Three ways to create a vibrant workplace that increase your RTO success

The success of your return-to-office initiative could hinge on how vibrant a workplace you have. Most employees want to come to a buzzing office that energizes them. How do you create that type of experience?

1. Design spaces based on current behaviors
2. Hibernate underused spaces and floors
3. Create opportunities for casual collisions

Designed spaces based on current behavior

Employees’ relationship with the workplace has changed. Yet many workplaces resemble pre-pandemic behaviors and expectations.

You can create a workplace that employees want to experience by designing spaces based on current behavior.

One of our customers, for example, had historically designed their workplace emphasizing focused-based spaces:

This represented how employees used the office pre-pandemic. Our data, however, showed that employees spend more time in collaborative spaces since returning to the office:

Our customer's workplace layout didn’t meet the expectations of employees.

Using our insights, our customer made significant design modifications, such as incorporating temporary pods to enhance collaborative areas.

Employees now encounter an environment aligned with their expectations. This inspires them to keep coming back and can motivate others to join them in experiencing the office ambiance.

Hibernate underused spaces and floors

An interesting trend we’ve seen across our network is employees who scatter to the floors and spaces available to them. The result is underutilized spaces and an office that feels empty.

For example, using Density insights, a customer uncovered that floors 3 and 4 in one of their buildings were not used by many people, particularly when compared to the average utilization rates of floors 1 and 2 in their other building:

There are two problems with lower utilization like this:

1. You pay for space few people are using
2. Employees miss out on the benefit of being physically closer to colleagues (we call this Critical Mass)

Having discovered this, our customer hibernated floors 3 and 4. With more people in the remaining spaces, the offices became abuzz with activity, and our customer reduced cleaning, utilities, and other service costs.

This hibernation strategy can also be used with underutilized spaces (neighborhoods, for example).

Create opportunities for casual collisions

Meetings are a regular part of work — for both in-office and remote employees. But the more time employees spend siloed in conference rooms, the more challenging it is to maintain a vibrant workplace experience.

Nathan Manuel, Head of Workplace Experience at PagerDuty,  decided to ditch the room with his common space conferencing:

“Since we don’t often have the opportunity for casual encounters these days, I love the idea that you might actually see someone from a different team and wave to them," Manuel says.

Meanwhile, Cloudflare is currently testing the idea of no hybrid meetings. If one person is remote for a meeting, then everyone joins remotely.

For example, if you have three people in one location and one who is not, everyone calls into the meeting from a separate location (like a desk).

This was originally intended to ensure everyone had the same meeting experience. But it also forces employees to spend more time in shared spaces, where they can add to the office vibrancy.

Takeaway

Creating a vibrant workplace experience is a pivotal part of having a successful return-to-office initiative. By understanding and adapting to current behaviors, optimizing space utilization, and promoting casual collisions, you can create an environment that energizes employees and enhances collaboration, productivity, and overall workplace experience.

Embracing these strategies can pave the way for a vibrant work environment that attracts and retains top talent.