Once again, Gensler interior architects and workplace strategists Sven Govaars and Dean Strombom, out of Houston, served up a superb seminar presentation at NeoCon 2016 at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Officeinsight has readily followed this Gensler team’s research efforts, and we were lucky to be able to attend this year’s seminar.
Now in their sixth year of delivering highly anticipated NeoCon seminars, Messrs. Govaars and Strombom set a precedent at NeoCon 2016: seats in their seminar, “The Free Range Workplace: People Experience, Freedom,” filled up so quickly that they were asked to present twice. We’ve all been to a few awful seminars, so our congrats to this team is served with a big side of gratitude. Kudos!
Gensler, and many other design thought leaders, have been shedding light on the things in our world that are defining our modern life, work, and play – demographics and generational contrasts, globalization, technology, and work behaviors, to name a few heavyweight topics.
We know that five generations now exist in the same workplace, and that Millennials have now eclipsed Baby Boomers as the most populous working generation; we know that 80% of the global population will have access to mobile telephony by 2020, and 67% of Americans are now smartphone owners, and for many these devices are a key entry point to the online world; we know that we live in an age of complete infobesity – we have almost immediate access to an overload of information that we can share easily; we know that we’re moving from a knowledge-based world to a learning based world; we know that technology is making us more mobile; and we know that choice, balance, and focus are quickly becoming the most valuable life and work environment commodities.
Messrs. Govaars and Strombom have for years researched how to design innovative work environments that successfully serve their end users. Their presentation at NeoCon 2016 felt like many of the concepts presented in previous years were now being placed into a larger context, a big picture view.
“The term ‘free range’ gives us the opportunity to put a lot of other things into context,” said Mr. Govaars. “A lot of these things – demographics, technology – are big generalizations. And these things are getting sliced and diced to a point where they fail to be meaningful, and we need to reframe. What are the tools that we and our clients can use to find real solutions for their needs?”
Free range is a new lens on mobility; it’s boundary-less and fluid, and time and place almost become irrelevant when doing work. Right now, people are working in contingent, full-time, part-time, and independent coworking positions all across the country and the globe.
“Free range is important to everyone,” said Mr. Govaars during the presentation. “It’s not about either young or older workers. Age is a generalization that doesn’t really tell us what we need to know. Everyone’s going through life changes all the time, so we have that as a commonality.”
One key to making free range work is understanding that the live/work/play dynamic operates on a sliding scale, and the modern workday looks much different (all over the place) than it did 10 years ago.
“It’s a blending throughout the week, never in a straight line,” said Mr. Strombom. “Anything that can be digitized will be, in the cloud. Knowledge spreads instantaneously. Ideas can and will come from everywhere.”
The Gensler team also brought up the interesting point that people now understand themselves better than ever; people are truly more in touch with what type of work environment they personally work best in.
“People coming out of schools today are very comfortable articulating how they work best,” said Mr. Strombom. “They don’t necessarily follow the rules now, and don’t accept traditional ways of working because they know what sort of work style fits them best. And, people who understand themselves better will be able to more successfully use free range workplaces.”
The origins of free range have a lot to do with coworking, but the roots are much more complex than simply “coworking.” What started as a movement by independent workers who didn’t want to work alone has steadily grown into a culture encompassing startup, incubator and accelerator functions in addition to co-working.
Designers can build free range spaces by questioning paradigms, breaking down sacred spaces, and creating activity-based spaces. These spaces rely heavily on three core things, according to Messrs. Govaars and Strombom:
>People – providing meaning, purpose and experience
>Technology – providing technology process, policies, and governance
>Place – providing mobile, resident and third place spaces
Getting clients to grasp the concept of a free range workplace and successfully fitting that into the framework of their current work processes is a difficult task, to say the least. It’s almost as difficult as this video they showed during the presentation: https://www.youtube.com/
“There’s an overriding frustration that we and other designers are dealing with in clients who don’t understand that the world, and the world of work, is shifting,” said Mr. Strombom. “Too many of our clients want the same thing they had in the past.”
