What if we could foresee the future of work? For Bertie van Wyk, Insight Program Manager for MillerKnoll, the workplace will be somewhere we come to “connect”, where ideally, we spend 2-3 days in this environment where we are physically together. Listen to our teaser podcast which introduces some of the themes Bertie will be touching on at Workplace Trends Research Summit this Wednesday 19th March 2023.

The recently published data from the Future Forum Consortium, of which MillerKnoll is a member, is interesting. This Consortium interviews 10,000 knowledge workers every quarter. 81% employees want the flexibility to say where they work, but interestingly 93% want flexibility for WHEN they work. The answer is a balance, something that works well for both the employee and the business.

Wellbeing and sustainability for Bertie, are two completely different entities. At Miller Knoll, they even split Wellbeing into three. For instance, there’s your physical health within a working environment, whether that is your co-working space or working from home. Then there is the cognitive side, which is fantastic, and biophilic design plays a big role in this, how we try and make better decisions faster within the environments that you are in and also help decrease your stress levels.

The cognitive design element is incredible. When we change our environments, this has a really big impact on how you feel and if you combine that with great wayfinding, our stress levels reduce too. With really great design, we can understand what the purpose of a space is for without having any stress of looking for a sign of trying to figure out.

The last facet of Wellbeing is social welfare. What we mean by this, is “how can we help people have better connections, better feelings within the environment through designing social behaviours within a floor space within a layout. Helping people have those connections so they can choose how much privacy they want to have and how much they want to give.

As designers, when we are designing the workplace, we need to consider TWO places. The “office” and the “home”. As a business, you have a responsibility to ensure that your staff have the correct ergonimcs, lighting as well as ensuring that you are reaching your CO2 targets. Bertie starting sharing some figures with us before we ran out of time, it seems there is a danger that working from home uses more CO2 than working from the office. There are some perameters of course, which Bertie shares with us here, but if you are working from home, consider where you source your electricity from, how you insulate your home, how much electricity you use, which mode of transport you use when you do go into the office..

If people are working fom home 2 -3 days or working week, that’s half their productive time, then we are not just designing people for working environment, but also their homes. We need to help our employees understand that need to take breaks, spend time in nature, have better chairs, and air quality, acoustics, but we must also now be aware that we need to mimic that for their home.

Bertie goes on to share some surprising statistics, and it is worth looking at the reports from MillerKnoll. And that is where we wrapped up our interview… so if you want to find out more about how much a video call uses in terms of energy use, what we should be doing to create sustainable offices, come and ask Bertie in person and join us at The Workplace Trends Research Summit, or sign up on their website to watch the post-event video streams to find out more.

To contact Bertie visit https://workplacetrends.co/register-of-workplace-consultants/bertie-van-wyk-2/ follow him on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/bertievanwyk/ and MilerKnoll https://www.mkinsightgroup.com

Bertie will be speaking at the Workplace Trends conference on 19th April 2023, in London https://workplacetrends.co

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