office design austin

WATER COOLER CHAT: Some Insights on Shifting Workforce, Shifting Expectations

As we create new workplaces to support organizational goals, those workplaces must do their part to attract and retain top talent and enable team performance. Much has been written about what the newest members of the workforce want and how to design for them. This shifting workforce is driving the change of expectation across the board.

This is only part of the picture. As the workforce evolves – not only by adding the next generations, but also by becoming global and increasingly diverse, flexible, full-time, or contingent – our expectations of the workplace continue to evolve as well. Expectations are and will continue to be a moving target. We now have definitive insights into six significant factors that consistently correlate to knowledge worker performance that we can apply. Our challenge, then, is to design a dynamic, adaptive workplace that embraces diversity in all its forms, and enables the more timeless elements that support performance: relationship building and social cohesion, trust, effective communication, and expertise sharing.

The nature of work has changed greatly over the past few decades – it is faster-paced, increasingly complex, ambiguous, unpredictable, and more collaborative and connected. It demands much more than just ”showing up.” Today’s highest-value knowledge workers are extremely adept at assessing and analyzing the data that is critical to the task at hand, possess excellent problem- solving skills, and are exible and agile in order to address unforeseen challenges as they arise. We’re hiring unique and creative minds, not interchangeable workers. Read More