Reimagining the workplace with design thinking

Author Dan Bladen, CEO & Co-Founder

This week on our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we discussed with Paul Russell, Business Development for Smart Buildings at IBM Tririga on design thinking for the workplace and the rise of community workspaces. Check out our interview and key takeaways below.

The rise of community workplaces

(00:06:28 – 00:08:04)

New models emerging post-pandemic: In countries like the UK where people might not travel like they used to, but how do you make sure people can still physically meet people – one of the changes that you might see is more community workplaces will start appearing.
Close proximity technology in the workplace: With over 300,000 employees at IBM, it is easy to find out about people from different teams or regions through some of our tools currently in play, but what you can’t find out is if anyone is working close to you in the same building in real time.
Community workplaces in suburban areas: Instead of renting large corporate offices in the city, I think that’s going to really change certainly in the UK and Europe is where traditional suburbs can regenerate and create these community workplaces, creating new opportunities in suburban areas.

Addressing needs of younger members in the workforce

(00:09:53 – 00:13:07)

While the older generation may prefer working from home, it’s also important to address needs and concerns of the younger members in the team, who may prefer having a physical office and the social experience working in a city. Making sure they will have the same upwards trajectory and opportunities to grow inside of an organization.

Reimagining the workplace with design thinking

(00:13:08 – 00:24:55)

Understanding user behavior with touchless technology: Moving forward, there will be more emphasis on looking at how people move through their workspace through the use of technology and deeper understanding of how people want to use their workplace. It’s opening up new lessons to learn about how we can augment their experience by providing a touchless technology and Chargifi is a great example of that experience.
Design thinking in the workplace: We talked a lot about design thinking at IBM and if we want to change someone’s behavior, that needs to be a sufficient motivation, efficient ability and a prompt.
Enabling contact tracing: With the contact tracing example, we are changing people’s behavior because we want them to feel safe in the workplace and they’re motivated to do this because they want to stay healthy. People need to understand the value exchange and it needs to benefit employees in some way.