Work Place Innovation – 4 Myths Revealed

February 21st, 2017 by Fiedler Group

In 2016 Gensler, one of the largest integrated architecture, design, planning and consulting firms in the world published their 2016 Workplace Survey which focused on understanding the relationship between workplace design and innovation.

The survey was built upon more than 10 years of work, dating back to the launch of Gensler’s first Workplace Survey in 2005.

Asking the question “how can the workplace be a catalyst for innovation in today’s organization?”, Gensler sought to better understand changes in the workplace and discover how the workplace can enhance performance at work.

The findings published in the 2016 report included efforts to survey over 4,000 people across the U.S. representing 11 different industries, and employing 77 million knowledge workers.

The data looked at how work is done and the performance of the workplace as a whole.

Several observations about innovative workplaces stand out, including, (1) higher performing, more innovative workplaces are 10 percent more collaborative than less innovative workplaces and there is twice the amount of learning going on in innovative workplaces. (2) People socialize 13 percent more often in innovative workplaces. (3) The actual time spent on focus work is 14 percent less in an innovative workplace than in a non-innovative workplace.

Several commonly accepted beliefs appear to be dispelled as well.  Diane Hoskins is one of two Gensler Co-CEOs and is Vice Chair of the firm’s Board of Directors. In her published blog on workplace design for the innovative economy, Diane submitted the following four Myths about Innovation in the Workplace

• “Myth #1.  If given the choice everyone would work away from the office.

In reality, people would rather spend 71 percent of their time in the office. In discussing some of the results of recent research from his organization, CEB Corporate Executive Board CEO Tom Monahan was fascinated to find that over 60 percent of his colleagues interact with 10 or more people each day to do their jobs, and 50 percent of CEB employees reported working with more than 20 people each day to complete their jobs. Further proof that people actually want to come to work is the growth of co-working. The co-working trend is remarkable because people are actually paying to go to work. Today there are over 8,000 co-working centers and facilities worldwide, with a large percentage of these places having opened in the last three years. There are another 10,000 co-working spaces being planned over the next two years. WeWork, the world’s largest co-working provider, has more than 50,000 members spread across 90 locations in 30 cities and 13 countries.”

• “Myth #2.  Office buildings are going away.

The reality is that office buildings are changing dramatically but they’re not going away. New buildings should consider floor plate sizes and configurations in new ways that better fit the needs of today’s knowledge workforce. Existing buildings need to seek out creative design solutions to support the kind of workspaces that drive innovation.”

• “Myth #3.  Innovation is only about technology and Millennials.

The reality is that innovators are located in every industry and hail from every generation. We looked at a breakdown of innovative workplaces and every industry is represented. Similarly when we conducted a breakdown of innovators by age we found that every generation is currently represented, with an innovator age range that spanned workers from 18 to 77 years old across our sample population.”

• “Myth #4.  Collaboration is the primary goal of the Innovation Workplace.

 The reality is that all four work modes are essential: focus, collaboration, learning and socializing. In fact, over the past 8 years, our research has shown that individual focus work has consistently remained around 45 percent of time spent in the office, and focus work continues to be the most critical of the four work modes.”

The full text of Diane Hoskin’s  article can be found at “A Workplace Designed for the Innovation Economy.”