Build It

11Workspace

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, we will:

• Understand the evolving role of workspace with employee engagement and productivity.
• Look at ways workspace has to change to meet the needs of the business and our workforces.

Key Points

• Physical and virtual workspaces are enablers and destroyers of employee engagement.
• As jobs become more varied, workspace has taken on a more important and strategic role in employee engagement.
• If our workspaces are to truly “work,” we need to take into consideration that work is done in different ways by different people to achieve different objectives.
• Building great workspaces takes courage and a commitment to updating work practices.

Introduction

If I'd written this book two years earlier, this chapter would have been very different. In fact, it might not have been here at all. Workspace wasn't in the early versions of the Bridge™ model; it came as a late, but important, addition to the party.

My initial lack of enthusiasm for this element was caused by my own misunderstanding. First, I thought of it as workplace, thinking primarily about the physical environment, which invoked thoughts of the lavish workplaces of wealthy companies. I thought they might have a role in recruitment—who doesn't want to work in a cool office?—but I didn't really see the role in longer‐term employee engagement.

Things became clearer when I started to understand workspace as a broader concept: virtual, physical and the wider work environment, ...