Despite its many innovations and incarnations over the last thirty years, workplace design has essentially been driven by the same premise: efficiency. Whilst there have been a number of prevailing trends or movements throughout this time, the persistent focus has been on how efficiently organisations can accommodate people, utilise space and manage cost.
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In the 1990s, “open plan” became the dominant workplace model. Rows of enclosed offices were replaced by rows of workstations, with a smaller number of internally located offices being retained for business leaders. Workstations and café/breakout spaces were generally situated alongside perimeter glazing, maximising access to natural light for everyone, however the overall workplace remained hierarchical. This approach enabled a reduction in overall property footprint, with this emphasis on efficiency supporting an organisation to accommodate more people within a smaller overall footprint.
By the early 2000s, the open plan approach had evolved further. Workplaces became an expression of brand and culture, and for progressive organisations, were an important tool for attracting and retaining a talented workforce. Technology companies, and later the banking and financial services sector, became particularly well known for strategically aligning their workplaces with organisational goals; at this time, Google workplaces globally were widely recognised for being an embodiment of the company’s ethos and values.
Later came activity based working (ABW). From 2008 some of the world’s earliest examples of ABW emerged in Australia, particularly Macquarie Bank’s 1 Shelley Street in Sydney. Increasingly mobile technology allowed people to decouple from their one allocated seating position, while a greater diversity of settings provided individual choice as to where in the office people could work, depending on the activity being undertaken. While the focus of ABW centered on collaboration, it also considered an organization’s overall utilisation of the workplace, and like earlier movements were again underpinned by goals around efficiency.
Later in 2020, with the widespread adoption of “hybrid working” driven by the COVID-19 global pandemic, the meaning and purpose of the workplace as a destination was questioned like it never had been before. If entire workforces had successfully worked from home during pandemic lockdowns, then what purpose did the office now fulfill? These and other questions around hybrid are still being solved many years later, with issues of collaboration, community, number of days spent working in the office, and the ability for the workplace to “earn the commute” still being negotiated. Hybrid working has also led to workplace utilisation being the lowest it has been in many years. As a result, many businesses have been faced with the challenge of determining how much space they actually need, as their staff’s work patterns continue to evolve. In all these workplace design movements, no matter how innovative the premise, efficiency was the driving factor underpinning much of the property and design decision making process.
Yet, what the global pandemic highlighted for many was that our understanding of work, in terms of where, how, and by whom it is done means different things for different people. Now more than ever, there is greater recognition that our experience of work is not universal.
In Australia, prior to the pandemic, around 10 per cent of knowledge workers had the option to work from home. During lockdowns, that figure climbed to over 80 per cent. As a result, millions of people experienced alternative ways of working, with many becoming considerably more conscious of the conditions under which they could – and could not – function effectively. Industry data now puts the figure of knowledge workers who work from home regularly at around 70 per cent. The office is no longer automatically the default place in which work happens. People have experienced working elsewhere and, for many, that has created greater sensitivity and agency around both the conditions and the location in which they perform best.
Alongside these profound changes in workplace experience, a broader understanding of neurodivergence and its relevance in the workplace has emerged. There is an increasing amount of data and evidence available demonstrating how different brains process information and respond to environmental stimuli. As a result, many organisations are beginning to understand that attention, focus, sensory processing, executive functioning, emotional regulation and cognitive load are not experienced uniformly across a workforce. There is no average when it comes to the type of person the workplace is designed for, yet the workplace models that have been created leading up to now have all assumed that there is a standardised experience of work, and created the workplace environment accordingly.
The same environment that can enable one person can deplete and even incapacitate another. Background conversation that barely registers for one person may make sustained concentration extremely difficult for somebody else. A visually stimulating environment may energise one employee while creating cognitive overload for another. A busy, collaborative setting may energise a person who is hyposensitive, whilst for someone who is hypersensitive, it becomes debilitating. A dark, isolated setting may support one task brilliantly yet make another almost impossible.
There is no average when it comes to the type of person the workplace is designed for, yet the workplace models that have been created leading up to now, have all assumed that there is a standardised experience of work, and created the workplace environment accordingly.
Most people are influenced by these variations in some way, yet they can be particularly consequential for neurodivergent people who have heightened sensitivities. For the estimated one in five people who are formally diagnosed as neurodivergent, the impact of their surroundings can be significant enough to compromise their ability to function effectively in the workplace. Currently, these challenges are addressed predominantly through individual accommodations, made on an as-needed basis. Resolution also usually relies on disclosure, with the responsibility largely resting with human resources or DEI departments of an organisation. This approach is inherently limited – it relies on people recognising what they need, feeling safe enough to disclose it, and having a leader or employer who understands and is willing to respond.
Whether the built environment can either enable or inhibit our ability to concentrate, think, communicate, regulate, collaborate and perform is not exclusively a neurodivergence issue, however. For many knowledge workers, work is increasingly cognitive: it requires sustained attention, information processing, problem-solving, decision-making and the constant navigation of complex interpersonal and organisational demands. Even prior to the pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised that burnout and mental health were major issues, often caused by fragmented attention, decision fatigue, repeated switching between tasks as well as the volume of work itself.
The workplace of the (very near) future, without doubt, must still consider issues of efficiency, sustainability, utilisation, collaboration and cost. But there is a more fundamental question that should be answered: how well does the environment enable the diverse people within it to function? The workplace of the future cannot simply be a static container for work. It must actively support human performance and functioning –enabling people to focus when they need to focus, connect when they need to connect, regulate when they need to regulate, and easily transition between different modes of thinking and working throughout the day. As work becomes more complex, more cognitive and more dependent on our capacity to think, then the environments in which we ask people to do that work need to evolve. We designed the office for efficiency and for an average user. Now we need to design it for human functioning – and for the diversity of minds that occupy it.
