-- Intro --
Chris Moriarty
Hello and welcome to the Workplace Geeks your regular immersive experience into the world of wonderful workplace academia with the brilliant brains behind it. I'm Chris Moriarty.
Ian Ellison
And I'm Ian Ellison.
Chris Moriarty
And you can think of us as a magical trail of breadcrumbs helping you navigate through the dense woodland. That is all things workplace research. So firstly, to the mailbag. We've had some great comments on LinkedIn off the back of our chat with Dr. Dan Wakelin Ian give us some examples of what folk had to say
Ian Ellison
Well, I particularly like this one from Robert Wainwright, associate director of CBRE, who said another fascinating listen from Workplace Geeks. It makes the morning dog walk fly by I found the discussion around ABW activity-based working particularly insightful. As someone who just viewed this as a design concept. I was interested to learn how it is also a location concept. My other takeaway was the idea that behaviours around correct use of ABW are only stressed when occupancy levels go past a critical number. If you don't already listen, I recommend subscribing. I agree, Robert, I do recommend subscribing as well.
Chris Moriarty
I think that's excellent advice, Robert. Now, our nod to the international Workplace Geeks community. So, hello to the person who listened to the podcast in Pilsen in the Czech Republic to the person who listened in Vecto. And I really hope I've said, that right? Because I know you Swedes like writing certain letters and send them a different way. So, in Sweden. And of course, back at home, Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. We love hearing from you. So, do get in touch with us about your thoughts wherever you are in the world about each episode. And the easiest and most popular way to do that is on LinkedIn. So just search for workplacegeeks using the Workplace Geeks hashtag, that's #workplacegeeks, dropping us an email on hello@workplacegeeks.org or signing up to our newsletter for which all the information is at workplace geek.org be like Robert, subscribe.
Also, just a little incentive. And Ian gonna kill me for making this promise. But someone who emailed us some feedback is getting sent one of our lovely purple books. So, who knows if you engage with us magic stuff might happen. You might get one of our wonderful notebooks. Try it see what happens. On to today's episode. So, we have a slightly different vibe today. Some of you will be aware of the Workplace Trends conference series based here in the UK, although they have been on their travels and gone to other countries as well. It's a wonderful event and one that the Workplace Geeks are proud to be one of the media partners for. And as part of that we were with them for their research conference in April. So, the next two episodes are going to be slightly different. Before we tell you more about that Ian why don't you explain to our viewers what the research summit is, and how it differs from your usual conference
Ian Ellison
No problem. So, we're going to get a bit more about this from Workplace Trends organiser, Maggie and Workplace Trends host Nigel in the next episode, but just for the time being, we need to think about is that Autumn is when the Workplace Trends flagship conference runs each year. And that is a really nice, multifaceted, really rich community conference from the workplace sector. But in spring, when they run their research summit, they go through essentially a peer review process a bit like academic journals where they invite applications and only people who make the cut that their research is credible, that it's worth reporting essentially get to be on stage.
Chris Moriarty
And we were invited behind the scenes to interview the speakers that made the grade and got on stage. Now, Ian, you spoke to those that were presenting on the day. So, do you want to tee us up with how you approach these chats? And then introduce our first one?
Ian Ellison
Yeah, absolutely so, after their talk, or at some point during the day, we swept them away to a little broom cupboard actually, it was a very nice subterranean meeting room. But it was right next to the venue's AV room. So, the interference with my recording electronics was a right nightmare, Chris, that's your job to sort. So, thank you very much. So, you might hear a little bit of background noise from time to time. But we've done our best to reduce that in the edit. I say we I mean, Chris, because he does that bit. So, we basically had little pint-sized chats who they were, what they were here at Workplace Trends, talking about key research findings and why their research area was important. And you get a real sense through these conversations about the quality of the work that's there at the Workplace Trends Research Summit.
And it was such a treat for us to be able to essentially piggyback the day and go a little bit deeper and explore their findings with them. Now with each chat, you're going to hear me talking to them. But what we've also done is dropped in some of the audio from the live presentations to really bring to life in elaborate some of the points that we cover. Now, sometimes when there were two presenters, that live recording might actually include a different voice. So just get your ears in, just so you know what's coming. We've got some familiar voices for you and some new ones, all of whom we're going to introduce over the next couple of episodes. So Dr. Dan was actually there presenting to you’re not going to hear from him in these episodes because we spoke to him in the last episode. So, you're very welcome to go back and have a listen there in more depth. So, I didn't get chance to speak to everybody was impossible because of too many presenters of the folks that I spoke to. There's a hybrid theme going on here. So that's what we're going to focus on for this first episode. And then for the next episode, it's gonna get a bit more esoteric, we're gonna go off the beaten path to explore some different methodologies, but also some different stuff to think about, too.
