Interview by Suzanne Chamberlain from Outline Design, Interior Designers specialising in workplace, hospitality, healthcare and education.  Wendy is a valued consultant to Outline Design.

 

Wendy, you specialise in transformational change by helping people, their processes and places transform their business through flexibility, mobility and choice

What is your advice to business owners and people leaders in assisting a smooth transition back to work, in terms of emotional wellbeing for staff post COVID-19?

We’ve got to make sure our people feel safe, healthy, considered and valued; that they have been missed.  It’s a core, fundamental, performance value.  Clarity and communication is key; be as honest and open as you can, have a clear plan of how your business will transition through the different alert levels and involve your teams in the planning, so they own the outcomes.  I often use People | Process | Place as my strategy pillars to help my clients navigate their territory.  This COVID 19 reality is nothing we’ve experienced before so go easy on yourselves as you all work through this together.  You might not get it right first time but you are planning and moving forward together.

What is your advice for team members in navigating the changes we are – and will yet – go through?

How do we create community in our workplace neighbourhood?

COVID-19 is highlighting the power of our relationships and how vital they are to us.  Personally, I have reached out to more of my neighbours since lockdown, than I have in the past few years.  My experience is that our community and neighbourhoods are behaving in ways that safeguard our collective health and wellbeing, therefore the sense of physical and spiritual community has strengthened my neighbourhood.

This concept of community is helpful as we begin to imagine what it will be like to re-occupy the workplaces. For the past +10years, we’ve talked about creating neighbourhoods in open workplace designs as a way to section various areas and encourage collaboration – a sense of ownership would result in collaborative and greater functioning work communities.

The question, then, is how do we restore a sense of safety and community to the post COVID workplace? Recently I’ve read and heard many ideas on redesigning the physical workplace to address the immediate need for physical distancing, but what impact would that have on the collective behaviour of employees within a workplace? While the redesign might offer you a sense of ease while you sit at your desk and circulate around the workplace, how do they fit into a holistic design approach that encourages communal care?

When we return to the workplace, we’ll need to transpose our newly discovered sense of community and neighbourhood accountability, back into the workplace. I suggest we take this opportunity to observe, practice, and implement your specific behaviours that will be critical to your collective recovery and the future of work.

 

 

How can leaders best lead under circumstances where their team is remote?

Leadership is never more relevant and critical than now – clear, concise and considered. Look at the various Leaders around the world and you get a strong sense of who is leading well and who is not.  Leading with highest EQ – with emotional courage and agility.

I introduce the “F” word FEELING; have awareness to the feelings of your people and build trust to overcome the challenge of distance.  When you can’t see or hear your team (and they can’t see or hear you) there could be anxiety and loss of connection through sense of missing out on vital information. Many people have taken a huge, and sudden, leap of faith to remote working therefore greater transparency and regular conscious communication will cement stronger trust levels with your people.

 

How can collaboration and a sense of connection and team work be fostered in these ‘new normal’ remote-working circumstances?

I’m not sure about you, but I have never had so many virtual meetings and connections recently so clearly virtual collaboration has been quickly tested and is being widely and successfully used.

Preparing a work from home strategy with your people and teams is critical.  Flexibility (where I do my work), mobility (physical + virtual tools to support my work) and choice (how + when I work) are valuable to working remotely. Creating clarity for teams + people by defining purpose, scope, resources and roles – everyone understands what they are now accountable for.  Using clear communication, as people cannot get their usual cue from physical interaction.  Have your team design and implement a plan to action new virtually teaming routines and protocols.

It’s not all about work outcomes, so make sure there is time for regular social connection to maintain that sense of team camaraderie, celebration and have a laugh to keep personal connection alive amongst your people and teams.

 

In practical terms,  there will likely be physical changes in the way that people will want – and be directed – to work when we get to Level 2. Things like physical distancing and not sharing desks.

We know that building community, reinforcing our business culture, and strengthening relationships with colleagues is still what the workplace is about.  Our physical workplaces have used kinetic furniture to bring people together, now it will have a different function: to physically pull people apart.

Here are some ways to prepare the workspaces for your people to return safely to work:

• Clean, clean, clean; wipes + hand sanitizer stands everywhere; ramped up cleaning routines; limits on the number of people allowed in elevators / escalators
• De-densify workstations; using every other desk to create a buffer for each person; space people so they don’t face each other; adding partitions for sit/stand desks that are attached to the desktop and move with the desktop; minimise situations where one person is standing while another is seated within same bubble
• Keep your distance; different desk arrangements; remove excess chairs in meeting rooms and staff cafes; spread out collaboration seating; encourage people to collaborate virtually whenever possible; chairs on casters so people can roll seats a safe distance from colleagues
• New Apps; book a desk from home, social distancing via desk lock off; contact tracing; workpoint cleaning history, data to give people greater trust with their workplace
• Carefully choreographed return to work; instead of mandating that everyone come back at once, offer the option for people to do it in waves; distributed working; working from home; locating people in different suburban hubs;  A + B + C teams working different hours + days; cleaning protocols in between shifts
• Changes to dynamic and unassigned seating; assigning what were formerly shared desks to people / teams for a half/full day or a week; disinfect and clean between uses
• Limit tech sharing; provide technology and accessories (mouse, keyboard, headset) to each individual; disinfecting between uses
• Be open to new ways of working; new habits and new ways of working will take shape; different ways to collaborate virtually may continue in workplace; embrace changes to workflow and let them grow
• Improved air filtration systems; invest in air-purification systems to protect collaborative environments; improving air quality by reducing airborne and surface contaminants like viruses, bacteria, germs, VOCs, smoke, and other allergens
• Touchless interfaces; technology providing access to rooms and elevators without touching a handle or press a button; badge readers, touchless soap and anti-viral cleaning supplies, garbage and recycling receptables
• Antimicrobial materials; building materials that discourage the spread of germs; smooth surfaces that are easy clean; old metals may experience a revival, e.g. certain stainless steel, copper and brass have anti- microbial properties

 

Do you think there’s a future for Shared Space/Co-working spaces, that were increasing in popularity until Covid-19?

Yes, with good hygiene practice and social distancing protocols.  Some businesses may reduce their workplace footprint, so these shared and co-working spaces will become important in the short term.  There is industry discussion on the increase of more smaller local neighbourhood hubs to support less commuting to a main workplace and allowing smaller groups of people to occupy this hub workspace.

 

What would be your blue-sky scenario following this “reset”, if we were to see it an opportunity to conduct ourselves differently moving forward?

For me it is People being front and centre – how exciting to witness this shift in priority and my hope is it remains and grows stronger as we figure out together what post-COVID looks and feels like.

In the pre-COVID workplace world, the traditional steps (simplified for this example) we would find a new workplace location, engage the architects + designers to complete the design and then communicate to the people what is happening and when (and call that change management). People engagement was often at the end of the chain of events.

This post-COVID reset has put people at the front of the process.   To support NZ businesses to survive and grow will require cross sector collaboration from us all.  Leave behind the bullish competitiveness, the price cutting to win at all costs and keep using and improving our new cross community collaboration. Then we all win and support our NZ businesses to thrive.

The investment in physical workspace might decrease as the office size and layout changes and distributed remote working will increase.  I predict approx. 20% of our workplace people will remote work on multiple days per week (was approx. 5% before).  With less commuting and more time to enjoy our whanau, friends and colleagues, we offer our people choice.

We are mostly social creatures by nature, so it will still be important for us to get together in the workplace, potentially less often physically and more often virtually in the short term as we navigate our way to safe and healthy workplaces.