Image Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
How do we create better workplace design solutions? If we unpack the words, we find hints about where we should begin.
Workplace is no longer just a place of business; it is a space where people come together, it’s a home base for staff, and, for many businesses, it’s is a tool used to express what makes them different from their competition. Design is an organized set of characteristics that is unique in its application and usually created as a physical representation of culture and values. “Solution” is the answer to a challenge or problem, and the best ones most often satisfy a direct function and an indirect desire. We must introduce people into the equation for each of these words to be meaningful.
Your organization could have the best technology, the most efficient processes and the most beautiful design, but at the end of the day, these things are just attributes of the workplace. The actual work gets done by the people. So, it’s no surprise that the most successful workplace designs are ones that have been developed with a strong and comprehensive people strategy as a foundation.
To develop this strategy, you need to understand people, their emotional response to space, and what makes them feel purposeful, supported, and productive. While quantitative measures of the workplace –such as space utilization studies – can tell us a lot about how staff are currently using a space, they don’t tell us anything about how staff feel about the space.
Why is it important to understand how people feel in a space?
Various literatures, from business to psychology, have found that when businesses look after staff needs the business flourishes. Staff needs go beyond a ping-pong table or extra vacation days and time off. People need to have the ability to find purpose and meaning in their work, the ability to concentrate, the ability to build relationships, the ability to re-focus, and the feeling of being in a safe environment and feeling supported to get their best work done.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [i] provides us with an understanding of human needs and the road to self-actualization. It is important to realize that you cannot reach self-actualization without satisfying the needs below it in the pyramid. It is no surprise that the characteristics of a self-actualized person and the behaviors to take on to reach that state align very closely with job postings of leaders in today’s job market. In an interview, Aaron Hurst, author of The Purpose Economy and CEO of Imperative, links staff feelings with organizational performance in stating that if the percentage of staff that feel purpose in their role were to increase it ‘would fundamentally change the culture and performance of the organization’ .