Collegiate Design: A New Driver for Workplace Design

Securing top talent is fast becoming the biggest concern for industries across the United States

Human resource professionals claim that two of their biggest challenges over the next 10 years will be recruiting and rewarding the best employees (59%) and creating a corporate culture that attracts the best employees to their organizations (36%), according to a “Challenges Facing HR Over the Next 10 Years” study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2012.

As more Baby Boomers retire and Gen Y and Gen Z members snap up more spots in the workforce, companies can’t afford to ignore the priorities of recent college graduates. How newer generations shape their careers and prefer to work is astoundingly different from previous generations. But are companies continuing to overlook the impact of their work environments and policies when trying to recruit the best and brightest from college campuses?

In a recently released research study, Jonathan Web, of contract furniture manufacturer KI, and Brett Shwery, currently of design firm AECOM, but working at HOK when the study was completed, examined the reasons behind the current distinctions between higher learning and work environments. KI and HOK studied and compared the work styles found in higher education versus those in corporate environments, and found that “incorporating campus design elements into work environments would attract and appeal to young professionals who have spent the last four to six years learning, growing and working within the campus environment.”

The white paper released for the research states that, “Unfortunately, taking design cues from higher education environments isn’t even on the radar of most corporations.” This isn’t entirely true; workplace design has in fact begun to embrace elements commonly found in campus design – more collaboration, more “social scene” spaces, and a little bit of learning-based workplace interior design. But it is still the beginning of such efforts.

 

2016.0222.CollegiateDesign2.Recruitment“Despite the fact that many companies describe their places of employment as ‘campuses’, most corporate environments used for training and collaboration fail to resemble today’s dynamic campus environments,” reads the research. “Nor do they support the preferred work styles of recent graduates; styles cultivated in highly responsive, higher education environments.”

The white paper is right about one thing: today’s recent college grads are strongly scrutinizing potential employers based upon their environments, far more than any previous generation.

The benefits of designing for recent grads are plentiful. First, it allows companies to attract grads in the first place. It also cuts down the time recently hired grads need to get up to speed with their new position, thrive sooner, and become organizational leaders earlier in their careers.

2016.0222.CollegiateDesign3.ResearchSo what exactly are interior architects and designers, missing?

Messrs. Web and Shwery launched into the yearlong research project with the following hypothesis:

“Corporations should address today’s work styles by taking design and workspace planning cues from institutions of higher education because of the influence these learning environments have had on a newly graduating workforce.”

The research asserts that, because learning environments have played an important role in shaping and supporting the work styles of the newest workforce, and because the numbers of newest generation members are grabbing increasingly more pieces of the workforce pie, corporations competing for talent should borrow design and workspace planning concepts from institutions of higher education.

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Open work environments at software company a2z Development Center.

Messrs. Web and Shwery conducted interviews with Fortune 100 companies spanning a range of industries, including technology, entertainment, manufacturing and advertising. “The results revealed a significant disconnect between today’s workplaces and the expectations of both soon-to-be and newly hired employees,” notes the white paper.

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Software Company a2z Development Center

While many of the results received weren’t altogether unexpected, the research did yield three key findings:

>Recently hired graduates are “lost in translation.”

>There is limited research being conducted by organizations on the recently graduating workforce and their work style preferences.

>Current workplace design does not respond to the needs of recently hired graduates.

Lost in Translation

The research found that new hires at a large majority of the companies interviewed are baffled by the relevance of their physical space (“cube farms”) and by the work styles expected of them.

One company reported a recent college graduate/new hire as saying, “Professors give me assignments and deadlines. How I complete those tasks is entirely up to me. They don’t say, ‘You will write this paper between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. while sitting at this assigned library table.’”2016.0222.CollegiateDesign6.RecentGradQuoteIn their interviews, companies do acknowledge the above fact; but still – just 16% of the companies interviewed actually offered workspaces that responded to the preferences of new workers. The other 84% of new employees floating around – referred to in the research as “lost” employees – translate into lower retention rates, a critical metric indicating a company’s future success and an expensive disbursement.

The research highlighted two ways companies can benefit by providing workspaces that emulate higher learning environments:

>Creating workspaces that foster coaching and mentoring supports ongoing training and development, opportunities new hires seek.

>Workspaces that leverage technology and support e-learning provide a crucial tool recent graduates are accustomed to and have come to expect.

Providing comparable corporate environments lessens the shock for recent graduates as they enter the workforce, reducing the “lost in translation” affect.

Insufficient Research

The second enlightening things Messrs. Web and Shwery learned was that most employers aren’t sure how new hires like to work because they simply aren’t asking.

“While most companies have campus recruitment campaigns to hire the best and brightest from universities, only a third bothered to ask soon-to-be graduates how they prefer to work,” notes the white paper. “Clearly, corporations are missing an easy opportunity to gather valuable information about their workforce.”

