Wellness Check: Not all workspaces are created equal

The dynamic of working fully from home or from the office has radically changed. Businesses now have a chance to recognize the complementary roles that in-office collaboration and work-from-home productivity can play for their workforce.

However, many organizations have been slow to respond to these changes and focused on one-size-fits all solutions. Those who maintain the status quo and “see how it goes” miss out on a critical opportunity: Earning a real competitive advantage among their most valuable asset – their people.

IT leaders will play a major role in moving toward a new paradigm; one in which workspaces are transformed from good enough, to well enough. As they start to outfit employee setups accordingly, they must ensure every type of workspace is equipped to empower anyone’s best work.

This approach enacts a domino effect of positive change: Workspace equity can support employee wellbeing, which can support employee productivity, which can support successful business outcomes. Here’s how to get going in the right direction.

1. Define top use cases of each workspace

First, uncover which kind of workspaces your teams will use moving forward. It might not be as simple as it sounds: Even if a company is shifting to a permanent hybrid model on a large scale, an individual employee might be fully remote or fully in-office. 

IT leaders should establish a way to document the variations of workspace models unique to each employee they support. From there, more broadly define what each workspace is likely to be used for within the organization and why.

2. Forecast wellness challenges of each workspace

Workspace initiatives within any business must be careful not to leave the fully remote or fully in-office workers behind. There is already a growing difference in experience. According to the Gensler global surveys, workers in a hybrid model “are more likely to report positive impacts on creativity, relationships, productivity, communicating, and problem solving” than workers in the office or remote full time.“Across the Globe, Workers Want a Hybrid Work Model,” Gensler, 2020.

This is where a crack in employee experience can start to form. If the majority of a team’s members prefer to collaborate in person, for example, a fully remote employee may unintentionally be left out of a conversation. Such a scenario’s mental wellness implications for the left-out remote employee cannot be understated. Even a single incidence of micro-exclusion can lead to a 25 percent decline in an individual’s performance on a team project.“Belonging: From comfort to connection to contribution,” Global Human Capital Trends Survey, Deloitte, 2020.

Explicitly integrating wellbeing into the design of work is not the norm, according to Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, “representing a huge missed opportunity.” Organizations that are already redesigning work around wellbeing incorporated such tactics as introducing wellness behaviors in day-to-day work and rethinking workspaces themselves.“The Social Enterprise at Work: Paradox as a Path Forward,” Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report, 2020.