Work Life by Design

How do you know what size tenancy is going to be right for you? Current space +10%? Industry average?

In this episode we'll be exploring some of the common mistakes that are made in determining how much space you need. I'll then share with you three steps that you can take to analyse how your organisation is using your workplace in order to put some data and science behind determining the floor area that your business will need.

This episode covers a LOT and gets into the finer details of determining your office space requirements so that you are well informed when going to market for your next workplace.

Melissa Marsden | www.melissamarsden.com.au

Sarah Skeats is a Partner of BoB Group, or otherwise known as Business of Brand, where she is also the Managing Director of BoB Australia. BoB are a purpose driven business supporting organisations to make an impact and "shift the world into a new era".

Sarah has delivered record-breaking acquisition, retention and brand campaigns with leading global and national brands including Microsoft, Telstra and recently as the Head of Brand at NAB, where she delivered the latest brand strategy, More than Money.

However as you'll hear in our discussion, Sarah realised that in order to truly deliver on a brand strategy, it needed to be integrated into the entire business, which she realised very quickly needed alignment with the culture team. The success of this strategy was how it was tied back to the core of the business and alignment with the organisational purpose.

We also discuss

• the difference between brand and branding
• the impact of brand through every touch point of a business and how it's instrumental in from the top in defining purpose & vision right through to sales & products
• the opportunity that comes from pulling your market towards you through by building community
• As well as how uncovering and shining a light on your employee's personal brands can open up new market channels and revenue streams in your business

We also chat about one of our clients Hall Chadwick, their brand story and how the process of uncovering their brand enabled them to visually see how they showed up through the physical environment. You can listen to that one again if you missed it back at Eps 3, of the podcast.

Sarah explains how when we connect into purpose, understanding our brand and our community, we can then create a space that articulates their brand and bring it to life in a physical space. She also shares with us the true impact that a well-executed brand can have on your business, and how investing in your people enables you to live up to your brand promise, along with the role that purpose plays in business.

Sarah has worked with hundreds of businesses and business leaders globally, helping them grow and step into their own potential through brand led growth. She is here to shift their belief of what's possible.

BoB Earth www.bobearth.com

BoB https://businessofbrand.com

Your Workplace Future Ready Program - JOIN THE WAITLIST! https://www.melissamarsden.com.au/your_workplace_future_ready

Creating a new workplace can be a really exciting but also daunting time. There are a lot of big decisions that need to be made and these decisions are ones that we are going to be needing to live with for a long time.

In this episode we discuss all the factors that influence the cost of your workplace from floor area and workplace style through to how your brand influences the level of finish that you desire. We'll also be looking at how time impacts on costs and how with the right lease deal, you can actually build a new workplace for FREE.

Your workplace is an investment in the future of your organisation. It is the space that enables your people. When done well, your workplace is an asset that continue to perform for your business.

Melissa Marsden | www.melissamarsden.com.au

Workplace Dynamics Blueprint | Your Workplace Future Ready https://www.melissamarsden.com.au/your_workplace_future_ready

Dealing with the tough stuff is not new to any of us, but actually doing this and doing it well can be a challenge for many us. Thankfully this is at the heart of what Ali Hill loves to support leaders and organisations to do daily.

Ali is a registered psychologist and CEO of three-time AFR 100 company Pragmatic Thinking. Using her expertise across leadership, culture and psychology, she and the team at Pragmatic thinking help organisations build better leaders by building better people.

Ali is also the author of two best selling books and the host of one of Australia's top podcasts Stand Out Life.

In this episode Ali talks us through the opportunity we each have in our organisations to create high performing teams, how we can embrace the ability to support our remote and distributed teams, her shift in thinking around the link between culture and performance and shares how the team at Pragmatic Thinking have implemented three key structures into their day to help them focus their motivation and productivity.

Ali gives us a few tips on how we can have the tough conversations and the impact of "contaminated space" and our emotional memory and how we can still continue to have our tough conversations even over zoom!

A really insightful conversation on the actions that we can each take to support our teams and continue to adapt to our evolving environments.

www.melissamarsden.com.au

Pragmatic Thinking

Pragmatic Thinking – Linkedin

Ali Hill – Instagram

Workplace styles - What are our options? What are the various types of environments that exist for us to consider when moving into our new workplace? Now is a really exciting time for us to reimagine our workplace in the future. We've been presented with so many possibilities that lie before us. We're going to be looking at everything from the traditional right through to running a remote workforce, and what makes up each style and how different types of industries have typically aligned with each style. We look at how technology is enabling us to work differently and what that means from a workplace environment perspective.

If you enjoyed this episode, I would love you to engage in the conversation further and jump on over to Facebook and join our COMUNiTI Dialogue Group. You'll find other great resources and people to connect with on a similar journey.

COMUNiTI Dialogue | https://www.facebook.com/groups/697144931023446/

Melissa | www.melissamarsden.com.au

Coworking is a concept that has fascinated me for years. In this episode, Jonathon and I unpack how these spaces operate and what the financial metrics & community engagement needs are to make this model work for both the operator and the resident. But perhaps even more importantly we discuss how the design of our physical environment influences our behaviour and organisational performance, and how he has seen this first hand through the tenants of his coworking space.

