Brad Taylor
I think that people are identifying themselves with their own sense of brand so much more these days as well. You know, and social media and all these things are making that so much more possible to project who we are, what we stand for, what we're about.
And therefore the type of organization that we work for and all of the things that are attached to workplace experience matter just as much as well, because that will be saying something about who am I as an individual, and does this align with my own personal values and projection of what I'm about and those things get quickly picked up on from the moment you walk into an organization on day one; how you're treated by the manager and the reception staff, to Andrew's point. Everything that's taking you through to how easy is it for you to find people within the organization, whether in the office or you're accessing it virtually. Has it got its act together when it comes to making it easy for you to do your job? And then does it feel like a great experience in doing it, or does it feel like a bit of a chore trying to log on to the systems or to find things on the Internet, you know everything that you need to be able to work as seamlessly as possible.
So it matters. And you're right, people will then take a choice. It's easier now than it's ever been to strike off in a different direction and either go for work with a different employer, or you know, set up on your own, or do whatever you want to. So it's never been more important to get these things right from day one. And make sure that you are living the promise that you're giving to these people.
00:14:59 Karen Plum
And I think just to finish off, one of your steps Andrew was about maintaining the experiences over time, and I think this is something we learned from consumer experiences - you can have the best designed experience, but if people are experiencing it over and over, then for some people and some times, it will just get old and stale and it won't wow them anymore.
00:15:22 Andrew Mawson
Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the one of the most disappointing things when we were doing the background research around designing consumer experiences - this notion of the wow factor that often designers will talk about in a physical environment. It doesn't last long. And you've almost got to accept that that initial WOW bomb, if you like it, is only gonna last a short period of time and you need to keep thinking about what's the next wow, whatever that is.
So yeah, and I think it's critical and the world doesn't stand still anymore. Things move on quite quickly, and certainly there are different ways I think, to do that kind of monitoring too. I mean, obviously scanning what other organizations are doing, keeping in touch with what's happening through your networks, but also you know from time to time, I think it's quite interesting to use sort of mystery shopping, to test how your experience is.
Not just through the eyes of an abled person, but what about people who are maybe disabled or have different language, skills and so on. Employees don't all come in one shape and size, so we need to be constantly aware that we need to be testing our experience through the eyes of lots of different people.
00:16:43 Karen Plum
Yes, and as that population changes, that we can adapt our experiences to a changing population. Whether it's the demographics of the population or just because we've managed to recruit the types of people that we said two years ago, we wanted to try to recruit and now they’re here and perhaps again that requires a bit more fine tuning.
00:17:03 Andrew Mawson
One thing we haven't talked about on this podcast is the recruitment of people from different geographies, you know I think increasingly organizations are going to be doing a lot of the same things that we do and the experience is not going to be a physical one.
And of course, when we're recruiting people to join our organization from different parts of the world, we've also got the local cultures, languages and rituals and things to deal with as well, so that adds an extra dose of complexity into the whole process.
Increasingly, organizations are gonna have to think about that dimension in a way that they would never have needed to or been able to before.
00:17:48 Karen Plum
I think Andrew's spot on. The world really has changed and organisations are faced with the need to up their game to recruit and retain the talent they need today and into the future.
If you'd like to talk to us to understand more about our approach, please do get in touch with us. Andrew and Brad's contact details are in our show notes. Or you can head to the website advanced-workplace.com and get in touch with them there.
Now it's time to return to Reward Gateway's story, and my guest Catrin Lewis, Head of Global Engagement and Internal Communications, who you heard from in the last episode.
In that episode, Catrin explained how they've been through an extensive process to design not only the office space, but the workplace experiences that they wanted staff to have working for Reward Gateway.
Having moved the London hub six years ago from Westbourne Grove in West London to Tottenham Court Road in Central London, I wondered whether much had changed in terms of the physical workplace and the workplace experience.
00:18:51 Catrin Lewis
So I mentioned in the last episode about our eight work modes that we introduced alongside the launch of the workspaces, and at that time when we introduced them, they were all focused on being in the office. So we would have Retreat Plugged-in One-to-one, Little, Large, Buzzin’, Briefing and RGfun.
And what's changed now is actually as the number of employees that we've got in some of the office spaces has grown, and those small meeting spaces that you have, I mean they take up quite a lot of floor space in the office to have just tens and tens of tiny meeting rooms, so what we would encourage our employees to do now, rather than get into the office and then struggling to find places to just have video calls all day long is encourage Retreat, Plugged-in and One-to-one to be at home work modes and then Little Meetings, Large Meetings, Buzzin’, Briefing, RGfun to be recommended, like you should be in the office if you're in that mode of work.
