Design to help people get back to work
Amid this morass of thoughts, a word that had until now been buried deep within our tedious tasks has resurfaced: “meaning.” We spend an average of 71% of our week at work. So if we’re going to spend our lives earning a living, we might as well find some meaning in it, right?
The importance we place on our profession, its impact on society, and the personal fulfillment it brings have returned to the forefront. And COVID didn’t take long to snap us out of our lethargy.
Today, the resulting phenomenon of the Great Resignation has a name: Quiet Quitting. Employees are no longer there and are weary, and they’re leaving in search of deeper meaning. The very value of work is increasingly being questioned, and offices are being deserted by employees—often in favor of a few days of remote work each week.
Suffice it to say that as workplace designers at Génie des Lieux, we’re constantly grappling with questions about the return to the office. And so we eventually asked ourselves: can design save companies from the Great Resignation?
Design to the Rescue
March 2019. The first wave of COVID hits the world, and millions of people find themselves confined to their homes overnight. Forced to work from their home offices (or their living room tables), the public experiences mandatory mass remote work for the first time. Employees then got a taste of a comfort they had always longed for: freedom from the hellish commute. Feeling inspired, some even began working remotely from places other than their homes. They crossed city limits and even… national borders. And suddenly, the realization hit: if you can perform the same tasks with your feet in the water on a beach in Bali—in other words, in a third place—why bother going back to your cubicle in Nogent-sur-Marne?
Against all expectations, this interlude has given employees time that is all too often snatched away from them: time for introspection. We re-examine the place our work occupies in our lives at a time when the boundaries between professional and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred. What meaning do I attach to my work? Am I truly aligned with the values my company upholds? And more broadly: what meaning do I want to give to my existence?
Isolated from others—and, in reality, isolated from almost everything—the employee reevaluates their stance and priorities. The desire to return to the office, meanwhile, is (almost) gone. And since then, we’ve heard managers lamenting the absence of their subordinates: “Where is the team spirit when we’re working remotely? Where is it?!” A manager’s visceral fear, distance is singled out. However, we must ask whether distance truly equates to a loss of team spirit. The conventional wisdom holds that, isolated and far from their peers, employees are less inclined to foster team spirit.
And as we all know, designers and legends don’t mix well. For us, facts are gold, and to obtain them, observation is key. If employees no longer want to return to the office, we need to know why. And so, asking the user—a fundamental principle of design thinking—seems obvious.
And this is precisely where design comes into play. By gauging both the company’s needs and those of the users, it allows us to converge on a solution that is typically viable for both parties. It’s important to note that the company’s objectives must not take precedence over user needs, or else you risk delivering a service that’s ill-suited and shunned by everyone. Involving stakeholders and users in the process of defining and solving the problem is therefore essential to finding the right balance for your employees’ return to the office.
How can you bring your employees back to the office using design thinking?
A company is a living organization. And since it is alive, it is, by definition, evolving. The solution to anticipating and initiating the necessary changes lies in a systemic approach—that is, recognizing that the company is part of a larger ecosystem. For example, the company’s needs will vary depending on the social context (hello COVID, protective measures, and social distancing) and the political context (hello war in Ukraine), and the same goes for its employees (inflation, lockdowns). And these factors will influence one another.
Without going to such extremes, certain scenarios are nevertheless quite common:
Personal situations evolve. An employee’s life changes throughout their professional career. From a party-loving single person to a dynamic married individual to a father involved in his children’s education… Needs and desires change, yet they are rarely questioned.
Economic pressure related to housing can lead to people moving to more affordable regions, potentially far from the company. Why force yourself to live where the cost of living is highest?
Finally, health also influences employees’ needs. We all face, at one time or another, health issues—some more debilitating than others—that can affect our well-being and, consequently, our performance at work.
Personal life. Why devote so much time to the company? Don’t I have better things to do, other personal projects that are important to me?
Do the company’s mission and culture align with my core values? Do I really want to spend 42 hours of my week selling chicken nuggets?
Today, if a company wants to retain its employees, it must, more than ever, reflect on the working conditions it offers them. The balance of power has shifted: whereas in the past the company demanded unwavering commitment from its employees, now the commitment must come from the company’s side. For example, a study by the Adp Research Institute estimates that 71% of young people might leave their jobs if asked to return to 100% in-person work. We’re coming to realize that if a company wants to take care of its professionals, it must now take its employees’ personal lives into account.
So aren’t we right in the middle of a design thinking process? Asking employees about their needs, aligning objectives, finding solutions… If we apply this approach to its fullest extent, the company and employees could then conduct test phases to validate or invalidate the solutions they developed together.
Because design thinking has the ability to shed light on an entire system and its pain points. We ask the user, we develop solutions quickly, and above all, we verify them through iteration. It therefore promises rapid adaptation through short cycles. In a world shaken by the unexpected, isn’t this the perfect solution for the company? Like a researcher, it must question and experiment in cycles, lest it crash headlong into the wall erected by its own certainties.
Conclusion
In light of our example of quiet quitting, the company must take an interest in its employees and reevaluate its solutions. It must certainly rethink the collective, but also the individual. It can no longer apply the same solution to everyone, since we now see that each person has personal—and therefore different—expectations. To do this, they must broaden the spectrum of their personas: age, profile, disability, remote work, CSR commitment, remote work… It is not a matter of responding to quiet quitting through the workplace by saying, “Come to us; we have the coolest offices in the entire startup nation,” but rather through a space that extends beyond the physical location. This shift in perspective challenges our assumptions about workspaces, work styles, organization, values, and personal life.