Chris Moriarty
Let's get started then.
Ian Ellison
First up we've got Lorna Landells from Remit consulting, she was presenting with Darren Yates, and their presentation was called returned to office or not question mark. So, backstory in early 2021, remit started monitoring how the pandemic had impacted office occupancy levels. They collaborated closely with the British Property Federation and the Windsor group, the latter of which comprise the UK leading commercial property agents. And the sample who were they were able to research covers around 150 offices, 1500 leases, and over 200,000 workers in 10 UK cities about half of the buildings were in London and the data contributors included British land, Great Portland estates, Cushman and Wakefield, Knight Frank map and Savills
Chris Moriarty
So we're talking the major headliners from a property perspective of the UK here
Ian Ellison
The big hitters indeed. So, from remits perspective, their assertion is that the data collected is a crucial part of helping to understand the growth of the hybrid working model where it might finally settle and how this will impact on our urban centres.
Chris Moriarty
Right? Well, let's hear from Lorna.
-- Interview --
Lorna Landells
I'm Lorna Landells and I work at remit consulting LLP. I'm one of the directors there. And we are a management consultancy business, but we only specialise in the real estate world, we speak the language of property. So, when we go to speak to different companies for change management, or system selection, or whatever it is, we know what they're going through. And we can speak the same language. That's what we do about two years ago.
So, May 2021, we were approached by some of our contacts, in fact, the influencers and leaders in the property world and they said, anything you guys can do about checking who's really going back to the office. And if you think back, July 2021, was going to be a big, you know, you can go back to the office announcement. So, they said, can you could you possibly do anything with this. So, within two weeks, we'd set up a portal, we'd spoken to all our contacts around the property world, gotten to agree to provide the data on the condition that we were anonymising it. So, we've got something like 150 offices in it was in 10 cities around the UK, but then one, you know, one or two got sold. And so, we've got 1500 leases, we've got over 200,000 people involved in the in the survey, considerable dataset, then it is a considerable data set we've got and it's a time series as well, because we've got weekly data, so longitudinal data, excellent at but actually we collect daily data, but we collect it weekly.
So, we tried to minimise the amount of trouble they had to go to help us. So that's why we made the portal. That's why we got them to say you only need to put it in once a week. So, what they recorded was the number of occupiers going into their offices, the number of visitors going into the offices, and where car parking was a possibility. So, like in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, such like then we monitored how many cars were being used. So, we can we also brought in other elements of data, some of these have changed over time, because one of the things we looked at early doors was the inoculation statistic. And did that impact the number of people going in the incidence of COVID in an area did that impact that's obviously fallen away. So now we look at whether transport certificates, the prop index, all of these things would bring them all in.
And so, it's pretty robust. What we actually do is we use our relationships with the property managers to persuade them that their building managers need only spend 10 minutes once a week, filling in the data. We set up a portal. What they do is they input number of people in Monday through Friday, every day of the week, number of visitor’s number of occupies and also the number of car spaces used if that's appropriate. Right at the beginning, we took details on how many leases there were in the building, and how many people could be in the building. So, we don't do it by the number of desks. We don't do it by desk usage. We do it by actual people going in. So, we haven't listed the contributors here but there are a dozen or so the big property managers so Cushman, Knight Frank, Map, Savills, British land GP, they've all very kindly come on board on this
Just a few words on data collection issues, the first one is getting the initial buy in from your contributors to give you the data to a certain deadline at a good quality. There are generally issues around confidentiality, particularly if you're collecting data, which is commercially sensitive. So, for example, with the return project, it is quite sensitive data. So, we built a database, whereby we can identify individual buildings that protects this sort of competitive element of building a, the investment Building B, and so on.
That, of course, links to how you store and analyse the data. So, you want a database that's easy for those both inputting the data into it. And also, for us when we're extracting, and analysing it. Definitions is a really important one. Also, you need people to understand exactly what you're tracking, you get these issues around sample sizes. And the data's got to be accurate. Otherwise, you'll lose all your credibility. And also, if you're using external resources like we do for our general reporting around return, we need to know that that is also good quality. And we can get hold of it to suit our timescales.
