The challenge of instituting collaborative workplace designs that work across the shop
Even longstanding traditional retailers are now investigating collaborative workplace designs that encourage new ways of working through the use of social, sharing workplace technologies and new workspace architectures.
In the early stages of any open research endeavour, you can never be sure what the trigger is for respondents to come forward, nor who, if anyone, will be interested in what you are investigating, or about what your work will uncover. This seems especially true when the subject is workplace change, when few have yet experienced the change you are writing about, and are still working in the old paradigm.
Consequently, this makes it reassuring to discover a business of a quite traditional form contemplating the necessary changes to its workplace practices the future will inevitably demand.
My interviewee this time around, who has chosen to remain anonymous, but who I will refer to as Matt, is the digital brains behind the investigation of the business case needed to take into a new age of digital collaboration and workplace learning a large, multi-brand retailer of significant enough vintage for anything radical to be a substantial threat to its established modus operandi.
“Our initiative is mainly led by HR and IT, and I manage a team here responsible for the strategic direction of digital for the group, and we are in the process of looking at how we can manage better collaboration across the organisation.
“What started a very long time ago is now a group with several thousand members across Asia and Australia, so what we’re looking at now is how we can collaborate better and what tools and what software we can use.
“Obviously, we have been old school, using Microsoft Outlook and Word.”
But now, within a team often rusted into outdated practices, Matt says, “We are looking at Google and Google Apps, obviously, for document publishing, but also for Google Hangouts.
When I talk of what I personally have experienced, through working for six months in the Commonwealth Bank’s opulent Sydney Darling Harbour ABW workspace, and through a recent visit to the “minimum viable office” geared to innovation of a major Sydney financial institution, Matt tells me of a study tour his transformation team took recently.
“Our CEO is really passionate about exploring collaboration, and a group of six of us, from our HR team, IT and project management paid a visit to the campus of [another extremely large retail organisation which has embraced activity based working], which showed us through what they have done. They were really open, and I was blown away by some of their collaborative workspaces.
“Our recommendation back to our business was that we can do all this with software. That’s a fairly easy thing for us to do, because Google has this down with its tools, from A to Z.
“That’s the relatively easy bit,” he says, “But things like having the right breakout work spaces, will be what brings [this initiative] to life.
“For it to really work, we also have to make sure we have the right spaces, and as well that they are equipped to make the most of this software. There is, for example, no point in having all these [technologies like Google] Hangouts that enable rapid collaboration if you walk into a meeting room and it takes you ten minutes to set up video software.
If you go down the Google route, you can replace your desktop, with a single device, a Google Chromebook … but there are any number of people who have been here for 10 or 20 years who like having their desk where it is, and the certainty that brings
“But that means you also have to look at the hardware people use, and if you go down the Google route, you can replace, with a single device, a Google Chromebook [laptop], your desktop, your phone and everything you have that is currently plugged into five different sockets on your wall.
“That bit can be done easily, so you can set up and work everywhere you want with one device. But, while we think about how we can use this technology better, implementing the new changes to the way we work is probably, to be honest, one of the last steps on the journey, as we are in retail, and there are any number of people who have been here for 10 or 20 years who like having their desk where it is, and the certainty that brings, because that is the nature of their personality.
“In a long-established business, there are also people who have fiefdoms to protect and knowledge they don’t wish to share, and some people also just don’t want to collaborate.
“If you’re an introvert, you might also think, well, I don’t want to be available to be on a video call anytime I am sitting in front of my computer, so don’t do that to me because I need my time and I need to get into my zone. You’ve got to be wary of that.
The anticipated benefits of better collaboration and better shared knowledge across the business may also be challenged by the business’s structure, with, “different brands not doing a lot of sharing because they compete against each other.”
The hope that ultimately, simple utility, and the idea of getting better ideas out quicker and more easily will win out, bringing with it necessary culture change may be similarly challenged by the visual symbolism of the company’s workplace.
Matt says that to get the optimum effect from new ways of working, “The technology obviously has to remain in step with the evolution of the workspaces, but I don’t think we have worked this all out yet, and we recognise that in workplaces such as our own, the premises are an obstacle to communication in themselves.”
He says his office might actually create an impediment to sharing and learning. “We are very cost-oriented, so if you walked into our office, which is halfway between a shed and an office, it’s not very glamorous. It is scruffy, it’s down and dirty retail, and my view is that it stifles a bit of creativity or innovation because it is not a visually inspiring place.
“I imagine that it looks exactly the same as it did 20 years ago, yet we are the source of much jealousy and considered lucky in that we occupy an area with a window that looks onto the car park.”
But, while its premises might not match the modernity of its practices, this is in fact a company whose leadership group was quick to realise that the old retail model was not going to be there forever, and which may be now be a leader in Australia among those “multi-channel” retailers who sell both instore and online.
“Because we are now a big organisation, we see a kind of less formal, more regular and effective way of working and connecting as desirable. So that’s one part of it, and having these tools, whether it is Google coming in, or something else, that, yes, signals, we are a changed culture.
“But, even without this knowledge and reassurance, it’s still a big project. It may not be technically the most difficult, but the shift in our culture to embrace new ways of working will be a really big change.”
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About this post
This post was originally published at shiroarchitects.com.
See also:
How To Use Social Technologies To Enhance Your Workplace Design Briefing
Relocation: New thinking on workplace design briefing
Posted at The Urban Developer:
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About Shiro Architects
Workplace strategy is where building design, modern technology and new ways of working come together to deliver the future of work. Through dedicated research, we aim to understand how to create workplace-design briefings that satisfy the evolving needs of occupants, owners, investors and developers of commercial office space. For organisations looking to use relocation to kick-start change in the ways their teams think and learn, we champion the use of sense-making workplace social technologies applied to this purpose.
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