Workspace Design Lab | Healthy Spaces, Lasting Impact

Why Your Office Is Designed Wrong (And Data Proves It) | Stephen Smith, Reworc | Workspace Design Lab Ep. 12

• Sylvanna VanderPark • Episode 12

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 30:44

What if the biggest mistake in workplace design is starting with the building instead of the people? In this episode of Workspace Design Lab, Sylvanna VanderPark sits down with Stephen Smith, VP of People Analytics at Reworc, to explore how people data can reshape the way architects, designers, and workplace leaders think about office design, hybrid work, and employee performance. With experience spanning human resources, corporate real estate, and people analytics, Stephen shares what data from more than 500,000 employees reveals about flexibility, workspace intentionality, and why the best environments are designed from the inside out.

From return to office mandates to activity based working, this conversation looks at what organizations should really be measuring if they want spaces that support better work. Stephen explains why days in office can be a misleading metric, why choice without intentionality falls short, and how organizations can use holistic measurement to connect culture, performance, and workplace design.

If you are an architect, interior designer, facility manager, or workplace strategist looking to create more human centered workspace solutions, this episode offers practical insight into how better data can lead to better design decisions.

Guest Links

Podcast Links

🔗 Explore NovaLink’s product and process for effortless workspace design.

Workspace Design Lab | Healthy Spaces, Lasting Impact

📅 New episodes release every 2nd Thursday at 6 AM ET / GMT-4.

Join host Syl VanderPark as we explore ergonomic office design, modern interiors, and sustainable workspace solutions with architects, designers, and industry leaders.

Watch and subscribe on YouTube.

💡 If this conversation helped you reimagine what a workspace can be, share it with a colleague or client. Together we can design offices that support wellbeing, productivity, and lasting impact.

Produced by APodcastGeek

Coming up...

Stephen Smith

Right now we're kind of just control seeing and control V and copying and pasting and expecting people just to adapt to it. I think that's lazy.

Sylvanna VanderPark

That's Stephen Smith, VP of People Analytics and Principal at ReWork, a company that is rethinking how work gets done by bringing together technology and social science. Steven's career sits at a rare intersection. He holds a master's in industrial organizational psychology. He has worked in both human resources and corporate real estate. And today he leads a team that has analyzed data from over half a million employees worldwide.

Stephen Smith

We start with the people. Once we understand the work and the people, then we can start to understand the typologies that will reinforce this.

What should organizations measure instead of budget and occupancy?

Sylvanna VanderPark

He believes the best workspaces are designed from the inside out, starting with the people, not the building. In a world where return to office mandates are making headlines and organizations are spending millions on office redesigns, Steven brings the data to answer a question most companies are not asking. Does this space actually help our people to do their best work? In this episode, you'll learn why occupancy rates and budgets do not tell the full story of what makes a workspace work, what data from over 500,000 employees reveals about the gap between what leadership assumes workers need and what they actually need, and what architects, designers, and facilities managers can start doing tomorrow to bring people data into their process. I'm Sol Vanderpark, and this is Workspace Design Lab. Organizations typically measure workspace success by whether the project was on time, on budget, and whether people showed up. What should they be measuring instead?

Stephen Smith

On time, on budget, of course, matters, right? We're that's just, you know, kind of table stakes, I believe. But how is the space and the money that we're putting into this not only supporting the work that we're doing today, but how is it reinforcing a better use of our time? I don't want to just just support work. I want to understand what are the outcomes we expect from people. And of course, those are things like productivity and performance. And then how do I use space to reinforce a better use of that? So, from my perspective, my background, it's always trying to tie motivation and human work and the tools that we have to make us do that work to be more successful employees and leaders. And if we're doing that, we are creating an environment in which we are all changing space from a commoditization to a, I think, a very proven asset that can make our business better. So I'm usually gonna go to back to things like the internal value chain and how do we speed up the connection? And how do we make sure that our space is helping us to perform better in terms of the bottom line that leaders seem to go straight to all the time?

Sylvanna VanderPark

What are the key things that you've found? I mean, this kind of starts to go into like hybrid versus in-office, or you know, is it bonding events, those kinds of things that build uh trust, build a team, or is it kind of assets that are available or internet, making internet consistent, you know, whether you're at home or at work?