Ian Ellison
Key Findings, headlines
Lorna Landells
Headlines, well, interestingly, but not surprisingly, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that’s when everyone goes into the office, if you adjust for the fact that offices were never 100% occupied, it gets to round about 40%. Attending
Ian Ellison
40% in comparative terms are 40% adjusted, just unpack that for me, because we just did. Okay, so offices used to be about 60%
Lorna Landells
60 to 80%, because we we've had to retain our independence. So, we've gone with the BCO figures, so 60 to 80%, depending on holidays. So, if you adjust our findings, it comes to about 40%.
What about the actual results and those size a little bit busy showing COVID events, and also the data going back to May 2021. When we first started the project, it shows the blue line shows national average occupancy, expressed as a percentage of the total number of occupiers in buildings. You can see it's been a very stop start process, which is really the legacy of the pandemic. Bear in mind when we first started this project two years ago, quite a lot of COVID restrictions were still in place. The really big dips, you can see are around Christmas or New Year, it was kind of what you'd expect.
Normally, you'd get just two or 3% occupancy around that last week of the calendar year. Here we've got occupancy by days of the week, you can see from the red, yellow, and green lines that we've got very high occupancy on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which creates the amusing acronym. And now we're regularly pushing 40% occupancy on the busiest days of the week, not every week, but quite frequently. Friday, which is the black line is generally a write off, we're getting about 20% occupancy on the Friday, and about 30% on Monday, again, obvious reasons people, people taking holidays, either side of the weekend.
-- Reflection Section --
Ian Ellison
So, Chris, what did you make of that?
Chris Moriarty
Well, I think, and you mentioned this in the intro, I think one of the biggest things in this research was actually convincing all these different parties to collaborate to share the data. Now, they talk a little bit about the practicalities of that, you know, convincing building managers is only going to take a few minutes each day. But it's important that we do this regularly and keep feeding the machine. But I would say it's nice to see something like that in a sector that isn't renowned for competitors playing nicely and sharing data preparation.
Yeah, so I think that was lovely. But what ultimately that was gonna give us and I use the word all the time and Dr. James Pinder is always telling me off for using the word in the wrong context. But we are talking about sort of genuine longitudinal data here that can be mapped a longer period of time. And also, as they started to do when it talks about the pandemic is about the different variants, we can start mapping environmental factors that are impacting how people behave and seeing what pet that is. So, I guess as a modern equivalent, it'd be really interesting to see whether continued strike action has started to change people's opinion about whether or not to travel as regularly if they want a bit more clarity about when and where they can. So, I think that's going to act as a really nice bellwether for the patterns that we're kind of hypothesizing about every day on LinkedIn.
Ian Ellison
And I think also to your first point about the collaboration that all of the different bodies involved in the data collection, I wonder if that points to the power of a well-respected consultancy in the property management sector like remit and their ability to mobilise people like that in a partnership way. And you might argue that the sort of the more academic robustness that you get from university studies and whatnot, you certainly can't move that quickly.
Chris Moriarty
It sort of touches on some of the stuff that Jo Yarker talk to us about this sort of partnership between academia and commercial bodies is that the strengths and weaknesses to both and it's actually when you start building all these communities of researchers together to lend their relative research superpowers he actually get some really interesting data. So, yes, a lovely start to our Workplace Trends, Special Edition. What we got teed up for us next Ian
Ian Ellison
Very good, well, time to go deeper, I think. And for that, it's time to turn to KasiaMaynard from the Gensler Research Institute. So, Kashia’s presentation was called the ripple effect, colon, on how the evolution of hybrid work will impact the workplace and our cities. So just to frame this, while hybrid working has become a permanent fixture on the landscape of work, there are still big questions around the future of work that remain unanswered. Kasiawas asking questions like how does the office fit into the new ecosystem as work beyond the office if you like?
How can we build sustainable office spaces that meet new expectations? What's the wider implication of hybrid working on our cities? So, to explore these questions, it was a bit like Kasiabrought a record bag of all the white labels and the recent releases from Gensler Research Institute to essentially preview at Workplace Trends. So, this is research about how to best enable hybrid working, how to optimise the office environment, how to meet goals of net zero, and how to maximise employee experience and engagement. So, this was a session not just about people and where they work post pandemic is also a consideration of the urban realm too.
Kasia Maynard
I'm Kasia Maynard, I work as a researcher, communication strategist, my background is in workplace research. So, I've been doing that for the last decade looking into different elements of research. And only recently, I've kind of gone into Genslar and worked in this kind of corporate research, which has been really interesting and eye opening. My presentation was really looking at hybrid work holistically or has holistically as you possibly can in 20 minutes. So, we've just released a workplace survey of UK today. And we've supplemented that with some of our city pulse research that we did last year. And also, some upcoming research in carbon comparison. So, measuring the carbon impact of hybrid working, so we've kind of tried to smush all of these research ideas together and look at the wider implication of hybrid working. So that's kind of looking at how workplaces can be more effective for hybrid working, but also outside of the office, where does it sit with what location? What locations do they need to be in now?