Messrs. Govaars and Strombom spent their first years of in-depth research defining what these optimal workplaces look like, what they’re made of, and how designers can begin to craft them. Last year, they began to touch on change management efforts that many design firms are finding necessary in their efforts to get clients onboard with their ideas.
Now, they’re asking designers to help their clients tap into a new mindset, to be open to a free range workplace.
“Mindfulness is about tapping into a new way to view the world,” said Mr. Strombom. “It’s about flipping perspective and looking at something in a different way. Something can look one way, and then completely different if viewed from a different perspective. Sometimes it’s just a matter of shifting our perception of what the world is like and what our view of the future is.”
Messrs. Govaars and Strombom detailed the tools they use to help clients get onboard with a more progressive, free range work environment. They and many designers across the country have been using these and similar solutions for a few years now, but in a less articulated manner. But, the need for clients and end users to understand the potential of free range workplaces has become a pressing enough matter that it’s time to more formally address how designers can accomplish free range in a positive, meaningful way.
Designers need to engage with their client to land on the right degree of free range the company, and specific groups within that company, can work in successfully.
Messrs. Govaars and Strombom recommend using the SMART Process, a goal-setting tool. Their variation on this tool involves the following steps: listen, share, collaborate, deliver, implement and observe. SMART thinking revolves around collaborative face-to-face events that help clients and design teams share information, insights, goals and objectives; and it essentially happens in a workshop format.
These workshops are true collaborative efforts, and designers should use them to help their clients tackle tough questions and problems “through unconventional insights into people, work process, and where the two collide.”
In order for free range to work, it’s important that designers account for every person in the office; not everybody can move around. Surveys can help gauge how ready certain groups or departments are to change to free range.
“We need to help end users understand how architecture can help facilitate what the client would like to be as a company in the future,” said Mr. Strombom. “And between the client and the tools are the people – the end users who are using the space.”
One workshop exercise involves identifying the company/client’s key attributes, and then translating those words into visuals that accurately represents the client and how the client’s end users work. The design team can then help translate those images into real spaces.
For those of you out there looking for specifics in crafting a “free range” space, Gensler has a few guidelines to get the ball rolling. Below are some things to keep in mind:
Components of Free Range:
>Focus: individual work – both open and enclosed workspaces
>Collaborate: group work – open, enclosed and semi-enclosed meeting spaces
>Socialize: flexible community layout that can transition to event space
>Learn: features that support continuous reinvention and learning
>Rejuvenate: areas that support resting, re-charging and re-energizing
“The workplace is now a continuum,” said Mr. Govaars. “All of the components of free range should be in very close proximity, so that end users have the ability to flow between them very easily.”
Messrs. Govaars and Strombom like to say, “There are no neutral environments. Every space has an emotional component.” Within those five basic frameworks of free range space, some specific spatial options are:
>Retreat: solitude, but beyond focus work.
>Studio: for creative project-based work
>Town Square
>Flex Desk
>Learning Zones
>Refresh Zone: an energizing space within the workplace. Can include exercise spaces
>Sleep or Rest Zones
>Nodes: anchor spots built into a floor plate for certain activities, such as a small collaborative area with a whiteboard
>Open Collaboration
>High Connection Zone: a space where people are pulled together instinctively, such as a work café or a constricted hallway that many people frequent
>Wormhole: seeing or connecting to another place through technology
But, free range is really more about a big shift in mindset, not specific “do this, do that” instructions.
“This change in working is not something we can avoid,” said Mr. Strombom. “It’s similar to a few years ago when people were reacting to open plan with ‘new’ needs for privacy, but it’s now more nuanced. People are finding they need a certain environment to work, and it looks different for everyone.”
Or, as told by the Braveheart film clip shown in the presentation, “Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live…at least a while.” (Full speech here: https://www.youtube.com)
To view the full Free Range Workplace presentation, visit www.freerangeworkspace.com
