Intelligent and Compelling Workplace Experiences: Enabling and Enhancing Collaboration

Creating spaces that inspire creativity and uplift collaboration for the future of work

For a skill that’s been proven to be a key driver for innovation and growth, collaboration is often oversimplified. So while its importance to organizational success is universally acknowledged, companies have done very little to define how they effectively support and enhance collaboration among their teams.

There’s been an expectation that a physical office space with meeting rooms outfitted with tables, chairs, whiteboards, and digital displays was the solution for a high-performing collaboration program. The approach was focused more on capacity needs (‘how many spaces do I need and how large do they need to be?’) versus designing spaces tailored to enhance and augment the collaboration experience.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to take a deeper look at collaboration within their organizations and address gaps in the digital experience. Faced with the immediate need to keep employees connected while working remotely, leaders invested aggressively in digital tools that enabled dispersed teams to collaborate effectively.

More productive working from home

The results were overwhelmingly positive from a productivity perspective. A survey conducted by the University of Chicago, ITAM, MIT, and Stanford University, found that 40% of workers reported that they were more productive at home during the pandemic than they had been when in the office. Just 15% said the opposite was true. The research, “Why working from home will stick”, also suggests that productivity trends will remain strong as employers adopt permanent work-from-home programs.

The advantages of working from home and the ability to remain productive have led many employees to start questioning the benefits of the physical workplaces their organizations provide. If employees believe they are equally or more productive at home than they are in an office, there needs to be a shift in how companies leverage their physical environments to provide value for their users.

With many organizations embarking on “future of work” initiatives, addressing the in-office collaboration experience is an imperative first step. Enabling collaboration and creating compelling in-office experiences will be the differentiator between organizations that find success in their future of work programs and those that struggle to maximize returns on their workplace investments.

The key to collaboration? An integrated intelligent workplace

Enabling collaboration starts with deploying tools that help facilitate and encourage employee interaction. Why is this so essential? Hybrid working models empower employees with much needed choice and control over how and where they work, but they can also contribute to declining interactions, shrinking networks, and accelerated employee turnover.

This is where physical workplaces shine and why they are such a crucial element of the work experience. Having employees co-located in a physical space can lead to spontaneous interactions, expanded employee networks, and feeling connected to the organization, all elements that enhance and maximize the collaboration experience. However, if employees are coming into the office, they want to know that the people they work with will be there as well. After all, why make the commute to the office only to learn that the people you need to collaborate with are remote for the day?

The foundation for supporting employees with this vital information is a thoughtfully integrated solution that brings together space reservation and real-time occupancy data, with insights from a productivity suite like Microsoft Office 365.

Imagine this experience: You reserve a day and space at the office equipped with the knowledge that the people you collaborate with will be there too. When you arrive, an interactive digital display shares that a person you had a “meet and greet” call with, a week prior, is also in at work. As your day progresses, you’re notified that the café space is currently active, and it may be a good opportunity to connect with your co-workers.

These are the types of experiences that will enable and even encourage collaboration in a hybrid world — a world in which ambiguity over where work happens can lead to shrinking internal social networks and organizational silos.

Compelling experiences that can’t be achieved at home

Beyond helping facilitate collaboration with an integrated and intelligent workplace platform, organizations need to provide employees with compelling, immersive experiences. Static meeting rooms with long rectangular tables and chairs will no longer meet the expectations of users in the workplace. A 2021 study by Leesman found that the average home-working environment now scored much higher than the average office on the Leesman Index.

The places where we meet in person must inspire creativity and augment our collaboration experiences. Otherwise, we risk losing the innovation that collaboration is intended to spark. Immersive experiences are the future of our office environments and will become the expectation of employees. Leveraging technologies like AR and VR will create experiences that far exceed the capabilities that users have at home. These tools, when thoughtfully planned, help elevate collaboration and take our meetings from times on our calendars to discuss work to engaging interactions where products are created and problems are solved.

Employees are eager to use the office for experiences that go beyond what they can accomplish anywhere on their phones and laptops. Maker spaces, ideation hubs, design studios, and VR labs will become the most used spaces in future workplaces. Planning and designing these types of spaces now is how we’ll unlock the potential of our office environments.

However, because of utilization, adoption of these types of experiences have historically been underwhelming, causing leaders to remain reluctant to invest in them. While there are many possible reasons for this, lack of consistent workplace programs and change management are the top reasons. We must educate our teams about how to use the spaces we deploy and create strategic plans that govern how these spaces fit into future workplace programs.

Bringing to life an intelligent and compelling workplace

As workplace leaders turn their focus to capitalizing on collaboration in physical office environments, how best to get started? Here are five steps to consider:

1. Study collaboration

Identify how, why, when, and in what form collaboration happens in the new normal. When people and teams come together, what are the activities that need to be supported, what are the tools and technologies they use, and how easy are they to leverage fully?

2. Assess what you have

Assess existing meeting spaces to quantify how the furnishings/layout, tools and services support new needs, such as hybrid working. Focus on the technology, operations, and physical environment that comprise these spaces and assess audio, video, content sharing, access to analog and digital whiteboards, reservation, occupancy monitoring, lighting, HVAC, air quality and end-user support models. Accenture has developed a room maturity assessment tool that helps clients rapidly identify gaps and provides benchmarking to inform strategy, prioritization, and investments in this area.

3. Identify gaps & opportunities

Consolidate findings from the first two activities and pinpoint the areas where users encounter obstacles, where opportunities exist to enable new experiences or where data can be collected to help you make informed real-time or future decisions that will, in turn, improve how the office provisions for collaboration.

4. Rapidly prototype

Pilot technology and build prototype environments that solve identified needs. For example, examine the value of an AI voice assistant or see how insights extracted from a productivity suite like Office 365 can be integrated with a space reservation system to encourage users to use different types of spaces. Use the data captured to decide what works and what doesn’t. Then refine again.

5. Govern & execute

Form a cross-functional governance team with the mandate to ensure all workplace technology programs remain aligned and are thoughtfully integrated into the new experience. This team should be responsible for defining the “north star” for experience and the long-term strategy for the tools, processes, and technologies that are adopted, as well as overseeing program execution.

Productive spaces are more important now than ever before

How, when, and where we collaborate has changed. But the impact collaboration has for an organization has not. While harder to achieve when people can choose to work from anywhere, organizations must invest in the technologies that help facilitate collaboration and enhance it when their people are in the office together.

A company’s physical workplaces will remain a crucial component that helps the organization drive innovation and build company culture. However, the technology gaps that currently exist in most workplaces prevent the physical environment from realizing the purpose that employees believe offices must serve in the future.

In the wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, expectations of physical workplaces have changed permanently as employees have proved that there are other viable options to support where and how they work. The snacks are great, the views are cool, and the furniture is comfortable, but organizations that fail to address how the physical space enables and enhances the collaboration experience will find that their teams struggle to realize the value of the workplaces they provide.