It is sometimes easy to forget that our shared work experience is exactly that – a shared experience. One that is shaped, for better or worse, by our daily interactions with the people we serve, and the people we work along-side. The global pandemic has amplified this forgetfulness, as working from home has distanced many of us from one of the most rewarding and defining parts of our work. Our relationships with the people around us. For a growing number of workers, we have become isolated and alone, and quite possibly to dire effect.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2021 study, 85% of employees are not engaged in the workplace. This means that the majority of the workforce are either viewing their workplace negatively or only doing the bare minimum to make it through the day, with little to no emotional attachment.
Research conducted in 2020 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that nearly half – 49% – of the American population spent time working at least 7.6 hours per day. This percentage of time for nearly half the US population far out weights the studied number flexible leisure hours.
The opportunity is vast for organizations to impact an individual’s whole life through creating intentional space for personal purpose and wellbeing.
But this isn’t a new revelation for most.
Organizations have invested countless resources to drive employee engagement at work. 71% of executives say that employee engagement is critical to their company’s success. Programming throughout the employment lifecycle has proven to drive up engagement survey results and have led to increased talent attraction and retention, which have long been performance measures revered by the C-Suite for decades.
The most effective employee engagement planning efforts are those that uniquely amplify an organization’s culture. Afterall, an organizational culture – or ethos – is what sets these experiences apart from one company to the next. At +One, we define culture as the beliefs of people expressed through their collective behavior repeated over time.
While studying and consulting on how to influence culture for over 12+ years, +One co-founder, Laura Eley, has partnered with some of the world’s leading organizations to design culture-building solutions, like immersive onboarding and learning experiences. When it came time to activate these solutions in the day-to-day flow of work, so often these digital and in-person experiences happened in random locations around or through whatever connection space was available at the moment. Digitally this often looked like a combination of social chat channels or video-conferencing systems, as well as whatever HR tech apps were available. In-person this historically looked like a combination of crowded, sterile break stations, stuffy conference rooms, and loud café areas where more private conversations feel awkward and constrained.
Similar to Laura, the other half of the +One founding team spent his entire career solving for human-centered challenges related to organizational culture, belonging, and the learning experience. A 20+ year career as a commercial interior designer and a passion for people led Chris Good to collaborations with design thinking organizations, public universities, and start-up accelerators as a consultant, mentor, coach, and practitioner. While his work has been founded in the physical world and the experiences we share within the built environment – Chris has become a prominent thought leader on positively shaping human behavior and team dynamics.
Bringing people and place together has been the core thread throughout all his work and is central to the promise of +One
Ways and Places
When most people think of special gatherings – weddings, baby showers, honeymoons, graduation parties – they obsess just as much about the setting as they do the experiences that will take place. Why is it that we don’t obsess the same way about our work and our workplaces?
- What if culture-building experiences were actually designed around the ways and places people organically come together?
- What if the people thinking about the people and place experience came together to design these experiences together?
- What does this look like in business landscape where digital transformation investment is on the rise and commercial real estate is on the decline by 20% on average according to a 2021 Deloitte study?
A shared curiosity and passion to bridge this gap is what brought co-founders, Laura and Chris, together in 2019, to form what would become a new venture of One Workplace, +One. A consultancy that exists to guide organizational leaders to take a deep look into their culture and to activate better experiences that harness the ways and places people come alive together.
Our fast-growing practice could not have been founded at a better time, as individuals and organizations are now questioning the many assumptions that have shaped our work and our workplaces for decades. Renewed emphasis on why our work matters and the relationships we create along the way has allowed the +One team the opportunity to help both growing and established organizations find and express their purpose and energize their people.
Contact us to share your story and learn about how +One can serve you.