So, I'm going to touch on some of those findings, as well as some of the other research we've been working on again over the past year, and some research that's not even yet published yet. For context, the UK workplace survey is part of a global study have 14,000 office workers across nine countries. And we've already published our results in the US, Canada and Mexico. Obviously, UK was published today, and we'll be following this month with Germany, the Middle East, Singapore and the Philippines. And in May, we're going to publish a global comparison report, which looks at all of these results in aggregate and really pulls out some of the nuances, industry differences, generational differences, it looks at the bigger picture, which is really exciting. So that's coming next month.
Ian Ellison
Interesting. So, you've got the stuff, essentially, within the four walls of the office, as it were, you've got the wider impact upon the city. And you've got the impact from a carbon perspective of stuff like travel and where people are working. Exactly. Okay. So key findings, key takeaways
Kasia Maynard
That we did this survey the UK as part of a wider survey of 14,000 participants across the world in nine countries, actually, what was the universal across all of them, which is how much people still need the office or say they need the office, compared to how much they're coming into the office. I don't think it shocked us how much people are coming in. They're coming in about half of their typical working week. That's probably typical across all organisations. But what was interesting is that when we asked them how much time they needed in the office for their productivity for particular reason, yeah, so productivity to for their individual work, so to focus and their teamwork. So how does that impact their team? We actually expected to see a difference between individual and team, there wasn't a significant difference. They wanted to come back or they needed to come back about two thirds of the time and the most innovative company said about three quarters of the time.
So that's a substantial sort of increase for on less than half. And so that surprised us. And then the follow on from that the big question we asked them that was, okay, well, why aren't they coming in and if people know it's a productive place, what's stopping them. And then that's when we started looking into the effectiveness of the office, and what kind of spaces had the most impact. And we looked at this across industries as well. And we started to see some interesting variations. If you look at some of the more traditional industries, like sciences, financial services, maybe Management Advisory, these are the people who are working most fluidly in and out of the office in a typical workweek. And then this is interesting as well, we looked at it by role. And people in positions of management, people of seniority are spending more time away from the office. And this isn't necessarily surprising, this probably, you know, they're probably at client sites are probably traveling a bit more. But these are the people that are making the return to Office strategies. And so, this is where you start seeing this mismatch of expectations between employees and management over return to Office.
Ian Ellison
Another thing which I heard you talking about on stage was when we think about the sort of the carbon impact or the environmental impact you were, I think making a well, I wonder whether you were starting to challenge a bit of kind of accepted wisdom received wisdom about it's more sustainable not to come into the office.
Kasia Maynard
So, we've been doing some research in the US at the moment around the carbon impact and fibered work. And we looked at the average US commute square foot per person in the office. And we looked at the average house, and it resulted in, we're coming to the office is basically more carbon efficient. If everyone or the majority of people are coming into the office, if there is some density,
Ian Ellison
Almost a critical mass to tip the scales and use the analogy of a bus being the most efficient way to travel around the city, if it's full.
Kasia Maynard
And if you think about the bus as well, when it's not full, it still has to do its rounds, it still goes around the city that's not very carbon efficient. The same with the office, the office doesn't just switch off, because we're not there. The typical building isn't a smart building, which shuts off different places, the typical building uses all of the energy. And we can change our individual behaviours much better than we can change our office spaces. So, we can when we're at home, we can switch off the energy that we're not using when we're not there. And we can change those behaviours to make our homes more energy efficient. But we can't really do, we don't have that individual autonomy. In the office space.
Unlike other studies out there, we've looked at hybrid working as a holistic process, when we're working from home, the office doesn't just switch off, it doesn't go away, the energy is still being used, because it needs to be ready for the people that do want to come into the office and do choose the office. So even if one person, one or two people decide to go to the office that day, the office will be running almost full at full capacity, as opposed to the rest of everyone else who's working from home. So obviously, there's a number of variables that can influence these results. So, we're working on averages across the US at the moment. So, we're using open source data to calculate the average house size, flat size, can view office space, per square foot, per person, and so on. And we're also working with the MIT mobility lab to vet our findings as the process goes on. So, it's still a process.
Ian Ellison
And there was something about the relationship of the immunities close by and that making hybrid or the office more desirable. Have I got that right? Or does that just need a little bit of unpacking?
