Indesignlive: Can you summarise the headline findings in this report by Hassell?

Dr Daniel Davis: To me, the biggest finding is that after several years of disruption and upheaval, workplace patterns are finally stabilising. As things settle, we’re seeing that workers have a growing preference for calm environments defined by flexibility, freedom and fresh air. At the same time, companies are dealing with less uncertainty, they’re feeling more confident and more willing to make long-term investments in their workplace.

What prompted you to research on these specific topics at this time?

It’s Hassell’s fifth year running the workplace survey. We started it early during the pandemic to understand how it would shape the workplace.

Over the years, we’ve continued to invest in the survey. Our clients seek us out because, at Hassell, we mix creative design with strategic insight. Having data on what’s happening in the workplace and what’s about to happen is critical.

Every year we refine the survey’s focus. We’re still interested in the pandemic and how it has shaped the workplace, but we’re also looking ahead – what are the next set of challenges that workplaces will face, and how should companies prepare?

What surprised you in the findings?

What surprised us is that this is the first time we‘ve seen stability in the survey results. In prior years, the results varied wildly as different regions went in and out of lockdown, companies experimented with new policies, and people grew accustomed to, and sick of, different work arrangements

But this year, we are seeing something we’ve never seen before: stability. The number of people returning to the office hasn’t changed, workplace policies are basically the same, and people’s priorities and motivations are very similar. The results are so similar that when I first ran the analysis, I assumed I’d made a mistake and loaded last year’s data – we have never seen this level of stability before.

How important is agency when arranging workers’ work-from-home setup?

The research by Hassell and other academics is consistent: people value having agency over their work. People not only want the option to work from home, but they also want the ability to choose when they do. This desire for autonomy extends to all aspects of the workplace. When people come into an office, they want the power to decide where in the office they work, be it a quiet, library-like space, a cafe, their desk, or another space suited to whatever they’re doing at that moment.

Do you expect to see significant differences across countries, regional-urban areas, and other divides?

This year, we gathered data from Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each region differs, owing to variations in everything from their work cultures to how they handled the pandemic.

That said, we are now seeing more convergence at a country and regional level. There are still differences, but they are getting less extreme over time. In many ways, this resembles what we saw prior to the pandemic, where you could walk into an office virtually anywhere in the world and it would feel familiar. This isn’t to say we’re going back to how things were before the pandemic, but that we’re coalescing around certain workplace patterns. It’s evident from the data that hybrid work is here to stay and that we’re seeing this in all types of companies worldwide.

Is it fair to say that people are now more interested in genuinely helpful amenities rather than gimmicks?

Before the pandemic, some companies installed gimmicky amenities like ping-pong tables and slides. These might have captured headlines back then, but they’re not enough to draw people to the office today.

Over the past couple of years, people have spent time working at home, and they’ve become accustomed to amenities such as fresh air and green spaces that aren’t always found in commercial work environments. As people return to their offices, they bring with them new expectations. This isn’t to say they want their office to look like home, but they are asking why it can’t also have some of the same simple, wellness-focused conveniences they can access at home.

What does ‘hyrbid’ now mean in workplace design?

All companies are grappling with hybrid work. Our data shows that employees prefer, and tend to perform better, when they do some of their work at home and some of it in an office.

The challenge for companies is that if you let people decide where they work, you might end up with an office that’s really busy on Wednesdays and super quiet on Fridays. We’re working with a lot of clients at the moment to design offices that can adapt to these fluctuating patterns of occupancy. We’re also working to create workplaces that draw people back, or in more frequently without forcing them to be there.

Read the full report by Hassell here.

Hassell
www.hassellstudio.com

Photography
Australian Workplace, Earl Carter

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