I was recently talking to some people and the topic of policies for future workplace design and use came up – which in this case meant telework policies. However, during the conversation I was motivated to say that practices, and peoples’ perceptions of those practices will have a more significant impact on employee wellbeing and performance than policies will.
Policies are necessary for legal and institution-wide communication reasons, so I certainly understand why they must exist. But research shows that the ways employees think and behave are more closely related to practices than to official policies.
Employees are particularly likely to be more significantly influenced by practices tied to physical environments than they are by related policies.
Policies are relatively easy to create, and revamp. A decision by company leaders, a few keystrokes here and voilà new policies exist, and the documents are free to move through the organization.
Practices based in the physical world often require that money be sent to people outside the organization for construction, furnishings, or something else, and there’s nothing like “putting your money where your mouth is” to make it really clear to employees what matters to an organization – and the behaviors it will reward. The actions that flow reasonably from seeing the physical environments the company provides are clearly the ones that rational employees will pursue.
For example, if there are not sufficient numbers of places in company offices where people can have hybrid meetings – some people physically present, others participating remotely – hybrid conferences will not often occur. Most meetings will instead either be face-to-face, which can complicate work from home schedules, or be held with all participants connecting in remotely. In the first scenario, at least all participants are participating on equal footing, no one is continually cut off from conversation because of lack of support for hybrid meetings. In the second scenario creativity and strategic thinking will be compromised.
However in neither case would an official company policy of supporting employee-directed work from home actually be supported. And it would be clear to all that the policy must not really be important to the organization.
Seeming to reward people for showing up at the corporate office, with recognition, promotions or something else will cause people to work from that office, no matter what official policies on remote work may be. But if there are not actually enough workspces at the office of the right types, people will still arrive, but their work will not be stellar. And so another workplace design and workplace policy misalignment plays out, this time based on perceptions that the company rewards those who show up at the office but don’t support them with the types of spaces needed to be productive.
Organizations need to think through the policies they decide to state, and make sure that resources—physical, human, financial, etc.—align with those policies. Policies can’t be developed based on some fantasy about a future work culture or market position or financial situation, etc.—and the physical environments provided, or not provided, need to realistically align with those reality-based policies.
By the way, research also consistently indicates that the best scenario for employee work from home is 3 days in a corporate office and 2 days at home, per week. This schedule leads to the best professional/social outcomes. Also, and logically, during those two days at home employees should focus on solo tasks that require concentration/focus. If people don’t have spaces where they can work effectively at home, it is better to have them work 5 days a week at the central offices.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. 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) 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.