So it helps people think about their energy throughout the week and where they're going to have focus days, and then when they're going to go in for networking, collaboration, communication with the team, and we're seeing this quite a lot I think in the news and things, talking about offices now being central hubs to come in to network and be visible and all of those things.
So I feel it personally, I can have days where I'll go into the office and I think previously I could have felt oh, it's not been very productive today because all I've been doing is talking, but there's so much value in that. It's really important to go in there, be present, connect with people, talk them through their difficulties, challenges, projects they're working on, how can we support all of those things, I know that's still a day is well done and the office is the perfect space for that.
And then I can come back and be doing my policy writing and document writing one to ones with my team for instance, at home and not be blocking a meeting room all day long where actually our agile teams that are working on product might need that space to just hop in and hop out and things like this.
00:20:55 Karen Plum
Have you've changed much about the physical environment, given that you've now got some of those work mode types are spending more time away from the office?
00:21:05 Catrin Lewis
The office space hasn't changed so much in terms of its arrangement or what we have in them. So that design was based on a lot of data that we had - we'd be using the - had a meeting room booking system, we did observations to see how much desk space was being used at the time and actually it stayed quite true to what it is now.
But people are creatures of habit, it seems and where there may have been an increase, as they say in meeting room usage and we did have discussions about, well, do we change? We have a studio space - do we change that now into a meeting room? It's like actually no, we should encourage people to be home for those times because you're not interacting with the people in the office, so you could just use your home space for that.
And we've been able to work with the extended space that we have now in people's homes. Something we did invest in was a work from home bundle for people, so we could ensure that they do have decent desks, decent chairs, second screens, similar experience in the desk tools that they've got in the office, at home that was hugely popular that benefit.
So equipping people, we had two options, they could either have the budget and then buy extra if they wanted to, or we'd have readymade packs delivered to their home, which was just chosen for them if they wanted to do that instead. So that really helped people ensure they're able to work and all set up at home in the best way.
00:22:34 Karen Plum
Was that for anybody or was that for those specific work types that were mostly going to be working from home?
00:22:40 Catrin Lewis
So that's all employees have that and we have very few employees on remote contract, but for all hybrid workers, they're able to benefit from that as well.
00:22:49 Karen Plum
So given that you've provided a workplace set up for people in their homes, did you spend a lot of time thinking about the experience that they were going to be having at home? You know, in those early stages of COVID did you think a lot about how their experience was going to change when they weren't in the office.
00:23:08 Catrin Lewis
Yeah, it was quite a swift move. We had everybody sent home. I remember it, I'd actually been in Plovdiv, opening our biggest office there and then a week later we had to go home and our Bulgarian team weren't able to use their beautiful new office until after Covid!
So quite swiftly, our CEO at the time, Doug Butler, he decided to open a channel on Slack, which was work from home tips and tails. So it was just a place that everybody who was now in the home situation to share chitter chatter, like non work related things whilst also our IT team they were sending out a survey to understand what's your experience at home so far.
It was very easy for everyone to go home because we're I think you call it like cloud systems, so there was no worry for IT, they did amazing job - in the office today, at home tomorrow, no problems with that. But they sent a survey to understand who really needs a secondary screen.
That was one piece, but this channel that Doug created, people were soon putting pictures of where they were working at home. So saying, well, here's my setup now and this was really smart, because it wasn't then asking people to create a survey, they were choosing to just show - here's me set up on my ironing board for today or my standard desk that I'll be using.
And from there it was quite easy to then get a sense of what people were experiencing at home, but they were voluntarily sharing those pictures and photos and a lot of pictures of their dogs and cats, which was very fun, but it gives you then an insight into that home space where you can just quickly get an understanding of the health and safety situation and then we were like, right OK, too many people sit on sofas here or how can we level that up for them? Because it needs to be better - we can't have people just sat on soft furnishing all day.
00:25:02 Karen Plum
Yeah, it's like I expect some of it was horrifying, wasn’t it?
00:25:05 Catrin Lewis
Ah yeah, they had some which was just quite fun spaces and actually some amazing ones I know in, I think I saw pictures from Bulgaria where people were making their own desks and things like this, like some really nice stuff happening. So that was such a good channel because as I say, it's not you asking for pictures or anything like this, it's people happily sharing and for us as a people team we can just sit observing having a look.