What 500,000 employees reveal about flexibility

Stephen Smith

I think it's all of the above. I think if I had to try to boil it down in terms of, you know, what are the things that are quote unquote most important for us and what are we learning through this process? It's you know, things like activity-based working was a good idea, but I reject the notion that there is one universal, you know, set of typologies that everybody needs to have to be everything we need. I think in psychology, we talk about choice fatigue. We talk about people not knowing what they don't know. I want to create intentional-based design. I want to use the tools and the assets to customize and tailor to the uniqueness of the work that the people are doing. If you're doing this for an insurance firm, for the actuarial team, it's gonna be very different than that same firm from a marketing team. It's gonna be very different from a retail organization or an upper education. But right now, we're kind of just control seeing and control V, copying and pasting and expecting people just to adapt to it. I think that's lazy. I think we can be much smarter with it. We are trying to lure people back to the office with, like you said, like, you know, concerts or bonding or any of these things. And that's a huge part, sure. But if we're creating space and time for people to do work that's better elsewhere, why would I want to come to your campus to do work? Like people are very honest and open. And in our data, we can see very clearly the kind of work that people need to do in an office together. So let's build our spaces to do that. Like if you're creating a bunch of cubicles for analyzing, like people are much better at home with two screens, not being distracted, cranking out code. But I want to mill an office for things that people need an office for. And then you'll see that people will start to come because it does what they need them to do. So I guess broadly, I would think more about the intentionality of our design and our policies versus, you know, trying to create either fake sticks or fake carrots that don't last very long.

Sylvanna VanderPark

So through rework, you have analyzed data, this is impressive, from over like half a million employees globally. What is the most consistent finding that surprises people?

Stephen Smith

Obviously, flexibility is a big piece of that now. And I think COVID changed that and we didn't see these scores look quite the same before. Even when I ask with things about like benefits, when we ask employees about what kind of benefits are best for you, is it healthcare or is it vacation time? Oddly enough, it's flexibility. That's powerful. When people are saying that flexibility is just as important, if not more, than their healthcare. Wow, that's a real opportunity for us to uh you know double down on. I think the problem is sometimes we are fearful of letting the inmates run the asylum. And I think that's why it's really important to have, you know, freedom within a framework. How do we create a framework that kind of keeps the guardrails on there, but allows people the freedom and the autonomy to do the work that's best for them? So whether it be here or in Europe, whether it be for any industry you can think of, these same general themes start to keep popping out for us. And I think that's going to be a big piece moving forward.

Sylvanna VanderPark

The flexibility keeps coming as the number one driver then of engagement in your research. How does that square with, you know, you mentioned that with the return to office mandates we're seeing everywhere right now? You're saying the leadership really has to be willing to give freedom within certain boundaries.

Stephen Smith

Intentionality is really important because if there's no thoughtfulness on the guardrail, so to speak, yeah, things can get wonky and weird and all that stuff. But if we are thinking ahead of time and being mindful, I also think you asked a question earlier about the kind of metrics we're using. I still think that days in office is a stupid metric. I I want you to talk to me about the amount of working time that I spend on a campus. So for me, even before COVID, my first corporate gig, I was a five-day-a-week employee. But I would go in every morning at eight o'clock and I would be with my teams while everybody was energized and lively and it was good. And then lunchtime would come and everybody would like just pass out at their desk for the second four hours of the day. And that's when I would take off. That's when I go home, put on my own rock music, put on my second pair of headphones and start cranking away at the stuff that I needed to do. So while technically, yes, I was a five-day employee, I was really only 50% utilization. And that works great for me and for my team and for the things that I need to do with my role. So thinking about how do we change the conversation from those traditional methods and metrics and definitions of what flexibility is and think about it in a different framework that actually allows us to do what we need to do. At the end of the day, organizations want to get better. They want better performance, they want to have a better PL. If we can show them and prove to them there's a way to do that without disrupting business, I think that's something that more people would be interested in.

Sylvanna VanderPark

So did you describe kind of your your perfect day there? You go in, energy energize morning, then go afternoon and do kind of, you know, deep think or kind of I don't know, just it's sometimes it's just that shift of location or whatever that you have around you that energizes you once again. You need that shift.

Stephen Smith

I think a lot of people do. And I think of the time and the labor we are wasting not doing it. I think we are letting people pass out the wheel and they don't need to. They don't want to. People want to do good work. There's nobody that goes to work on Monday morning saying, you know what, it is gonna be awful for next week, and I'm gonna make sure it's that way. I just think that we have uh created a system that creates this kind of opportunity, which is being able to be better. Yes, ma'am.