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75% of businesses interviewed said collegiate design could impact the layout of their workspaces, but none had formally studied the collegiate learning environment to find out how it might apply to their workplaces and the needs of the newer workforce members.

This lack of research being conducted on work styles and on the connection between collegiate design and workplace design is making recruitment harder than it has to be.

Four Winds Interactive in Denver, Colorado, Oct. 9, 2015. Photo by Ellen Jaskol.
Four Winds Interactive in Denver, Colorado, Oct. 9, 2015. Photo by Ellen Jaskol.

It seems strange initially, but why shouldn’t corporations ask soon-to-be grads at career day interviews questions like, “What do you look for in your physical work environment?”

Such questions could provide businesses with important insights into the work styles they’ll eventually need to embrace, noted the research.

Four Winds Interactive in Denver, Colorado, Oct. 9, 2015. Photo by Ellen Jaskol.
Four Winds Interactive in Denver, Colorado, Oct. 9, 2015. Photo by Ellen Jaskol.

Messrs. Web and Shwery appealed to the workplace interiors and facilities management industries for any existing research connecting current corporate design trends with recently hired graduates. In IFMA’s 2010 Space and Project Management Benchmarks Report #34, they found three trends connecting collegiate and workplace design:

>Increased Adoption of Distributed Work Strategies. Classified as a way of distributing work based on tasks and responsibilities, it is often simply defined as a “work anywhere, work anytime” policy. In the workplace, that often means accommodating a variety of work styles and tasks – heads-down, concentrative work, collaboration, offsite and mobile, etc.

Messrs. Web and Shwery noted, “Thinking about this strategy in the context of today’s university students, it is evident that they have “worked” (studied, produced) in a “distributed” manner for years. Perhaps university planning established this anywhere/anytime design trend long before the workforce created the distributed work strategy.”

>Less for me, more for my team. The need for individual workspaces has diminished in corporate environments, while the need for more shared spaces has multiplied. Companies are allocating more square footage for collaborative, conference, support and amenity spaces. The premise that more shared space is required for everyone, while less is needed for the individual has long been a hallmark of university planning. Students and even faculty have limited individual space so that the bulk of campus space can be shared among everyone.

>A higher degree of worker choice and control improves results. By allowing workers to have a higher degree of choice with regard to their workplace, greater productivity will result.

“…students always choose how they complete assignments and where they will be most productive,” notes Messrs. Web and Shwery. “They maintain control of time and space and produce the necessary results to complete tasks. While workplaces have only recently placed more emphasis on this approach, students have long been accustomed to it.”

Inadequate Response

The research did find that while companies are making some observations about the work styles of new graduates, a disconnect comes in those companies’ efforts to make those work styles a reality in their offices.2016.0222.CollegiateDesign11.Graphic_BusinessesMakingSomeObsYet, when provided with a list of the top five physical workspace priorities valued by recently hired grads (potential hires ranked technology and community/collaboration spaces as the most important elements/priorities relative to their potential workplace), only 8% of companies said they actually consider attributes of collegiate design when planning their work environments.

“So, while organizations are beginning to recognize that recent graduates may prefer to work in a more open, collaborative environment, they are either unwilling, unable or unprepared to alter the physical workplace in order to accommodate these evolving work styles,” noted the researchers.

Curiously, one of the last things on the list of recent grads’ workspace priorities was sustainability.

“We found that it’s not that recent graduates don’t want sustainable practices,” said Mr. Web. “It’s just that they assume they’re already in place.”

2016.0222.CollegiateDesign12.Graphic_90750The Web and Shwery research team has spent the last year in phase two of its efforts, called C2C, which focuses on taking corporate clients on tours of college and university campuses. This second phase included corporate clients from the initial research phase as well as an expanded range of new companies, including those from financial and legal sectors. Phase two of this research is projected for release sometime in summer 2016.

“We didn’t realize how few of our clients had actually been on a college campus in the past decade,” said Mr. Web. “It was a big eye-opening experience for a lot of our clients, and we learned a great deal from the tours ourselves. One of the clients on a tour said to us, ‘No wonder we can’t get anyone to come work for us.’”

“I was amazed at the similarities between campuses in different regions, and by how purposeful outdoor spaces in particular are planned.”

Outdoor spaces on college campuses were carefully planned in regions ranging from very warm to very cold climates; large and small campuses; and in state and private institutions across the country. The C2C tours revealed that universities and colleges have long embraced outdoor spaces as an integral part of campus life.

“Students have always had to use these external spaces to collaborate and congregate on campus,” said Mr. Shwery.

In their concluding comments, the researchers noted that, “As companies begin to recognize the need, value and benefits of accommodating the work styles of the newest generation of employees, few will know how to take the next steps.

“The design community and furniture manufacturers with higher education expertise will play a critical role in helping companies meet a new workforce’s preferences, successfully evolving their corporate environments.”

Because of this, the need for the design and furniture industries to articulate their expertise and their worth has never been greater.