Kasia Maynard
Yeah maybe a bit of unpacking. So, I think what we found was when we started measuring the effectiveness of spaces and the workspaces that offer a great experience, those are the ones that were located in amenity rich neighbourhoods. And what we mean by that is, they had amenities that weren't just related to work, they were related to lifestyle, or just general errands that you might do in a day. So, there are coffee shops, fitness centres, pet care, elderly care, things like that, that people can just do in their average day, that might not be related to work. But then that creates a more compelling destination for people to come to. Typically, they're not spending a full day in the office, now they can go out, so they might go out for their meeting to the local coffee shop.
And if there isn't that option, then you are limited to spending your full day in the office. And that means the office has to work so much harder to provide every single space that employees could possibly need to get their work done effectively. Whereas if you start using the city as an extension of the office, and you start saying that you can do your meetings in these coffee spaces, we have a library five minutes away, if you want to get your head down and do some work. That means the office can really start focusing on the things that it's good at. And we can start creating this diversity of spaces by using what's around it.
-- Reflection Section --
Ian Ellison
What did you get from that thing, Chris?
Chris Moriarty
I think the most interesting thing with it is the findings that Keisha are presented that go beyond the office actually start to talk about part of the reason that people we'll want to come in is because they want to build this into a wider landscape of life, you know, they need to return something or post something or they need to pick up a prescription or something like that. And all these urban realms are now having to think about how do we make all these useful services, all in the same place. Now, it'd be really interesting to look at the I'd love to talk to an urban design or an urban expert, because has things like Doctor surgery has typically been located in a residential area? Because that's when people want to go and pick up their prescriptions. But now it's actually saying no, no, we need to have a bit of a mix and all the rest of it.
So, I think that was the interesting thing, because what we're essentially saying is that workplace strategies now the location of the office isn't just a kind of purely transactional kind of very straight forward thing. The location now forms part of that wider workplace strategy from an experiential point of view. Now, I'm not saying that no one's done that. And that's like a new thing. Of course, it's been kind of talked about for a while. But what we're hearing from Kasiais that this is now a vital, cannot be ignored part of your workplace strategy. And therefore, we the location now isn't just the address of the office, its proximity to what your people and it might be different for different cohorts of people, what your people want, from that extended augmented workplace location.
Ian Ellison
So, what I'm getting from your reflections, there is a couple of things. One is about permissions and blurred boundaries. And in that respect, you could argue that what hybrid working does and what the experiences throughout the pandemic have done for us is they've demonstrated a greater ability to blend, work and life and a greater acceptance and a greater tolerance to be able to do that. But then for me that links into the sort of next idea, which is one about, it's not exactly a quality, it's the wrong word. But what I really sense from this, and I've seen it in other research data, just different studies that I'm aware of is that when you look at the things which are available to people in urban areas, compared to perhaps more rural or even suburban areas, there's actually an entirely different level of resource.
So, you've got this weird disparity where headquarter offices of organisations are in shiny, beautiful buildings in the middle of incredibly well-appointed urban realms done well, whereas other offices, or other people working in more satellite ways are away from the good stuff, you see what I mean, equality is not the right word, but it's a different level of provision. And that's partly about the office. But it's partly, it's like a differential, which is partly your responsibility, but also just location specific as well. And that just shows the systemic nature, I think that Kasiawas getting at in terms of what we've got to start thinking about
Chris Moriarty
What you've got to think about there is, you know, my point about this isn't new, I think is, you know, I make that as case as people are listening going, Yeah, you know, of course it is made, we've been doing that for 10 years sort of thing. But there's I think there's another dynamic that the pandemic is introduced. And let's face it, this is what we're kind of talking about is the things in context of the pandemic, and changes to work patterns. Your point there about the different types of headquarters got me thinking about some of the examples I've seen in the past of out of town industrial estate type places, where the expectation was, you came in for most, like 90% of the working week, you know, you might work at home on Friday, but really, most people came in unless they're on holiday or sick, or offsite meeting everyone came in.
Now, that means there's a lot of pressure on parking. So, these out of town places, you've got huge car parks, and that's probably why they are out of town, because it's very difficult in a city centre or town centre to cope with that level of parking. And these places quite often had amenities that you wouldn't expect to see in an office. So, they might have a dry-cleaning service, because they know that we're taking you out of town, and you might need some of this, they might have cash machines there because you know, there wasn't one round the corner. Oh, and the other example is catering, right, they might have a full-blown catering offer, because there's nothing to buy within two miles walk and you don't want to get the car.