Sylvanna VanderPark

I'm just like imagining this. I'm imagining my office. So my main work were furniture manufacturers, and I'm just imagining the office staff, because you know, the the factory workers, they can kind of continue because they're in motion. And I think you could prove me wrong about that. But office work is where you can kind of get stuck and you're kind of sleepy after lunch or something like that, or you just need something to to to spice up your brain again, you know, after a certain amount of hours. And I totally agree with that. Now, then people you say, okay, you can go home and you can work from home, or you can go to the Starbucks. Is there now like uh continued communication through that second half of the day that because I'm just imagining from an ownership standpoint, you know, everybody just all of a sudden disappears and you're thinking, yeah, there's a lot of people who they are maybe you have to get this done by the end of the week, or you have to have this project done. And you know, you're so you're goal-oriented and stuff like that. And a lot of people will respond, but you still have to keep accountability in check there.

The accountability question leaders keep asking

Stephen Smith

At the end of the day, that we're we're running a business, right? And I want to do the things or I mean, if I thought about like a if I thought about like a sports team, man, if if if you show up every day and you're doing your job and you and you're you're running the plays the way we called it, you get freedom not to have to come in at seven o'clock in the morning. But listen, if you're not understanding the playbook, if you are not getting this thing figured out, like I'm gonna make you come in every single day and get coached hard until you get to that point. So A, there's certainly no one size fill. I don't think saying everybody's taking off these four hours versus these four hours is correct. And at the end of the day, it is all about performance and that accountability is everything. Because again, we have to be a team. We have a job to do together.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Yeah, because I the reason why I ask is because you know, some people say, well, at this job, they can do this, and that job they can do that. Yes, but over here, this is how we do things. And so you can't have just every every company operating the same way and people moving from one business to another. They really have to understand how they work best and how the companies, you know, they have to know what they're looking for. And I'm just thinking about people coming into the workforce, you know, out of college and that kind of thing. How do they find this out about themselves?

Stephen Smith

You're a rookie, man. You you're coming to rookie camp and you're going through the whole thing, you're going through Hell Week if you're in the military. I mean, we're finding that it's our two tails of the age brackets that actually like the office. You know, it's the 30-year-olds and the 40 year olds and the 50 year olds that don't really care about the office and you succeed with that aversion. But these new kids that are coming out of school crave that. They crave the energy, they crave the attention, they crave the opportunity to learn, mentor, get connected, build their career, build their network. And then once we've developed this and developed, you know, a healthy worker at this company, that's when I think we can start to, under the watchful eye of the intentional accountability you mentioned, that's when we can start to understand who has the flexibility to do these things the way they need to.

Sylvanna VanderPark

That's interesting. And then you said like the boomer generations, they like to come in to work.

Stephen Smith

We're seeing that a little bit older and a little bit more senior really appreciates the office. But it is that, yeah, that the big metal tail, I'd probably call it the 75% in the middle that are kind of, I mean, honestly, it does seem about 50-50 to our data because we ask these questions all the time. And people are pretty much telling us 50-50. But again, 50-50 to us, we don't measure in days. We're not saying two and a half days. We're saying about 50% of my 40 hours.

The meeting room myth that was costing millions

Sylvanna VanderPark

Okay. Walk us through the rework process. When an organization comes to you and says, we need to re-redesign our office, where do you start?

When office design changes behavior in unexpected ways

Stephen Smith

We start with the people. I mean, we are we are an assessment-based organization. We we've built an industrial organizational framework to help understand how work happens. And once we understand the work and the people, well, then we can start to get to the level two, which is understanding the typologies that will reinforce this to be better. But we're always tying back to the business. So for example, we had a client who was doing surveys before we got there. And one of the questions was, I have enough meeting room space. And people did not believe that was true. It was a very high red item. So they're planning on building twice as much meeting room space. But when we measured it under the guise of work, we found out that, you know, meeting was certainly their most frequented activity in the organization. I mean, I think it was like 30-ish million dollars of labor every year spent in formal meetings. And of all the activities that people did, it was dang near dead last in terms of value it provides the organization. So our analysis dives deeper and says, okay, well, what kind of meetings are these? Under half of them were brainstorming meetings or problem-solving meetings. More than half were just regular status check and updates. So our organization is doing a lot of an activity that's not very good for us. We don't really like it. But if we're going to do it, we need space for it. And traditional surveys would tell you, okay, well, look, they don't like that. But in reality, the business case is this is killing your business. You're you're you know, flushing $30 million worth of time down the down the drain. How do we get to the root cause of how making work better? And then let's use space to reinforce that. So again, I think going from the inside out versus the outside in is how we start to make these business cases and these business drivers to really create opportunities for improvement. But at that point, we're an organizational MRI. As much as I love consulting, I am not a consultant anymore. I am a technologist. So we work with organizations all over the world and partners to deliver that news and to deliver those remedies and implement the opportunities because at the end of the day, we need to be the best at what we do and partner with the people who are best at what they do. So we're the upfront, we're the assessments, we're the organizational MRI. But honestly, people like you are the doctors that come in with that sheet of music and say, okay, I'm seeing X, Y, and Z. So let's talk about getting you on plan B, C, and D kind of thing.

