August 09 e-zine

ShiftS in attitudeS and behaviorS make the workplace more important than ever.

Attracting & EngagingToday’sWorkers

gen y worker: “we have a lot of meetings around here. there are certainly elements of my job i could do from home, but the collaboration is what we do at work.”

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Add one more wrinkle to the current economic crisis: filling knowledge work jobs. While unemployment is at a 25-year peak and thousands of highly educated people are out of work, finding the right talent is still a challenge for many organizations. For that, thank new, highly specialized skill requirements and a global market for talent.

And then there’s the complication of decreased loyalty. Keeping knowledge workers already on staff engaged and motivated is a growing challenge. Among the survivors of layoffs, 75% say their productivity has dipped. Cuts in compensation haven’t helped either, which may explain why one study says as many as 76% of workers are looking for a new job.

To deal with these talent challenges, smart workplace planners and managers are refining the workplace to better attract, engage, and retain knowledge workers.

“You can only do so much with salary,” says David Stoutamire, managing director of Sempai Services, Inc., an Atlanta-based consultancy for commer-cial office development. “An employer has to be able to offer those intangibles, both in the workspace and in what the person does, and in how they do their

work during the day, for them to be an attractive employer.”

“It’s the workplace, people!” is the core takeaway of global architecture and design firm Gensler’s 2008 Workplace Survey. It says high-performing compa-nies (with higher profits, stronger market and brand position, better employee engagement, etc.) have similarly high-performing workspaces. Knowledge workers couldn’t agree more. The vast majority say having an office that helps attract and retain knowledge workers is important to them, according to the Steelcase Workplace Satisfaction Survey, an ongoing global survey of knowledge worker attitudes on work issues that to date has engaged nearly 23,000 respondents at 133 companies. In fact, it’s the single biggest issue not being met – and it’s been that way every year since the survey began in 2004.

Now comes the tricky part: the key elements of a high-performance workplace are changing faster than a 19-year-old’s Facebook page. That’s because work, and worker attitudes and behaviors are transforming before our eyes, thanks to the influence of the youngest generation in the workplace: the earbud-wearing, texting, Twittering, Facebook-loving, newest iteration of the knowledge worker.

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As Gen Y drives biG chAnGes in All worker Attitudes And behAviors, the right workplace becomes more important than

ever in attracting, engaging, and retaining talent.

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The 70 million-strong Generation Y, 32 million of whom are already in the workforce, is exerting its influence in ways that demand attention. Like their Baby Boomer parents before them, Gen Y is changing the world. New primary research by Steelcase involving in-depth interviews and observation of more than 160 workers at nine U.S. companies has uncovered eight dramatic shifts that Gen Y is driving in knowledge work and the workplace. Just as important as where these shifts in attitudes and behaviors are coming from is that they’re being embraced rapidly by all workers of all ages.

“Gen Y is transforming the rules of engagement between employers and employees,” says Sudhakar Lahade, senior design researcher with Steelcase’s

WorkSpace Futures group, which led the nine-month study. “Younger knowledge workers’ attitudes and behaviors are being adopted by their older Gen X and Boomer colleagues, creating a whole new set of requirements for any com-pany that wants to compete for talent. From mentoring spaces to integrating work and life styles and leveraging social networks, a high-performance workplace will look much different from most workplaces today.”

how gen y is changing workGen Y brings to the office new ways of working that stem from an upbringing in a world radically different from the one

that shaped earlier generations. Four Gen Y work habits stand out:

high-intensity work — Easily uses two monitors and keyboards. Checks frequently with peers for feedback and collaboration. Shifts easily between focused work, socializing, collaboration. Multi-tasks big-time. Grew up with an intense lifestyle and brings it to the office.

extreme focus — Comfortable working with and among others. Can focus attention and activity with laser-like precision on a specific task, such as working on a laptop or smart phone in the middle of a chaotic office. Can settle quickly in a lounge chair or a corner of a project room, deploy earbuds, iPod, and a Zen-like focus to get the jo b done.

Megamulti-tasking —Grew up with a packed schedule (school, sports, clubs, yadda yadda), so multitasking is no big deal. Juggles multiple tasks simultane-ously – project work, email, IM, web browsing, listening to music. Becomes restless and bored quickly, constantly looking for the next challenge. Speed, change, and uncertainty are typical.

Peer-to-peer networking — Social networking is part of life. Checks in with peers constantly (been doing it since high school). The chat line is always open.

“Thanks to the influence of Gen Y, work attitudes and behaviors are shifting –

dramatically in some cases, subtly but no less assuredly in others,” says Lahade. “Workplace design and planning must likewise shift if the company wants to attract, engage, and retain talent in a knowledge economy.”

As one Gen Y worker interviewed by Lahade’s team explained, “I think it has a lot to do with the high expectations we were brought up with. ‘You can do it. You can have what you want.’ We’re criticized for wanting it all: high pay, purposeful work, flexible hours. It’s hard for people in our generation to just do work.”

