Recently published research (LaGree, Houston, Duffy, and Shin, in press), is getting lots of attention. The LaGree-led team reported that, when surveyed, young US employees (aged 21 – 34) shared that employers should communicate to them in ways that indicate they are respected.
More specifically, LaGree and colleagues (in press) share that they learned that there are “positive benefits of respectful communication on employees’ wellbeing and, ultimately, positive long-term business benefits.”
A press release from the University of Missouri related to study outcomes (https://showme.missouri.edu/2021/study-young-workers-now-value-respect-over-fun-perks-in-the-workplace/) is a little more straightforward: “today’s young workers—age 21-34—represent a life-stage shift toward placing more value on having respectful communication in the workplace over trendy work perks.” In the press release, the following quote is attributed to LaGree: “As we see here with our research, actively recognizing employees for the value that they bring to their organization will help them to bounce back after adversity, to perform better in their jobs and be more committed to their organizations in the long term.”
LaGree and team focus their attention on conveying respect for employees and the contributions they make to the organization via spoken words. But those of us who live in the workplace design and management world know that office design sends powerful messages to users and visitors, ones that they can’t ignore. These unspoken messages have at least as significant an effect on how workers think and behave as those that are verbalized.
One of the ways design can communicate “respect” to workers is via a form that aligns with user activities that contribute to the success of the organization – if groups need to be able to work completely undisturbed by other teams to perform to their full potential, they need to be provided with a designated place to work completely undisturbed. Different individuals and groups need different sorts of support to do their best work, hence the need for programming-related research. For example, having your department located relatively close to the executive suite may mean that your group is doing a good job or it could mean that you are performing poorly and require closer supervision/management, it all depends on corporate culture. Only by talking to user group members can designers understand organization-specific signaling.
LaGree and colleagues only collected data from relatively younger workers, but for decades the research world has been establishing, and re-establishing worker focus – regardless of age – on their perceptions of what is being communicated via the design of their workplaces. What something says evolves over time – two years ago how many of us had seen a Purell hand sanitizing station which today conveys concern for worker health – but the drive to make sense of the “meanings” of design in use has been a core component of our mental apparatus for a very, very long time.
We can seize the opportunity being provided by attention to the LaGree-led study to increase focus on nonverbal signaling in workplaces – workers and the organizations that employ them will benefit from our efforts.
Danielle LaGree, Brian Houston, Margaret Duffy, and Haejung Shin. “The Effect of Respect: Respectful Communication at Work Drives Resiliency, Engagement, and Job Satisfaction Among Early Career Employees.” International Journal of Business Communication, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884211016529
Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com). Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice. Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles. Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others. Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009), Designology (Mango, 2019), and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.