Workplace Design Impact on Knowledge-Worker Productivity: Anne Loehr Interviews David Craig
In the business world, productivity is a hot topic. Organizations need to create an appropriate environment and culture that inspires productivity in their workforce. There are many factors that contribute to productivity, including workplace design.
In my last post, David Craig, the SVP of CannonDesign New York and head of CannonDesign’s global Workplace Strategy Practice, and I explored the impact of workplace design on innovation within an organization. Before then, we discussed how workplace design impacts organizational culture. You can watch me interview David Craig here, where we cover all three topics. More specifically, we talk about three workplace “must haves” to impact company culture, three quick ways for organizations to ramp up innovation with workplace design adjustments, and how workplace designs vary region to region.
On to the subject at hand—how can workplace design impact knowledge-worker productivity?
Anne Loehr: In a presentation of yours from 2010 you state that multi-tasking appears to be changing how people process information, making them less discriminative and more impulsive. I’d love to hear more about your findings.
David Craig: Actually, those insights come from research done by Clifford Nass at Stanford a few years ago. He and his research team found that people who multi-task the most think they’re better at multi-tasking than other people but are actually more scattered and less efficient in their processing. Other research has shown that short-term and long-term memory is compromised by multi-tasking and that age exacerbates the negative impact that distractions have. It’s fascinating but scary given how connected and dependent on information we tend to be these days.
Anne Loehr: You also mentioned that people intentionally distract themselves with more information than they know what to do with. That is so interesting. What are the implications of that? How can workspace design influence that behavior?
David Craig: While some people think workplaces should be more individually isolating to reduce distractions, most distractions today are electronic, and I think if anything easier face-to-face interaction could significantly reduce the amount of email and messages we send and receive. Interestingly, Clifford Nass encouraged his students to put down their phones for a day and talk exclusively face to face so that communication would be more focused and productive, and attention would be less divided.
Perhaps the best kind of workplace is one where you can control the focus of what you’re doing by the space you’re in. I.e., you can insert yourself in a team area for informal interaction and go to a quiet space when you want to concentrate, rather than trying to do everything all the time in one space.
Anne Loehr: I’d love to hear your perspective on virtual vs. in person communication in the workplace. Which do you find is more productive and why?
David Craig: Virtual communication is a necessity in today’s world where connections invariably span different locations and often time zones. When there’s an option of either face to face or virtual, the best choice will depend to an extent on what you’re trying to accomplish. Email or conference calls may be better than a face-to-face meeting in some situations when the cost of getting together (finding space, getting to the space, waiting for people, etc.) outweighs the benefit of seeing each other. But undoubtedly, face-to-face communication tends to be richer and more focused than virtual communication. Email is easy to send, but there’s often a lag in responding, and one email can generate a long string of follow-ups. A more focused meeting could actually be better and faster.
Most organizations that I’ve worked with have said that their employees rely too much on email and messaging, when they could deal with issues faster and more effectively face to face, and we have measured email traffic and found in some cases that it’s been reduced when moving to more team-oriented environments. Of course, if your team isn’t in one place to begin with, you won’t have that option. The best solution in that case might be better ways of interacting virtually.
Anne Loehr: If an organization wanted to move away from mainly virtual communication, how would they design their space?
David Craig: Assuming that the people that need to communicate are in the same building, the key thing would be promoting informal face-to-face communication. That means making sure people are optimally clustered. There’s research going back to the 1970’s (and repeated recently in our currently technological climate) that shows that communication frequency drops off sharply with distance. When people are 50 meters apart, the likelihood of communicating is about the same as when people are in different buildings. Aside from that, you need an environment that people feel comfortable talking in. Sound masking helps, for example. The culture may need to change as well. People need to feel that the organization values face-to-face interaction.
Anne Loehr: Explain your idea of a perfect workplace design for knowledge-worker productivity. Does that idea change depending on the industry?
David Craig: I think it depends less on industry than on the challenges a company is facing, its culture, and how much it feels it needs to change. Of these three, culture does tend to be tied to industry, but a lot of organizations actually want to evolve away from their stereotypical cultures as part of their desire to change. Some pharmaceutical companies, for example, have pushed to break down the culture of entitlement and independence that comes with having a lot of PhD scientists to create organizations that are more agile and open.
A perfect workplace, though, is one that aligns with the business vision of the organization and forces it out of its comfort zone in order to spur change. And while it pushes employees to work in new and better ways, it also provides intuitive settings in just the right proportions with just the right equipment to support the range of activities that people will be doing.
Anne Loehr: When it comes to a workplace that is designed to increase knowledge-worker productivity, do you think the specifics of the design might vary depending on the general generational range of the organization? Are Gen X workers more productive in the same environments that Millennials are?
David Craig: We have certainly seen people of all generations productive in the same environments, so I would generally avoid being too generation specific. Younger employees do, though, tend to be more interested in what we call internal flexibility – the ability to move around the workplace and work from different settings – than older employees. Younger employees also tend to be able to switch between tasks more efficiently, while older workers pay a bigger price for distractions. Hence organizations with older workers might be better off with somewhat calmer and more predictable environments.
Anne Loehr: This is more of a blanket question—how do you see workplace design vary depending on parts of the world? I can imagine that in Stockholm, workplace design is different than it is in Atlanta.
David Craig: In my experience, global organizations have been more pioneering with workplaces than local organizations in part because, with so much office space, they can afford to do workplace research and experiment. As a result we’ve seen many global organizations propagate very innovative workplace standards across all continents successfully. There are, though, some unique challenges in different parts of the world that influence workplace design. Asia and South America still, for example, tend to be very hierarchical. Not having private offices can be quite shocking, although again, many global organizations have achieved officeless environments in those regions. There is also a tolerance for much denser space on those continents, for better or for worse. And some Asian countries socialize in very different ways than what we expect in North America. Having a table tennis area or an outdoor café where people can smoke together can actually play an important role in facilitating knowledge sharing. Lastly, when it comes to flexibility – especially the ability to do some work from home – some developing countries don’t have the residential infrastructure to support it or the security to travel safely between home and work with a laptop. We’ve definitely learned to not take western best practices for granted.
If your organization isn’t paying attention to workplace design, it’s time to add it to your strategy. David Craig’s insight into the impact of workplace design on culture, creativity and knowledge-worker productivity makes a clear case for its importance. So put workplace design in your toolkit, and use it as a way to improve your organization, and move it toward success.
Can you imagine your ideal working environment? Do you think that ideal is influenced by your generation? Let’s talk about it. Leave a comment below, send me a tweet, or email me.