And I think it gave the leadership team a better understanding of OK, so especially in London, and we've got a certain group of employees here that are really going to struggle because they're working in their bedroom, they live in a shared house, then they're sleeping in that room and we need to think about mental health support for the people that are in shared houses, I think they're the ones that are really going to struggle during this time - you're sleeping and working in the same room. Not a great place to be.
And you can then start to understand the employee experience better when they're struggling at work. Maybe they don't want to share their living situations, or talk about that being an issue, but you can correlate it with what's happening in that Channel by thinking, perhaps there's more people in that living situation where a flat and rent is so expensive, they haven't got the luxury of a separate room for an office that perhaps other people in the company do.
00:26:27 Karen Plum
Yes, and thinking of people in those sort of small apartments or bedsits, I remember another organization saying, you know, we've offered furniture and properly adjustable chairs to our people, they don't have space for them.
00:26:39 Catrin Lewis
Yes exactly. They can choose whatever furniture they want, so rather than - we have the two options, there's one which is a quite compact, neat desk set, so it's from IKEA pre chosen and we just have it delivered to them if they want a no-fuss option. Or if it's that they want perhaps something that they can, like a fold up desk, one that goes up into the wall in the evening, particular chair, anything like that, they would then get a budget allowance and then they can expense that.
00:27:09 Karen Plum
So we've talked about six years ago, we've talked about the last three years and how things had to be adapted. And now, of course, we're into the sort of the hybrid mode.
What are you doing to keep things alive, keeping them constantly adapting to perhaps the way in which the organization's vision and strategy may change and evolve over time?
00:27:33 Catrin Lewis
In December last year, we had our new CEO, Nick Burns join Reward Gateway. So with a different CEO, comes different leadership styles and new visions and strategies and all those sorts of things will be coming into play as he continues and learns more about Reward Gateway. So I'm excited to hear what the whole company vision is going to be in the spring.
But one thing that I really like, is seeing a new leader and how they adapt to the space. So he's very much into bringing all the employees together for doing all-hands meetings and we're looking at - do we have the right technology in the space to really enable that, so everybody's got the best experience.
I’m looking at getting these fantastic catch boxes you can use, which are throwable microphones that we can just chuck around the office and everybody can be heard and speak up when they want to. We’re looking at whether or not we've got the best live-streaming connections because with a hybrid workforce, I do think that that's a really important thing to consider.
If employees are now working from home, if you've got remote employees, do they feel as included and that you've actually considered their experience rather than just thinking about the people that are present in the room. I’ve seen a really good example of that, actually, which I'm hoping to replicate in the office where you've just got the screen on stage with the people that are joining remotely, so they're very visible there as much as the audience is.
And I think, yeah, considering just the different ways of bringing that dual like hybrid experience to life for people. You can't just think now of the people in the room. It's got to be accessible for all and how people consume that content as well. Is it something that's easy for them to access through the through the livestream technology?
00:29:19 Karen Plum
Well, we'll look forward to hearing what the new vision and strategy is when you hear that later on in the spring. But to finish us off for our audience, people thinking about what you've been sharing and hopefully finding it inspiring, I know I have, but you want to create a powerful experience, but you haven't really started on that now. Where might you start?
00:29:42 Catrin Lewis
If you want to get started on this type of project, I think the most valuable part for us was right at the beginning. So what data are you working with to build and design this space? So have you done an assessment of the office where you're observing how people use it at the moment? Doing workshops where people get to contribute and actually say what they're doing in their roles of work and how the office could enable them better in what they need to get done.
Do you have some champions from the employee group that would be able to be speaking up and guiding you on the design and just sort of being involved in the process so you've always got that employee voice adding to it and advising and giving feedback and communications are going to need to be strong. You can't just create this new space and throw people into it and hope they're going to enjoy it.
A space like this, it's a product in itself, like we did have to train people as to how to use the space and which areas are meant to be designed for what they need to get done at work as well.
So your communications road map is going to be really important, so yeah. Obviously for me and my role I would be saying consider the people, consider the communications and make sure you've got really strong data before you get started.
00:31:03 Karen Plum
So that brings us to the end of this short exploration of workplace experiences, how they're conceived, designed, delivered, and maintained. Of course there's a lot to it, but a huge amount to be gained. We'll come back to this topic in future episodes because it's really at the foundation of what we do here at AWA.
My thanks once again to my guests Catrin, Andrew and Brad for sharing their wisdom and insights in these two episodes. I hope you've taken some inspiration from our discussion wherever you are on your journey in delivering powerful workplace experiences.
00:31:39 CLOSE: If you'd like to hear future episodes of the DNA of work, just follow or like the show. You can contact us on our website, advanced-workplace.com. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time. Goodbye!