February saw many making the move to the office, as both government agencies and private companies either implemented or intensified programs to bring employees back. In the U.S., federal government agencies, including the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs, announced new mandates. And at many of the largest companies in the private sector, the return-to-office trend that started last year has continued to grow.
With more people heading back to the office, it’s the right time to take another look at how organizations can create workspaces that best support a variety of work models and overall employee productivity.
Welcome to our monthly look beyond the headlines to help you stay on top of facility management (FM) industry trends.
Company culture as a concept: A short history
With many of the mandates publicly connected to organizational efforts to improve company culture, it’s worth remembering how the concept has changed over time.
A modern definition of company culture includes the shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and practices that characterize an organization. It involves the environment in which employees work, the way they interact with one another, and the overall atmosphere of the workplace. The reason it’s so important is because company culture can influence everything from employee satisfaction and retention to productivity and performance.
Early definitions from the 1980s to the 1990s focused on organizational values and norms, and companies limited it to the values and norms that guided behavior within an organization. They saw it as a set of unwritten, set-in-stone rules and expectations that employees were expected to follow. By the mid-2000s to early 2010s, though, the definition had expanded to include the physical and social environment of the workplace, with a greater emphasis on the role of the work environment in shaping employee behavior and satisfaction.
The current approach is to see company culture as a holistic concept that includes not only values and practices but also the physical workspace, technology, and the broader social and economic context. Organizations approach company culture as something dynamic and evolving, which means they understand that they can actively shape and manage it.
But it’s not company culture. It’s cultures
Company culture isn’t just evolving. It’s also multifaceted, and a company can benefit from understanding the different subcultures that exist in their workforce.
In the Workplace Innovator podcast episode “’How Do We Turn It Around?’ – Workplace Resilience, Creativity and Culture,” Rex Miller, owner of business consultancy Go mindSHIFT, lists some of the more common cultures, including aspirational, legacy, outlier, and shadow. He encourages companies to re-evaluate any long-standing assumptions they might have about their employees because, in many cases, there have been so many economic, social, and technological changes that the company culture they thought they had might not exist anymore.
According to Miller, progress starts with recognizing and understanding these changes.
“There’s an overemphasis on technical skills and virtually no emphasis on the human skills and the leadership skills of adapting organizations to new realities,” he says.
How leaders can use spaces to support company culture
Miller highlights the role of facility and real estate professionals in helping to shape company culture, suggesting they can improve the user and workplace experience, even if sometimes they don’t know it.
He recalls when asking people in the industry: “Do you all feel you are empowered to really move the needle in these areas, these bigger concerns, these culture questions, these human behavior questions, these leadership concerns, and… I sometimes got blank stares.”
But there are many in the industry with plenty of ideas of how to make this happen.
Design for the workforce you want to attract
In “’Attract a Hybrid Workforce’ – Creative Workplace Strategies and Innovative Design,” Albert De Plazaola, senior principal of Global Workplace Strategy at Unispace, talks about workspaces that meet the specific needs of the hybrid workforce to boost productivity.
The key is creating more than just a space with a series of neighborhood work settings. Companies need spaces that embody a more dynamic, responsive environment with zones for problem-solving, innovation, community, learning, and play.
“There is still an opportunity to think a little bit differently about the workspace and address all those legacy issues we had pre-COVID,” he explains. “Now is an opportunity to sort of rinse ourselves from the idea of having what we call these neighborhoods in which you have open workstations that are flanked by conference rooms and huddle rooms and these little phone booths that people go into to make a phone call and start thinking about, well, what are the spaces that people really like?”
Reimagine the workplace to unleash imagination
The power of rethinking workspaces also appears in episode 341 of The Workplace Innovator podcast “’Find Meaning and Joy’ – Building Innovative and Healthy Workplace Cultures” with guest Jamie Woolf, co-founder and CEO of Creativity Partners and the first Director of Culture at Pixar Animation Studio.
She explains how organizations can design workspaces to encourage spontaneous interactions.
“Steve Jobs, he saw the building as his film. He used to say, the building at Pixar, which we call the atrium, needed to speak creativity, but it also needed to be a place where there weren’t like hallways and cubicles that divide people.”
Paraphrasing Ed Catmull, former president of Pixar, Woolf described how the physical space needs to reflect and support organizational goals: “The table needs to be bigger because there are some people that are sitting in chairs behind the table, and that’s creating a caste system. We need a table where everyone can fit around and be literally and figuratively at the table feeling equally valued.”
How leaders can create the company culture they want to see
Behavior is just as important as spaces, and Woolf outlines the ways leaders can play a critical role in company culture. Having a positive effect, she says, starts with being engaged in day-to-day operations.
“I always say to leaders, if you’re not kind of out in the trenches, whatever that is, to see what’s really happening on the ground, how are things working or not working,” Woolf says.
Leadership through engagement is a common theme in “’Begin with the End in Mind’ – Creating Amazing Workplaces by Building Effective Relationships at Work,” with guest Todd Davis, former Chief People Officer at FranklinCovey and author of the book “Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work.”
Davis explains why effective leadership means making the shift from traditional norms to a focus on employee engagement and results. Strong leaders take time to understand their teams, key stakeholders, and others, and where they’re coming from. It’s an approach that involves listening with the intent to understand rather than to reply, which helps them make better decisions and build trust.
It also means asking the right questions. Davis wants leaders to ask their employees, “What could I do as your leader to create the circumstances for you to feel even more engaged than you are right now?”
Stay on top of the trends in intelligent worktech and facility management
Staying informed on the latest industry developments is critical for professional success. Workplace and facility management are constantly evolving with new technologies, regulations, and best practices, so staying well-informed is a key differentiator.
For more videos, podcasts, and webinars to keep you updated on the latest trends, visit our resource page.
By Mike Petrusky
As the host of both the Workplace Innovator Podcast and the Asset Champion Podcast, Mike's role at Eptura is to share thought leadership with CRE, FM, and IT leaders in the digital and hybrid workplace. As an in-demand public speaker, Mike engages audiences with his focus on the human element of workplace and facility management at International Facility Management Association, CoreNet, and other industry events.