Born in Ireland, raised in the Middle East, educated in the United Kingdom and living in Singapore. Jonathan has experienced some interesting insights into the way the world works

Jonathan found his love for entrepreneurship early; founding his first company in Singapore at the age of twenty four. After learning the hard way how isolating international entrepreneurship can be, he went on to found one of Singapore's first coworking businesses, Collective Works in 2012 at the age of twenty six using his skills of expatriate community building to create environments that supported people.

In this episode we discuss everything from what coworking is and is not, how the traditional model of the serviced office has evolved and how technology can be sophisticated enough to service even the highest of security requirements.

We also explore the importance of design iteration; the ability to observe and reinvent spaces to accommodate the changing needs of the people who use the space. Jonathon went so far as to create 9 persona's for his clients in order to support their varied needs, and space for both the extrovert and the introvert.

We even discussed what the future of commercial leasing may hold and how coworking has disrupted the real estate market and the opportunity to move from an asset mindset to that of a user experience.

Jonathon has a wonderful way of seeing the world and connecting the dots. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, as I got to dig into all the things I've been quite curious to know about running a successful coworking operation. If this is something you're keen to explore further, you can also grab a copy of his book.

Melissamarsden.com.au

Jonathan O'Byrne | https://www.jonathanobyrne.com/pages/about

Jonathan O'Byrne Book | - https://www.jonathanobyrne.com/pages/coworking-inc-book

The global pandemic has shifted how we work. While we can't predict the long term impact that the pandemic will have on our workplaces, what we have seen is an acceleration of the future of work and the role that technology is going to have in keeping us safe and enabling our productivity.

In this episode we explore what some of the technology's that our buildings may look to incorporate into the future and how workplace management technology will enable us to monitor, manage and coordinate our workplaces. We'll discuss the role of wellbeing and how our buildings will look to become "healthier" into the future and how that can then translate into the physical design to enable employee wellbeing.

To support the evolution into the future a Workplace Strategy will be required as the foundation from which we build upon and this will encourage us to look at the true purpose of workplaces and where we are going as an organisation. We discuss the shift in binary thinking of "either/or" to "and" and how this shift in mindset will lead to a hybrid approach to work and the opportunities it will present.

I'll also share my views on the idea that the "hot desk is dead".

I mentioned a few resources in the episode, you'll find those here;

COMUNiTI Returning to the Workplace Toolkit https://comuniti.com.au/returning-to-the-workplace/?fbclid=IwAR3WuZb22GM7si8d7fPxxD9s3ZZXFZq-IrkHl9-85XK-hVF32iwiA7ck1mo

WELL Building Standards https://www.wellcertified.com

Unwork Article https://www.unwork.com/blog/how-covid-19-will-change-the-world-part-three-workplace/?fbclid=IwAR1QVVq90wqXr2CjJjnUchPhZi4Dddcb0GmqrhWUE3YZfdyf6lOw9IsXxlY

Melissamarsden.com.au

Why does your organisation need a wellness strategy?

As we are navigating our way through one of the most challenging times in our history, never has there been a more important time to develop and implement a wellness strategy that responds to the needs of your organisation. Many organisations roll out fruit boxes, flu shots and engage their people in step count challenges. While done with the very best of intentions, these initiatives can often be seen as failing to provide an ROI to the organisation, as they aren't connected to the corporate objectives and goals of the business.

Katrina Walton is the founder and director of Wellness Designs, a boutique workplace wellness business supporting Australasian organisations to create healthy, safe, engaged and high performing workplaces. Katrina and the team at Wellness Designs have identified that in order for a wellness strategy to truly succeed, that the capability to manage the strategy needs to come from within the organisation. So they develop their practitioner training program to ensure those charged with supporting the organisation were supported themselves. They have since gone on to launch the hub, a workplace wellness Resource Centre and community for those interested in knowing, learning and sharing all things workplace wellness.

Katrina believes that healthy employees equal healthy organisations which equals a healthy economy, a win win scenario. In this episode, we look at what a wellness strategy is, why your business needs one, and how you can ensure that your wellness strategy is delivering value to your business and isn't just another strategy that gets filed in the drawer.

Wellness Designs | https://wellnessdesigns.com.au/

Melissa Marsden | https://www.melissamarsden.com.au/

What is the True Purpose of our Workplace? This episode explores why we go to work, how we came to be at this place we call work and how our workplaces fill a social need and connection in each of us. We also look at how our workplaces connect our personal purpose to that of the organisation and how we can achieve significant productivity and performance gains when we socialise at work.

"If in doubt, do it!"

Putting off starting a family in exchange for your career, is a conversation that I have had many times with my female friends and colleagues. In this episode of Work Life by Design I'm chatting with Nadia Taylor from Mapien on her experience of shifting from thinking she didn't want children to integrating her new son Atlas not only into her career but also into her workplace.

As a passionate advocate for returning mums to the workplace, I was fortunate enough to watch as Nadia navigate this experience successfully, returning to work with Atlas in arms at 2 weeks old. Nadia inspired me that it was possible to continue to operate a successful business and return to work with a baby with a little planning.

As an Executive Director at Mapien, Workplace Strategists, Nadia shares with us her career journey of growing from a graduate to building a million dollar practice and how deciding to have a child was decision she had put off. We discuss the impact that a lack of role models can have on your perception of what is acceptable, the fear that stops us from asking for opportunities at work, along with the cultural shift that comes from having a baby in the office.

If you are considering starting a family and how you can continue your career or are an organisation looking to embrace greater flexibility for your workforce, you need to tune into this episode!

Melissamarsden.com.au

Mapien.com.au

Take your baby to work by Sarita James