The idea below is one of the 20+ ideas from our 2023 Occupant Experience Ideabook (which you can download here). Today's idea comes from Impec Group's Vice President of Workplace Strategies Shuli Steele who discusses how employers should design their office spaces around the college campus lifestyle.
Shuli Steele, VP of Workplace Strategies, Impec Group
Post-secondary institutions are hallowed ground and time on campus is part of a student’s maturation process. Students register for courses and participate in classroom and laboratory (applied) learning. A clear rubric is in place: participate at this level, produce these results, receive this grade. It’s a contract of sorts that pairs agency with accountability. Historically learning was categorized as on-ground, online, or hybrid but has evolved to more flexible or seamless experiences affording students greater autonomy to select a variety of academic – and social – settings.
According to Gallup, Gen Z and millennials now make up nearly half (46%) of the full-time workforce in the U.S. As knowledge workers, these employees spent time experiencing a seamless campus with far more freedoms than they are afforded in the workplace. Aside from a few highly visible, campus-like buildings with expansive settings (think Google’s Bay Area Dragon-scale) most offer few choices.
Take advantage of the abundance of office space and think of a higher education campus when designing spaces and furnishings for the workplace. Create physical and digital settings with seamless transitions. Give employees freedom to choose and rubrics for accountability. Connect the concept of rubrics to ROI and other measurements of business success.
2023 is the year of responsible choice.
To read more ideas from the 2023 Occupant Experience Ideabook, go to our download page