Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Low Commitment Meetings

In “Dust Off Desks and Boot Up Terminals:  Wall St. Returns, Finally” (The New York Times, September 23, 2020), Kate Kelly chronicles the return, or not, to their corporate offices of people working in the finance industry.

Kelly’s article effectively details many of the issues influencing workplace use post-COVID-19, such as corporate culture, disparities in home offices, etc.:  “Large banks, where face time and long hours are considered virtues, are generally urging workers to come back.  Many hedge funds, which attract more seasoned workers who can afford sophisticated workstations at home, are not.”

Workplace design needs to align with organizational culture and a number of other factors to boost wellbeing and performance—and spaces that don’t “work” given the culture – and otherwise, won’t be utilized except under duress.

Design that is truly effective also recognizes fundamental aspects of human nature, as alluded to in a paragraph at the end of Kelly’s article.

Anushka Sunder, described as “a senior health care and technology investor at Blackstone,” reports on return-to-work conditions: “’Your day ends up being less over-programmed and over-scheduled,’ Ms. Sundar said, ‘because you’re able to have the two-minute conversation rather than the 30-minute Zoom call.’”

Serendipitous, or simply speedy, meetings are a clear benefit of employees sharing a physical environment.  When sessions need to be planned, our culture has generally required that appointments be longer than the two minutes spontaneous talks often take—so they end up being scheduled for 30-minutes (or 25-minutes at some firms focused on wellbeing related workplace processes)—all when there’s 2 minutes of content to work through.

The physical equivalent of the 2-minute meeting scheduled for a 30-minute Zoom calls is providing the wrong sorts of settings for quick meetings.  Best for truly quick meetings are spaces off of circulation routes, etc., where people can stand and speak.  Modern office workers will gladly step slightly to the side in a hallway and talk briefly with each other to resolve whatever outstanding issues they have—office occupiers are seat-phobic when it comes to what they anticipate will be quick exchanges.

People who are happy to step into an alcove, talk for a few minutes, and move on will not sit in the same space, no matter how comfy the chairs, because sitting is mentally linked to spending an extended period in a space.  Sitting is COMMITMENT. Seats of various sorts for people to use for spontaneous meetings are likely to go unused and become little islands that people who are planning to use a space for a minute or two work around, not on.

Lots of other things may have changed in our post-COVID world, compared to our blissful pre-pandemic existence, but fundamental aspects of human nature have not.  Seats in recesses look good in photos, and certainly nonverbally suggest “serendipitous meetings,” but for best results they should be easy to avoid using for potential very-brief meetings.

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.