Creating Environments for Business Innovation
What creates the best performing workplace environments?
We decided to ask business students at the University of Auckland when and where do they have their best ideas. Surprisingly they conceded that a lot of creative problem solving occurs away from the desk and even removed from the office. Students explained that light bulb moments usually occur during ‘soak time’, or ideas flowed while taking a shower, or bubbled up over a coffee in a café. Other locations of creative productivity included parks, buses, cars, cycling tracks or sidewalks.
Of course, it can happen at your designated workplace. So how can we put a focus on designing workplaces that encourage creativity? The real art is to realise that a place for creativity involves a multitude of factors. To create environments where business innovation will flourish, we need to design the right space, implement strategies which enable free-thinking and invest in peoples’ personal growth.
Image: Unleash Space, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
The Right Place
It is not unexpected that many innovative ideas appear to us while being in a comfortable place. Work meetings occur in cafes, hotel lobbies or restaurants because business interactions and social needs seamlessly merge. Workplace environments that support social needs are more likely to lead to better employee engagement and better ideas. Researchers, such as architect Donald Rattner, have found that for some people their best creative thinking occurs at a relatively noisy level of 70dB. This acoustic criterion is the noise level of a buzzing café, or in a splashing shower!
A report by the World Green Building Council found that 32% of workers find office acoustics particularly distracting for task productivity. But ‘quiet, task-oriented productivity’ and ‘engaged and enthusiastic creativity’ are two different things with separate needs.
The focus of workspace design is usually on daylight, natural materials, air quality, thermal comfort and green spaces, but less so on ‘the right level of distraction’. We need to create spaces for people to work where they are not constantly interrupted. However, areas also need to provide the right level of ‘buzz’ for creativity to flourish. Furniture manufacturers have developed ‘collaborative pods’. With their high-back separator, they form ‘mini workspaces’ in a larger area. The key is to create an appropriate level of privacy while not wholly separating the group from their co-workers.
The result of considered workplace design is also a significant drawcard for attracting new talent. 75% of job applicants believe a tour of the workplace should be part of the interview process. Moreover, 72% of workers believe a workplace-upgrade is an excellent reason to stay in their current role or environment (Robert Walters, 2018).
Image: Unleash Space, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
The Thinking
Recently Francois Catroux, international interior designer, explained in Vanity Fair that he has only ever worked with a small team of key staffers since the 1970s. These people were individually and collectively dynamite — ‘they are so good they each do the work of 15 people’. The retention, engagement and productivity of his select team had an immense business benefit over time. He did not need a larger studio like some of his competitors. One Australasian survey in 2019, found that the main concern for CEOs was retaining and attracting skilled staff (44%). Workplace policy can do much to support this aspiration. If your place of work is inspiring, then you are more likely to want to stay and produce your very best work there.
Engagement in the workplace means that organisations can harness the best from their people — an alignment of the individual’s desires, with the goals of the business. People crave for authenticity or ‘connectedness’. Therefore, it connects them with ‘the way the organisation conducts business’.
We found, from the business students, that many have their best and most creative ideas when they are ‘away from the workplace’. Being ‘free, at ease, with like-minded people’ scored high. One corporate innovation barrier we noticed is the fear of deviating from traditional productive workplace ambience and behaviour. An environment that instils confidence in the return of creative input will inspire ‘whole-hearted stakeholder engagement’ and will facilitate the innovation that organisations crave. It is not the furniture, layout or colours that create the ideas, but corporate culture is the driving force of change. The environment is there to support the free-thinking and encouraging productive ideas.
Image: Unleash Space, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
The Investment
Workplace design has gone through many technological and ergonomic changes over the years. Sit-to-stand desks allow the occupant better control around their ergonomic preferences. These vary and may depend on the task at hand and the physical and mental state. A Texas A&M University Report (2016) suggested that productivity may increase by 46% with the option of a flexible stand-to-sit workplace. Furthermore, on average stand-up meetings are 34% shorter than sit down ones (Bluedorn et al., 1999). Are these also more effective in some instances?
We love the input and insights we get from our student workshops. People strive for a meaningful connection to their work and workplace environment (with natural daylight, external views, natural colours and materials). For teams to perform at their best, businesses need to facilitate, and workplaces need to enable. In return, people will then provide what companies desire — to bear the fruits of their ideas and insights. Of course, when people are at their right level of comfort, physically and mentally, they produce their best work.
Businesses can benchmark their performance in terms of carbon footprint, energy use, wellness and corporate social responsibility with a host of third party accreditation tools. Benchmarking is useful for several reasons. Employee awareness of sustainability and wellness can promote staff engagement at all levels. A third party accreditation can signal to the broader market that the organisation is ‘walking the talk’. Office design rating tools include LEED, BREEAM, Green Star, NABERS, Living Building Challenge and WELL. Each of these tools has a clear plan, which balances the needs of Corporate Real Estate (CRE) from social, economic and environmental standpoints.
The co-working office sector has grown with the increasing demand for flexibility in office spaces. Although initially created for smaller start-ups, large enterprises have become the fastest-growing membership group. 20% of some co-working provider’s membership is large enterprises (Colliers, 2018).
Summary
Business leaders, such as Richard Branson, have stated that the key to a successful business is also about ‘having fun’. Workplace design can assist by creating environments that encourage people’s well-being and creativity, and thus long-term productivity and innovation capability. To create the ideal backdrops for business productivity as well as innovation, you need to combine the right ingredients with a level of flexibility. The appropriate settings include spatial design, a corporate culture which enables creativity, and investment in the individual’s growth mindset.
Co-author: Stefan Fortuin, Innovation Manager.