Sylvanna VanderPark

It's aligning with those kinds of goals. Can you share an example where the people data completely changed the design direction from what the client originally planned?

Why HR and real estate often work against each other

Stephen Smith

We were in the typical cubicle farm back in the day. And, you know, one of the problems was I sat on a team that had very personal private information in my HR team. But when you have these eight-foot walls, these cubicles or six-foot whatever they were, it was very clear how psychology started to work. We were became out of sight and out of mind. So I had people next to me talking about other employees' health care, other employees' performance levels. I heard colleagues talking to their own doctors about themselves and thinking, oh my God, does she not realize I can hear her right now? So what we did is we took those cubicle walls down and we created a new design. And what happened at first was it was a disaster. People were absolutely complaining about the fact that, you know, they had no privacy anymore. But in reality, for the first time ever, they were just aware that they never had it in the first place. Like now all of a sudden, out of sight, out of mind was gone. People were being very careful about what they're saying. And if they needed to have a conversation, they thought to go grab a safety room to go have that conversation. Amount of change in management and psychology that goes into these decisions is huge. And we ultimately got to where we wanted to be. People, you know, it became real, but to get through that journey took a lot. So I think as we think about these traditional changes, the psychology around it's really, really weird.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Yeah. I never thought about the cubicles giving a false sense of security, you know, and privacy. You just can't see each other and you can pin stuff up on the walls, but they're not really absorbing everything, you know. So you've worked in both HR and corporate real estate at Fortune 100 companies. Those departments rarely speak the same language. How do you bridge that gap?

What students need to understand about the future of work

Stephen Smith

Not only do you speak the same language. Usually I've found that their KPIs, their metrics aren't even different. They're oftentimes conflicting. And I think that's, again, fundamentally where we have an opportunity. Listen, this is not about making this place a happiness place. This is about making a place where people feel that they can bring and do their best work. That's what we want. And of course, things like satisfaction and culture come, but I think our metrics need to become more holistic. I think you're a leader and you have 10 different departments. All of them are doing some kind of study or assessment or bringing in a consultant. And every one of those things has an action item for you to take, you know, notice of. Which one do you start with? I want a holistic measurement where people are on the same scale so that I can start to weigh which things need to happen now versus later and prioritize my punches, if you will. It's equivalent to if you have a bunch of beautiful musicians, all so good at their craft, and without a sheet of music and you tell them to play, and everybody just starts, you know, blaring through their horns and smashing on their drums, that's going to sound like chaos, absolute chaos. But the second I get a conductor and one sheet of music that tells you everybody when they come on, when they go off, when they play this note, when they pause, I now have a symphony. I have harmony and it's beautiful. And I think that in the way we use analytics today, it's a little bit more like the chaos than the harmony. I want a single sheet of music. I want a conductor, I want people to understand how harmonies are created and played so that we can take advantage of these opportunities. So I guess to boil all that flowery prose down to one thing would be creating a holistic measurement, quick creating a holistic metric system from which we can operate.

Sylvanna VanderPark

And that's kind of your technology.

Stephen Smith

Yes, ma'am.

Sylvanna VanderPark

You also teach talent management and HR analytics at Drake University. And what do you tell your students about the future of workplace design?

Stephen Smith

That's a lot of the things that will be there aren't there today. And I am not there to teach them what that looks like because I don't know. I don't. I can tell you what I've learned and what I've seen along the way. But my goal and my job is to teach complex and critical thinking. Like if you can understand how to attach these problems and you know the tools that are at your disposal, y'all will make the right decisions for the rest of us along the way. Because it's fun to talk about the future and think about where it's going. But unless you're an awesome sci-fi reader, none of us really know. We're just making our best educated guesses. And those guesses are better when you have, you know, better thought processes behind them. So I don't have an answer for the kids. It's just let me teach you along the way how to approach problems and find out your own answers, and you're gonna build it for us.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Yeah, it's problem solving, right? It's it's real-time problem solving as you go along and kind of collecting the data, listening to people. And then, well, you'll make mistakes. Don't worry about it, right? And and I think you just have to keep on going until you get it right. You founded the Fail Forward Project in Des Moines. Tell us about that and what it has taught you about leadership and vulnerability.