But I just wonder with the pandemic and the reduced numbers and the change of pattern whether we're going to start looking at town centres a bit more favourably now to say, look, there's not such a pressure on parking, particularly in a world where we're trying to encourage more active travel, so cycling and all the rest of it. And lots of town centres are looking at how they can encourage that. And these sorts of spaces will have less pressure on them. If you get it right to say well, look, we're right outside of the amazing coffee shop. We're down the road from a whole host of different places you can grab your lunch, we'll provide you some spaces if you want to bring your own lunch and all the rest of it and it just it just gets you into thinking that location context is so crucial when it comes to workplace design. And I mean, not just the space layout but the services that are wrapped around it. Onwards.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so finally for this first special episode, we have Sophie Schuller from Cushman and Wakefield. Sophie was presenting with Rachael Casanova. And their presentation was called organisational network analysis, a statistical measurement of collaboration, employee capital at work. So, what is this all about? Well, for years, the real estate industry has made assertions about how inspiring workspaces drive things like collaboration, relationship development and knowledge sharing. So, from this perspective, what's interesting about the pandemic is how it affords an opportunity to test hypotheses about claims like this. So, we can ask things like what happens when offices are no longer an active asset to support employee connection, networks and relationships. So, prior to the initial global lockdown Cushman and Wakefield were engaged in exploratory field research of how a particular client organisations communication patterns were linked to office design features things like open plan and traditional workspaces.
So once the lockdown began, the research was extended to complete an organisational network analysis or ONA for short, across this client's global organisation. So quick interject time for quick definition organisational network analysis. It's a method for studying communication and socio technical networks within a formal organisation. Chris, do you understand that you're right with that? Yep, understood. So, Cushman and Wakefield used this opportunity to basically evaluate changes to the strength, density and formality of networks across their case study client’s business and to explore how spatial design impacted these networks, including the impact of where people work, Rachel was dialling in remotely and they both did a pre-recorded presentation. So, the audio for that will sound a little bit different. But Sophie was there in person for the q&a part of the presentation, so I was able to grab her afterwards to talk about it. You ready for a listen?
Chris Moriarty
Bring it on.
-- Interview --
Sophie Schuller
My name is Sophie Schuller, I work at Cushman and Wakefield and I lead our applied research and product development program based in the Netherlands, and I alongside work, also studying for my PhD. My background is in neuro architecture. So, I researched the way in which commercial architecture and workplace design specifically impacts our bodily systems, neurophysiology and cognition.
Ian Ellison
Amazing. Is there a growing interest for Cushman and Wakefield? How would you frame the value of what you're doing?
Sophie Schuller
I think the one thing that is really valuable for Cushman and Wakefield is that we are an organisation that really believes in advising by demonstrating that we have done and we're very practical organisation, we're a very innovative organisation, and to be honest, for any type of consulting practice and business if you're not actively researching your trade, and in this case, that's the effect of workplace on human health and performance, then I would be questioning the ability for you to advise on that.
Ian Ellison
So that brings us right to what we're doing here today, then, so in a nutshell, then, what are we talking about? Why is it important? And then let's get into a couple of key findings.
Sophie Schuller
Yeah. And so, our presentation today, was delivered jointly with my research partner, Rachel Casanova, who's based in our US organisation. And she's really a specialist in organisational network analysis. And organisational network analysis is basically using objective datasets, what we call meta data, which is normally when I send you an email, or we communicate via IBM, Microsoft will capture the fact that we've had that communication. And when you pull all of that communication together over a group of people, you start to be able to spot patterns in communication.
So, it made us wonder, how does network density impact organisational performance? Is it all about productivity? So, let's give you the premise of this the premises what is the value of an employee to an organisation. And we're giving you this construct around human capital and social capital. So human capital is the job we're hired to do. It's found in the job description and the bullet points of what you expect from me, it's the processes to get the work done. You can see it in an org chart, we talked about who we report to, and it's what you expected me and what you're going to measure me on. At the same time, there's something called social capital. That means we might define as the glue is that things that go beyond just what's in the job description.
Ian Ellison
So, this is the stuff that kind of powers, Microsoft Analytics, they're using that for some of their core products now, but what you're saying is you're foregrounding it for your own particular research as a methodology as a technique, social network analysis.
