HNI ONE|EXTRA—Four Things Your Workplace Can’t Afford To Ignore In 2019

Everyone knows it’s an employee’s market right now—in fact, many organizations are painfully aware.

Talent is our most valuable resource, so companies find themselves battling within their industry to appeal not just to new talent but to continue engaging those already on their payroll.

As with most resource management, sustainability is key. And a sustainable talent model today might look quite different from one that worked five or ten years ago. To develop the right workplace to support a sustainable talent model, organizations must ensure they design for the workforce of tomorrow, which just so happens to be a complex blend of five generations, redefining what diversity means and grappling with new technology in our ever-changing, increasingly urbanized world.

How is today’s workforce redefining diversity? The meaning of the word has expanded to now include considerations of personality types, thinking styles, cognitive differences, and other factors that influence how we engage with our work and interact in the workplace.

So how can we not only keep up but stay ahead of the needs of today’s workforce? We’ve compiled four key areas of focus to ensure your workplace aligns with your users.

1. The need for flexibility. If an organization does not acknowledge and design spaces based on expectations for flexibility, attracting and retaining skilled talent will be challenging. Not to mention it will be increasingly difficult, time-consuming, and costly to anticipate and respond to changes in an uncertain business environment. Whether it’s supporting a user in adjusting personal space or the organization in evolving an unused conference room into multiple, much-needed phone rooms, a functioning workplace should never be stuck or static. The tech company wanted to build a space that would inform future projects in the Americas on their newly developed workplace applications. Designed as a re-imagination of their existing kit-of-parts, the project served as a test space to evaluate flexibility and efficiencies. Not only were they looking to initiate a movement by providing more choice and autonomy to users, but also wanted to maximize their real estate in the competitive Seattle market.

2. The importance of user workplace experience. Workers demand positive, frictionless experiences, regardless of whether they are at work or home. Great user workplace experiences have the potential to translate into measurable increases in employee engagement and effectiveness of the workforce. This is one of the reasons to consider the expanding facets of diversity today by creating spaces that support social and solitary learners, because the character of your workforce should be represented in your space.

3. The value of learning beyond the training room. A risk averse, siloed culture that still considers learning an annual event will not have a workforce with the skills required to be agile and work more collaboratively—both of which are critical to business success today. And a culture of learning must have destinations where ideas can be shared comfortably and questions asked freely.

4. The power of aligning culture and space. Many organizations actively promote their focus on diversity, agility, sustainability, and other core beliefs. However, if your workplace does not authentically align with those beliefs, the next generation of talent will not help your organization work toward achieving your vision. For example, an organization that touts an open, collaborative culture but works in enclosed private offices is not walking the talk.

The good news is there’s broader recognition today of the positive impact the workplace can have on workers’ engagement, health, performance, and, therefore, the overall success of the organization. Understanding the workforce—what motivates, engages, and enables their work—is the new, forever-evolving frontier.

Looking for more insights on the workforce of the future? Check out what Allsteel has to say here.