Stephen Smith

Like many of us, I've done a lot of conferences, and it's great to hear about people's success stories. It's great to hear about the home runs. But I have always learned more myself from the things I dorked up than the things I did right. And I want to help people develop the mental resiliency, flexibility, and agility that's going to be the most commonly needed skill of the future. We've we've taught humans to work like robots for so long. And now, guess what? The robots are better at it than we are. So all the things that we didn't teach as much are starting to become left behind. And I think, again, mental resiliency and agility, that problem solving you mentioned is so important. So if we can model those behaviors and we can help people understand, like just like design, these things are iterative. I mean, learning only happens with frequent practice and immediate feedback. There's none of us picked up the bike the first time. Almost, I mean, we all had training wheels, we all fell over. That's just part of the process. So if we can have leaders model that behavior and get on a stage and say, hey, regardless of what you think I've done right, or if you've seen, you know, you think that I'm a millionaire, so I'm awesome, and it's all perfect. Let me tell you, I have messed up more than I haven't. I think it creates an authentic leadership. It creates an opportunity for psychological safety to really help people not be so anxious and fearful when it comes to making the best decisions for us, because I think that's what it takes. And that's what it's taught me. It's it's taught me that people have this in them, but there is so much fear and anxiety that it's preventing us from being our best selves. And again, if I'm an if I'm a leader of an organization, I need people to bring that version of themselves because if they don't, uh what are we what are we here for? I guess. I don't need wrench turners. I need people that are gonna be better than me and push things further than I could ever do myself. You know, the power of authenticity can really lead to that grit and growth we've read so much about and make it practical, make it actionable, make it every day.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Yeah, and I guess, you know, you don't lose your humanity in it because the world's a harsh place. And some places, you know, they you you get it, you're team workers, and then you go into certain places and you have people who are after you and they're want to take you down. And you know, that's life. You're gonna have to encounter these and deal with things and say, okay, well, I learned. You didn't do anything wrong to really deserve say a fail to happen, but it's just, you know, part of it. And and I think sometimes we think, probably from school, oh gosh, I didn't study for the test, so I, you know, I got that wrong or something. Something like that, or I failed. And so there's just that perfectionism that can come through. And I'm a real proponent of the arts because that's where people can really experiment and come to something that's authentically them, ideally. You know, you're not hopefully you're, you know, okay, it's great if you can copy the masters or something like that. But it's not going to be a perfect picture of somebody, but it's going to be how I see them. And because when you look at somebody like Matisse drawing somebody, that's not a perfect rendition either, but it's Matisse, you know, and everybody can recognize it now. But, you know, who knows how he felt when he was first drawing it or something like that. Or, you know, who decided that that was great. But I think as we're going through into more technology and all the AI stuff, it it, yeah, you're seeing more about all the human kind of skills, very human skills that AI cannot replace. At least I don't think it can. So we'll see.

One thing designers can do tomorrow to use people data

Stephen Smith

And you said something that was really important there. Teaching, I have seen that students they live in a very linear world in school, right? The outcome is very clear. I need to graduate, I gotta have a good GPA so I can get a job. So the outcome is clear. And really how you get there is linear. Study harder or study better. But that's it. Like there's an outcome and there's a way to get to that outcome. And in the arts, or after you graduate into the real world, like there's not one outcome. Is it money or is it title? Is it, you know, work-life balance? Is it family? Is it this? Is it that? Is it rewards or is it, you know, admiration from your peers? And even if you had that outcome, how do you get there? It's not just working harder, like we want to say it. It isn't, of course, you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get. But is it networking? And that's where people get wonky now, because again, what we trained them for for so long was so linear. And like arts, like you mentioned, it's not a straight line, not even close. I mean, there's it's like it's like a game of frogger. You're going sideways, you're going backwards sometimes, just so you can get across the street. And I think the the faster people can embrace that, and that goes back to even the failure piece, the faster people can embrace that, the faster they'll get across the road in-game as a frogger.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Not even every company is set up in a linear way, right? It's it's you've got the ahead of the corporations, you've got a person and they've got a vision. And then how that then gets passed down, it's it's a game of operators sometimes and trying to help that out. And it's it's an imperfect world. So just being able to be comfortable with that, I think, and finding the wiggle room in it and finding each other in that wiggle room. That's how I like to look at things anyway for my own comfort. For the architects, designers, and facility managers listening right now. What is one thing they could start doing tomorrow to bring people data into their workspace decision?