Sophie Schuller
That's right. I mean, most research that's undertaken in a workplace environment is survey based. And whilst we know that that is a really powerful tool to capture intent, it doesn't quantify the variable of what's happening. When anyone asks me, why not just use surveys, I respond very simply and say, when your doctor asks you, how much do you drink in a week? What do you tell them? And maybe what you tell them is what you think is happening but as not really what's happening, the story that you're telling yourself? Yeah. And so organisational network analysis and utilising different objective data set and pairing it with employee experience and survey-based questions, which is also part of our research, along with HR data sets and communication patterns, business outcomes, etc, starts to enable us to contextualise that employee experience viewpoint in a different way
Then we get on to how do we measure organisational capital. So, for this, we use a statistical model known as graph analysis or network analysis. And network analysis uses meta data, which is essentially the electronic trail that we leave behind when we email or make a phone call over teams arrange a meeting or send an I M, and take it over a period of time, you start to build a statistical map of communication that happens across organisations and networks. And you can interrogate this map using the following four statistics, which are universally classified as a four main dynamics of any network. And those dynamics are degree centrality, which really measures the density and size of networks, the between the centrality which really measures the fragmentation and the ability to connect across into fragmented parts of the organisation, it measures closeness centrality, which is how close the overall organisation is, and the communication patterns within it. And then influence which is a summary of the previous three dynamics.
And all dynamics should be read that apart from between this, that the higher the score, the higher associations of organisational outcome. So, the higher the network density, the more dense and diverse our networks are, the greater opportunity for innovation, collaboration, etc. The between the score should be read that the higher that score, the higher the fragmentation that exists within the network, which in lots of organisations, certainly for this client case, could be perceived as a negative, it indicates higher amounts of fragmentation and higher amounts of isolation.
So, for example, one of the outcomes of our research was organisational experience is negatively correlated with some aspects of improvement in organisational outcomes. So, to put that into real words, it could be that when you are optimising for organisational outcomes, you're building dense networks across your business, you're enabling people to be more networks, people have weaker ties, people have greater connectivity to influence etc. But that can be very uncomfortable. So, if what you're doing as an organisation is gaming, this, you know, optimum score and employee experience, it could be that what you're doing is eroding organisational value
Ian Ellison
One of the things that I heard was that you was kind of looking at the shape, and the way that networks behaved when people were working from home, versus when they return to the office.
Sophie Schuller
So, the first thing is, is when people were working from home, what our research shows is that they were working in hierarchies. So, meaning that we just we just start within our existing service line, I report to my manager, my manager reported to their manager, and so on and so forth.
Ian Ellison
So that's kind of like, partly the strong ties side of things rather than the loose ties.
Sophie Schuller
That's exactly right. Okay. And we know that weak ties are associated with innovation, creativity, getting a new job learning, development, etc. So, when we came back to the office, what we saw is that all the dynamics change towards a more socially integrated and networked outcome. So, if you're an organisation that wants to promote creativity, learning, development, mentorship, what our research shows is that there is a very real need to be physically together to enable that.
Ian Ellison
And that's interesting, because the criticism is that firms that have a vested interest in property, it was sort of it was easy to kind of go, Well, of course, you're going to say that coming back to the office is important, but your kind of going your analysis of this social network meta data kind of demonstrates why
Sophie Schuller
That's exactly right. And for and for what parts of my job, quote, unquote, because actually, what I get paid to do is what I can do at home, it's the delivery, the output, the productivity, the demonstration of you asked for x, here it is, boom, what I don't necessarily get paid for but what organisations want is, hey, take this idea, create something new speak to someone outside your department, generate a sense of learning for yourself that you can be developed into someone who could go for a more senior job. That is what we're demonstrating that when you come back to the office is the benefit and the outcomes that are generated.
The implication of that is that when we were working at home, it appears that we were working in hierarchies relying on in this case managers, which we know from deeper research to connect us to other parts of the network. However, when we returned to the office, and we started working together, that reliance decreased, and we were able to re-establish network integration, the likely business of that is an increase in the speed and agility of working in teaming when we work together. So when we take these findings together with the opening slide on network shrinkage and perceived productivity, and wider research on patterns, of on dynamics and social capital, it could suggest that the part of the network that we lost at the start of the pandemic, as Rachel mentioned, when we were working from home was linked to social capital, not human capital, which was why we were able to keep delivering against our job and retain productivity.
And that the dynamics that we see in this slide is an indication of reclaiming social capital, which in simple terms, could mean that when we work at home, we rely more on the hierarchy to form relationships from outside our immediate network, that connect isn't higher between the scores or phenotypes of human capital, where we're acting, that were connected to acting as interpreters across different parts of the network. But that when we come back together in an office, their role is less important as we build opportunities to grow social capital and trust within a more networked effect. And in addition, because our communication when we were working from home was largely electronic emails, IMS teams, etc. It gave us a great opportunity to evaluate whether the communication method had any effect on organisational network dynamics when we returned to the office.
