Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Standardization

 

In a New York Times Sunday Review article written by Dan Lyons (“Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired,” April 9, 2016), a dire description of the working environment at many tech companies is presented:

“Treating workers as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded is a central part of the revised relationship between employers and employees that techies proclaim is an innovation as important as chips and software…Tech workers have no job security. You’re serving a ‘tour of duty’ that might last a year or two, according to the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who is the co-author of a book espousing his ideas, ‘The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.’ Companies burn you out and churn you out when someone better, or cheaper, becomes available…His ideas trace back to a ‘culture code’ that Netflix published in 2009…In this new model of work, employees are expected to feel complete devotion and loyalty to their companies, even while the boss feels no such obligation in return.”

Whether conditions are as challenging as Lyons indicates may be in the eye of the beholder – with particular differences between the eyes of managers and non-managers – but in the freelancer-based economy that’s becoming more widespread, there is more turnover among space users. In some cases, freelancers never set foot in the offices of the people that cut them checks, but many do, leading to specific design repercussions.

With greater worker churn, creating familiar sorts of spaces is key; employees need to be comfortable mentally and physically, and able to anticipate how they can make desired, and needed, experiences more likely.

Office standardization across employers working with the same sets of people is desirable in a greater mix of workers. With office design, just like other employer systems, consistency from one potential employer to another cuts learning time and frustration. Locating printers in the same sorts of locations saves hunting time. Consistent policies on their use do the same. The same goes for break areas, not to mention spaces for making telephone calls, etc.

Sending the same sorts of messages in the same sorts of ways as other employers is also a good idea. Across all accounting firms in a particular city, a certain sort of chair might come to indicate manager status, for example. Insights on signs and symbols in use will need to come from people using the space. They know what was being said with what at their other recent employers.

Easy systems for modifying workplaces to support whatever workers are in the office at a particular time are also beneficial. In any rapid churn employee scenario, changing spaces and furnishings to support people with specific needs, as defined by their physiology, psychology, or job function, should be straightforward. Workers should be able to use and change their spaces as their expectations change. More and more office workers are stating a need for sit-stand desks for health reasons, so an employer may decide to try to satisfy related requests – but that can be a design challenge because people sitting near others standing can be stressed out by the standers looming over them, as discussed in a previous column here.

It’s important to acknowledge that people feel more psychologically comfortable (which means they think more clearly and can thus do better work) in familiar settings, but that doesn’t mean that each workplace where a freelancer may find themselves needs to be exactly the same as every other one. It does require consistency in the sorts of spaces available and how they are used. Similar styles in furnishings also support reassuring familiarity.

Recognizing that user groups will continuously churn means workplace designers must plan offices that are as “easy to learn,” “easy to understand,” and “easy to change.”

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.