Stephen Smith

I always love finding people from outside a traditional discipline to come in and look at it for a minute. My dad was in the military. They had things called red teams. So you would plan this whole mission, and you're, you know, on this date, at this time, we're gonna go here, and then we're gonna start here, and then we're gonna go here, we're gonna grab this thing, and then we're gonna get out. And they would, they would, they would brainstorm it, they pound it, you know, on it all day and all night for weeks. And then before they went to battle or before the mission started, they would bring in a red team. And a red team was just a group of completely randomized people. It could have a general, it could also have a lieutenant, it could have an E5, it could have an old guy, a young guy, a gal, whatever it might be, munitions department, whatever it is. And the goal for that red team was to do nothing but come in uninformed, having no project briefing, and just beat the crap out of it. Because I would rather learn from now before I go to the actual mission than otherwise. So I guess taking my own biases and background, pulling people that aren't from the traditional area to see what they see from their perspective is always going to be a good win. It's always gonna be worth it. Even if it's stupid stuff you hear, sometimes it's it's those little things that really drive power and opportunity. So, man, go grab somebody from an HR analytics background. Go grab somebody from an actuarial background. Go find your next money ball situation. Go like use somebody that's not from the same perspective, but has the same mission, vision, goals as you do, um, the same respect levels and all, I mean, all those things. Um, and bring them into the conversation. I bet you you'll be surprised.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Well, that's great. I've enjoyed talking to you about all this. Is there anything else that you would want to include?

Can technology personalize workspace design at scale?

Stephen Smith

I think sometimes in real estate, some of the things that you and I have talked about today seem touchy-feely. Why are we talking about culture? I'm trying to build a space here. The tides are turning in terms of what the difference between artificial and human intelligence is. This is going to be the name of the game moving forward. So I think embracing the ideas of, you know, who we are, why we are, and how it supports our work, not just our workplace, but how it supports work is going to be more and more important in the future. So I think embracing under the understanding of cultures and who we are and where we're going, being able to, you know, take the time to think through the intentionality of things like flexibility or what have you, being an empathetic listener is going to go very, very far for us now that these whole switches being made. So I think this is the time to embrace it. We got an opportunity here, y'all.

Sylvanna VanderPark

I like that about the empathetic listening. And a lot of people are also talking about kind of individual personalization. You know, you've got, you've got the job, okay, and you've got kind of the focus of that, okay. How do you, how does that job typically get done well or something like that? But then also adding in features about that person that make them unique, you know? And a lot of people, they they'll go to, you know, do they have ADHD or do they have OCD or, you know, kind of thing, something that's diagnosed and impacts very specifically on how that person works. I think yours is general behavior rather than kind of specific cases and looking to say, we've got this very talented person who needs this kind of room to work in or something like that, or you know, they need to move from this point, this area to this area at some point in the in the office or something like that or in the building to stimulate them. Do you guys get into that level of review and assessment?

Stephen Smith

We long ago did not have the capability to be feeling like a white glove service because we have so many people and we're doing so many things. And, you know, we have got to create a standardized, repeatable, quickly deployable framework. And that's where things like activity-based working and all that stuff pop up. But now technology has allowed us the opportunity to have the speed and the scale of master plans, but also allow for that white glove touch at the same time. That's the beautiful part about technology, it's allowing us to do that. So I think leaning into that and understanding that's not the way it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, where it's one or the other. Now it's an and. And we live in a world of and. So using technology and some smart, thoughtful, you know, things, if you will, can absolutely give us the best of both.

Sylvanna VanderPark

Well, again, thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to talk with us and talk to the audience here. And I always love kind of speaking to students who are coming in, you know, and really appreciate that as well. So thanks very much. Thanks for checking out Workspace Design Lab. If you're an architect, interior designer, or workplace professional looking to stay ahead in ergonomic office design and modern workspace interiors, make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast platform. For more resources on sustainable office furniture and human centered workspace design, visit us at Novalink.com. Until next time.

Head Shot

Sylvanna VanderPark

Host