What was your talk about?
My presentation today was about what is important to employees in the workplace, from a values perspective but also from a physical environment perspective. We also looked at generational groups and what that means for them in the workplace.
We were trying to identify whether we are likely to see a greater return to the office over the next six years and so looking forward to what a workplace 2030 might look like.
The aim was to try to identify what occupations there might be and the way that we explored that was by looking at all the different generations that make up the workforce. We want to understand how the workplace is changing over the generations over the next six years. What they want, when we start to look at the majority, is when we start to see what we need from the office and this is changing quite a lot.
What is your job about?
I am Hannah Nardini, and I am from WKspace, a consultancy practice. We work globally, based in the United Kingdom, but we have a lot of research, and a lot of clients based all over the world. The work that we do is workplace consultancy or analytics. We go into businesses for a few weeks and gather lots of data. We are very 'big' into people engagement, and we help them build strategies for their future workplace. So, we're trying to understand workplace needs over the course of the next 10 years. We do full interior design if that is required and we also offer behavioural change management. So many of our strategies are where we are fundamentally changing how people work. We believe in supporting a client from start to finish. We then re-engage with all the staff to take them through the journey of change to make sure that any strategy we have implemented executes properly at the other end.
What do you personally think about hybrid work?
Hybrid working, mostly driven by the pandemic in 2020, has fundamentally shifted the workplace at a global level and it is unprecedented; I feel lucky to have been part of the journey in this generation. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity that came along. I think the elastic band has stretched too far and we cannot get it back, so hybrid working has now become an accepted part of our working culture. We can certainly see by our engagement with people that it is not possible to return to what it used to be. So our advice to companies is to really embrace the opportunities that that brings. But we do see the value of the workplace and it is still important. Therefore, we need to find strategies and opportunities to bring people back together to get the best of both worlds.
In our article "A studio as a strategy centre", we have already showcased how Hannah herself works and found out what was important to her when building and furnishing her own studio. You can read more about this here.
Hannah has also answered our questions about the Detox Office. Thank you, Hannah, for always giving us such an interesting view of the world of work and how it is changing.