“The workplace has to show them who we are as a company, our values, the business we’re in,” says Bethany Davis, director of workplace concepts

and strategy for telecommunications giant Nokia. “More than anything else, our workplace needs to show we value our employees, and give them every opportunity to be productive.”

Jumpstarted by Gen Y and taking hold fast across generations, the following eight major shifts identified by Steelcase researchers represent big changes in the rules of engagement between employers and employees. Any employer today that’s intent on attracting, engaging and retaining workers can benefit from rethinking their workplace through the lens of these shifts:

Shift #1

The old path was a single career, clear roles and responsibilities, regular advancement up the ladder along with changes in title, pay, and office size to match achievements. Today, the corporate ladder has been replaced by a web or lattice of job changes and career shifts. As a result, knowledge workers are as loyal to the company as the company is to them. They want to know – now – the organization’s mission and plan, and they seek purposeful work that has meaning to their life.

Shift #2

The office used to be based on the organization chart and maximizing real estate. Most work happened in a personal workspace or meeting and conference rooms in the same building. Knowledge work is now an anywhere, anytime affair. Accumulat-ing face time has been replaced with achieving results.

Shift #3

Under the old paradigm, technology was a helpful tool workers used as needed. Now, innovative technology offers provocative ways to communicate, collaborate, and manipulate the coin of the realm, knowledge. Technology tools even anticipate our needs: software fills in

our thoughts before we can finish typing them, while Twitter, RSS feeds, and text messages continually tug at our sleeves, offering more information and ideas.

Shift #4

Trust was formed one way in the past: face-to-face. But shared online experi-ences offer faster ways to communicate and engage with others, and let us initiate and deepen relationships. The advantages of this virtual trust build-ing – unprecedented speed, limitless contacts, and no real boundaries – are demonstrated continually on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. They aren’t called social networks for nothing.

Shift #5

Job security is an antiquated notion. Boomers who remember it know job security is as passé as a three-piece suit; younger workers have no experi-ence with either. Career expectations and personal identity have shifted from a company and position to career autonomy and gratifying projects. Work-ers want to make an impact through personal and collective success. They admire companies for commitment to identifiable ideals such as sustainability, diversity, and other best practices.

Shift #6

For today’s knowledge worker, a career is like a Swiss Army knife: multi-faceted and quick-changing. Bosses used to

schedule job training; workers now are taking charge of their career skills with a long-term view of their own personal growth and development. Instead of learning skills in formal training, they’re more likely to learn in peer-to-peer knowledge trading, blogs and forums, and websites.

Shift #7

The clear separation between work (office, meetings, transactions) and life (family, play, social activities) has shifted to a blurring of work and personal lives, if not a fully realized 24/7 work/life. Since work often intertwines with personal life (nighttime email, off-hours phone calls, online meetings, etc.), workers increasingly look for support for personal needs through the workplace, such as flexible scheduling, telecommuting, and onsite amenities.

Shift #8

The structure of scheduled meetings, formal agendas, and leader-led discussions has shifted to a continuous series of connections and collaborations with colleagues, suppliers, clients, and other workers who are either co-located or distrib-uted. Social capital that was once built through infrequent collaboration is now built through personal and digital networking.

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to: personal identification beyond work

From: Personal achievement through a career

to: trust is developed both offline and online

From: Trust is developed in person

to: the workplace is wherever i am

From: The workplace is my office

to: technology is a part of me

From: Technology is a tool

to: growth

From: Training

to: continuous connection

From: Serial collaboration

to: work and life are one

From: Work and life are separate

to: identity

From: Conformity

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“In our experience, there’s no substitute for as much true face time as you can possibly get,” notes David Fannon, vice president of Office Depot who recently worked on the company’s new corporate headquarters workplace. “All companies, all of corporate America, all of American business is having to accomplish the same things with fewer resources. That makes it even more critical that the folks you have gathered in a facility... be able to collaborate openly.”

Clearly, the importance placed on a com-pany’s size, brand image, and history is shifting to how well the company can support a worker’s preferred workstyle, how much a person can learn with a company, and how well it supports work/life integration. Workers expect the office to ooze technology, morph quickly to the needs of the moment, and foster easy, personal connections. It’s a tall order, but vital to any company that wants to attract, engage, and retain good people.

what workers wantHow do you create an uber-effective workplace to address the fast-shifting needs and behaviors of today’s knowl-edge workers?

It all begins with the concept of a range of settings. Since workers are networked across geography and time zones, they need a range of shared settings to connect with other workers who are nearby and frequent collabora-tors, as well as sometime visitors or those who are based elsewhere and present only virtually. In other words, a distributed workforce requires a “palette of place” — a range of settings where all four knowledge work modes are supported. Some of these workspaces

will be onsite at the business, others may be in satellite workplaces, client spaces, home offices, third places, etc.

Based on their findings, Steelcase researchers have developed a suite of strategies for designing high-performance workplaces to support today’s new breed of workers.