And we saw that it did. So, when we came back to the office, we see that our hypothesized return of social capital was driven by informal methods of communication, phone calls and im’s. So, we can see that 75% of informal communications increased directionally with organisational dynamics also increasing when we worked together.
-- Reflection Section --
Ian Ellison
So, what did you think of that, then, Chris?
Chris Moriarty
I really love this chair and that presentation. And I actually know Rachel from way back. So, it was great to hear from her again. What did I think about this? Do you know what there's some really interesting points about the research itself? Right. So that's goes without saying, but I got total vibes about previous guests on our show, when I was listening to what they were talking about. Now, there's an obvious one, there's an obvious link back to Ben Waber. And his work about strong and weak ties. But it also reminded me of Kirsten, and I'll tell you for why. It's another example about how technology and or scientific understanding, particularly social sciences, is starting to uncover stuff that has kind of always been there always been true, but we just couldn't see it. It kind of feels like those scientists looking for dark matter, right. And the reason it reminded me a Kirstin's is because of the impact that the space syntax work had on me.
You know, it's probably always been true, but we just didn't know how to measure it and look for it or see it. And what it means, I guess, is, it's great for workplace leaders that we're getting all these new levers, you know, again, back to Ben Waber. And his idea of management leaders and stuff, we've got all these different levers that we can start pulling and pushing. It does have the other effect, though, that it can be a bit overwhelming that there's all this stuff to consider. So, we need to find a way of synthesizing this knowledge, but also turn it into very practical, applicable things that workplace leaders can do in their day to day job, but yes, loved it. And really, really fascinating subject love it.
Ian Ellison
Well, I'm glad you loved it, because we are working hard to get Sophie and Rachel on the podcast to go deeper. And actually, it's really interesting that you do link back to Kirsten, because last time we spoke to Kirsten, the focus was entirely about space syntax. But you do know that she's all about the social network analysis as well. So, it's no surprise that you've, you've felt that resonance
Chris Moriarty
I should imagine we're going to hear from Kirsten as well, she this feels like a moment where she's already drafting what she wants to type on LinkedIn to get in touch with us looking forward to hearing from you, Kirsten, can't wait, love you, then actually looking at the specific findings that they have, there was a really interesting moment. And of course, we've got a kind of a vested interest in this stuff. But when he started talking about surveys, and the challenge was surveys, particularly when it's indicative of stuff, you know, when it's kind of a, indication of how you're feeling or kind of, you know, that kind of tick box mentality that we've spoken about before. And she really, I mean, for all these people trying to come up with great analogies for stuff, you know, her point about drinking now, just for full disclosure, I stopped drinking four years ago, I drank too much. And now I drink, I drink nothing.
But one of the things that kind of led me to that moment was when I was going through some, like medical updates and get some check overs and stuff. And I was asked to fill in a questionnaire about my unit intake, and I tried desperately to be as accurate as possible. But I guess whenever you're estimating something, and you know that there's there might be something behind it, you knock off a couple units for good measure, right. And it wasn't until I then had a conversation with the doctor that she suggested maybe we should put a few more units on here. And you know, so I think it's a really interesting thing, but in the context of workplace, how a there's some flaws with that approach in terms of self-reported, you know, information and we need to do better with it.
But I just thought this dynamic about this chasing of individual employee experience, at the cost of organisational value and in a way It's a kind of a way of giving an overview of the wider survey mentality of organisations. I thought that was brilliant. But also, it kind of sits at the heart of this whole hybrid debate about individual productivity and organisational performance. And I, I can't wait to see where I hope they're taking this further. And I'm hoping that we can get them on the show to talk about this in more detail, because I've got so many more questions.
Ian Ellison
And also, that sounds like a discussion about objective and subjective data alongside quantitative and qualitative metrics. But anyway, that's definitely one for another day. So, Chris, that is all I've got for you until the next episode.
-- Outro --
Chris Moriarty
So, join us next time for part two of a Workplace Trends special where we'll be taking a departure from some of the hybrid work theme pieces we've heard about today. And instead, we'll be hearing about some of the less predictable research topics that Workplace Trends is famous for, remember to rate review and recommend, like Robert, the show to help build our community. And please do get in touch either via our LinkedIn community. So, search for the workplacegeeks on LinkedIn, and you'll find us, and you can also use the #workplacegeeks that's #workplacegeeks. And of course, you can email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org or visit our website and join the mailing list. Sign up at workplacegeeks.org speak to you next time.
