Naomi Sakamoto is a Principal in Gensler’s London office, leading both the Technology practice area for the firm’s Europe region and a studio serving innovative clients in sciences, tech, and creative industries. With a background in urban design, civil engineering, and architecture, Naomi is a regular keynote speaker at leading events across Europe, delivering thought leadership on topics related to the future of work and the importance of physical space to nurture talent and enhance human connection.
If you’ve been on LinkedIn lately, you’ve probably heard all manner of opinions about work, hybrid, and the future (or demise) of the office. To separate reality from hyperbole, Gensler conducts an annual survey of more than 15,000 office workers around the world to find out how and where they spend their working lives, and what they want from the places they work. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the most common workplace myths, and how they stand up to the research.
Myth #1: “The office is obsolete! Given the option, everyone would rather stay home.”
Our survey showed that while we now spend about 20% of our working time at home, we still spend about half our time in an office. The remaining 30% of our time is spent in other places, like coworking sites, client sites, business travel, libraries, and cafes. The office isn’t competing with the home—it’s competing with the city. And instead of workers abandoning their offices to stay home, they are busting out of their offices into new & different venues: trains and coffee shops, airports and libraries.
This is what people are doing, but what do they want? Interestingly, there is general consensus that people would ideally be in the office 58-68% of the time to maximise their personal and team productivity; those who are currently coming in less than 58% reported they would ideally come in more, and those coming in more than 68% would ideally come in less.
Fact check: office versus home is a false dichotomy—the data reflect that people actually work in the office and the home, AND a multitude of other places throughout the city. Each of these environments provides us with something unique, and taken together, offers employees a rich and diverse landscape for work. For those of us who design, provide, or invest in workplaces, we should embrace this opportunity to differentiate purpose-built workplaces from all other places where work happens, and to offer an experience that cannot be gained anywhere else. After all, amongst the wide variety of options we now have for where to do our work, people are choosing the office about half the time—and say that they would ideally come in even more.
Myth #2: “I’m way more productive at home. Coming into an office is a waste of my time!”
While 43% of workers believe they are more productive when working from home, Barrero, Bloom, and Davis found that productivity is essentially the same for in-office and hybrid work, and lower for fully remote work. The scales tip towards in-person work when we consider the longer term: Emanuel, Harrington & Pallais found that workers who were physically co-located give and receive more feedback, and therefore “working from home (WFH) has divergent effects over different time spans, as short-term gains come in part from mortgaging workers’ long-run development.” Face-to-face interactions are still the best tool we have for learning, mentorship, and longer-term career growth.
Furthermore, individual productivity is just one aspect of the increasingly collaborative nature of work. Our Workplace Survey found that working with others in-person is the only type of work we’re doing significantly more of this year than last year, and that time spent on cooperative work has nearly doubled since 2008, from 28% to 52% of our working hours. Work is a team sport.
If work is a team sport, how do we make teams more effective? In Google’s two-year-long study on team performance, they found that great teams are built on trust and psychological safety, and that trust and psychological safety rely on face-to-face interactions. Therefore environments (like offices) that support face-to-face interactions are critical for teamwork and collective productivity. And indeed, our survey showed that teams working in better workplaces are 2-3 times more likely to have strong team relationships.
Fact check: Compared to other places where work happens, workplaces are best suited to foster trust through face-to-face interactions, enabling feedback and long-term growth, and empowering success of the team—not just the individual.
Myth #3: “My teams don’t need a fancy workplace; they could do their jobs with a sofa and high-speed internet. Besides, isn’t a great office just about beer taps and ping pong tables?”
A great workplace doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be functional. According to our survey, high-performing workplaces were 2-3 times more likely to provide access to spaces for critical work activities. While functionality is non-negotiable, the difference between a good and a great workplace comes down to more subjective factors: employees in top-performing workplaces were more likely to feel that their workplaces are beautiful, welcoming, or inspire new thinking.
Rather than a magic-bullet workplace amenity or space type (like beer taps or ping pong tables), we found that the best workplaces offer a variety of different work settings, giving employees a diversity of environments, postures, scales, and moods to choose from when they come into the office.
And interestingly, we learned that if offices provided the right mix of experiences—a perfect blend of everything an employee needs—employees would be willing to come into the office much more often: 45% said they would come in one additional day per week, and 22% said they would be willing to come in full time.
In addition to driving increased office presence, a great office also has positive impacts on individuals, teams, and on the organisation’s business outcomes. Employees in high-performing workplaces are 2-3 times more likely to feel that their office positively impacts their job satisfaction, health and wellbeing, career advancement, relationships with colleagues, quality of their work, and the speed of their decision-making.
Fact check: A great office offers functional spaces, inspiring experiences, and varied environments, and drives personal and business outcomes. In other words: a great office is good for business.
CONCLUSION
The office is now one of a multitude of locations where people can work effectively. Therefore, workplace design should embrace what the office does differently from other settings, and amplify what it does best.
- The office is a place to grow, because mentorship and feedback happen more effectively than in any other environment;
- The office is a place to belong, form trusted relationships and learn to work effectively as a team;
- The office is place to perform, complete our core tasks and accomplish our goals.
And finally, a great office is not about Instagrammable aesthetics or trendy gimmicks; a great office can catalyse individual performance, drive organisational goals, and enrich our interpersonal relationships.