Design is crucial to attracting and retaining employees, office design drives productivity and innovation, and employees want flexible workplaces and employers. Those are the key findings of Capital One's extensive 2018 Work Environment Survey, which was released Tuesday morning.
According to Michelle Cleverdon, part of Capital One's workplace strategy and design team, the findings prove these changes in the workplace aren't just trends — they have become expectations. Workplaces that don't address the issues will find it difficult to attract and retain the best talent.
“This is helping us to substantiate what's important from a market perspective and from a professional's perspective,” she said. “Our overall goal is to create these environments that allow our associates to thrive.”
The revolution in workplace design seen in the past decade isn't just a trend. Employee views of the current state and overall importance of workplace design is steady year-over-year, according to the study, which also found significant majorities of office employees reported more design-forward workplaces help them to be not only more creative and innovative, but also increase their productivity. Today's workforce wants to work for companies with a flexible workspace that accommodates all kinds of work styles, according to the report.
It is the second year Capital One has conducted its Workplace Environment Survey and the first time it has added a national component. The responses are comprised of 1,000 nationwide and 2,500 combined designated markets (500 per market) for a total of 3,500 responses. Last year, the survey was limited to the five designated markets. Comparisons between 2017 and 2018 data refer to the combined media market data.
The survey was conducted by Wakefield Research among adults, 18 and over in the U.S., including 1,000 office professionals employed full-time in the U.S., and 500 office professionals employed full time in each of the following DMAs: Chicago, Dallas, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. It was done between April 19 and May 2 using an email invitation and an online survey.
The findings are fascinating, though probably not surprising to anyone who works or organizes an office. For example, two in three employees (66 percent) said workplace design is as important or more important than workplace location. That blows up the old adage “location, location, location.”
“We're really seeing that some of these trends, or what have been considered trends in the workplace, are really now solidifying into expectations,” Cleverdon said. “And so this is an overarching shift from just thinking about the business landscape to how companies are really going to need to start thinking about how these are fundamentally needed to create environments that are focused on experience, community and then also engagement.”
The survey found office design really does matter: 85 percent of employees think workplace design is important. The younger the employee, the more important design becomes. According to the survey, 42 percent of millennials say it's very important, as compared to 34 percent of Gen Xers and 32 percent of boomers. For Capital One, the millennial conversation — they call it the “millennial mentality” — is really important to the culture and DNA of Capital One, according to Cleverdon.
“Coming from the design world and being devoted to workplace strategy, I think that's a drum we've been beating for a really long time, that … design matters,” Cleverdon said, adding it's great to see it's resonating with professionals and they're validating the perspective through real data points.
Health and wellness is an important factor in office design, the survey found. On-site healthy food, beverages, health centers and wellness programs are very important to employees. This includes relaxation and social areas within the office.
Flexibility is important as well. Flexible schedules, the ability to have more control over when, where and how you're working and the ability to work remotely are very important, according to the survey.
Employees like working for an innovative company, according to Cleverdon. “It is the environment and the setting in which they're able to do their work (that is important) and if that it is not designed correctly, if it's not functional, if it's not aesthetically pleasing, if it doesn't provide the right offerings, then that can actually degrade their ability to either be innovative or be productive. That was really important for us,” she said. “So 79 percent of employees think that companies need to have an innovative environment if they want to encourage innovation. Those are numbers that we're not surprised by, because we received them last year, but … it's correlating from an actual professional standpoint from those that we're trying to attract, that there's a correlation between those two things.”
One finding that did come as a surprise is that nearly one in three employers offer none of the workplace amenities employees expect.