“We believe the extent to which a workplace reflects these new design strategies in turn indicates how well it will help attract, engage, and retain the company’s most desirable workers,” says Lahade.

For example, the shift from serial collaboration to continuous connection means the workplace needs to be

Gen Y: Natural Knowledge WorkersGen Y seems to have a natural proclivity for the four basic modes of knowledge work: focusing, collaborating, learning, and socializing. These were first described in the seminal 1995 book, The Knowledge-Creating Company by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi. Every knowledge worker — whether an interior designer, IT consultant, financial analyst, or finance teacher — uses these four basic elements of building knowledge, which in turn drive creativity and innovation:

Focusing - Concentrating on a specific task; thinking, close study, contemplation, reflection, analysis, and other “head down” work.

collaborating - Working with one or more people to achieve a goal, such as collectively creating content; listening, discussing, presenting information and ideas, brainstorming, etc.

learning - Building knowledge through education or experience, either in a classroom or a conversation with peers.

socializing - Interacting, networking, mentoring, sharing along interpersonal connections that lead to common bonds and values.

Rapidly switching from focusing to socializing to collaborating is how Gen Y typically functions. Learning is a comfort zone for them, too; they’ve been raised as active, lifelong learners and consider it a path to personal and professional growth, as well as a means to further their skills.

Most knowledge work – three of the four modes – involves communication and collaboration with others. As Gensler points out in their 2008 Workplace Survey report, employees at top companies spend significantly more time collaborating, socializing, and learning than those at average companies. A workplace that supports all four modes helps drive organizational success.

“ The workplace has to show them who we are as a company, our values, the business we’re in— more than anything else to show we value our employees and give them every oppor-tunity to be productive.”

– bethany daviS, director of workplace conceptS and Strategy, nokia

boomer worker: “how do you reinvent the corner office for today? gen y attitudes are being adopted by older workers. if they’re open to change, they’re open to anything to help them engage better with the team.”

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gen y worker: “i prefer to design web pages and logos while i’m on the treadmill. i have no idea why; it’s just what works for me.”

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saturated with support for social networks. People work in offices because of the power of place and their need to interact with colleagues. Yet how collegial networks develop is changing.

There’s unprecedented opportunity to support forming bonds and networking quickly by providing both virtual and physical environments that support interactions with peers, such as kitchen-kind of collaboration spaces with a knowledge bar to plug in computers and have meetings — places where workers can “chill-lax.” A good approach is to locate these spaces strategically near the entrance or elevator core so people go through them as they enter or leave the workplace.

Providing ample tools for projecting content from a laptop or PC to a larger display is another way to design workplaces strategically to support continuous connection. Equally impor-tant is fully supporting videoconferencing and remote collaboration, quickly and easily.

building the business caseOffice Depot is just one company that recently completed a new corporate headquarters building to address today’s knowledge work requirements, and the results are telling.

“There are two things that we’ve learned and are reminded of every time that we make a move — the two things that are really important to associates. One is pay and the other is their space. If you can create an environment where their space is really working for them…, then it does a lot in terms of building morale…, making them more productive and making them proud of the place where they work,” says Daisy Vander-linde, vice president of human resources for the company.

“We’re running the business smarter now,” adds Fannon. “It’s an impressive and exciting environment when you first walk in. It encourages people to remain with the company. We think it’s a great advantage in recruiting talent.” 36

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“ The workspace should be mobile so people aren’t stuck in one place. Free to come and go as long as I get my work done.” – gen y worker

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Addressing the shifting attitudes and behaviors of knowledge workers should be integral to every workspace design, says Lahade. “A workplace that helps attract, engage and retain knowledge workers is not an option for any com-pany that wants not only to survive this economy, but to flourish in the years ahead.”

The traditional “attract & retain” model is outdated, he adds. “Businesses should consider their workplace, their HR and IT policies, and other means to find and keep the best talent in an overall strategy to ‘attract and grow’ the people in the organization.”

This larger view incorporates how knowledge work has changed,

how worker attitudes and behaviors are shifting, and how knowledge workers of all ages can best be supported to do what they do best: learn, create, and innovate. A high-performance workplace, like the right technology tools or a competitive compensation program, is another expression of the company’s investment in the talent that drives the organization.

“As a workplace professional, I believe we have some impact,” says Davis of Nokia. “It’s not more important than the quality of the work you do, or the colleagues you work with, or the challenge of your work. Those things are always going to be more important. But the workplace reinforces those things.

It’s what the physical space says about the company, those subtle messages you get – access, openness, com-munication – that say a lot about what you are. If the workplace creates hurdles to being productive or barriers, it can be a detriment…. We’re doing the things the business needs to do.”

Workplaces aren’t the only way to attract, engage, and grow knowledge workers, but they’re certainly key to surmounting the challenge.

360: Designed to inspire and inform architects and designers, 360 explores the latest in workplace research, insights, and trends.

© 2009 Steelcase Inc. All rights reserved.