How do we redesign office space to embrace the power of hybrid workplaces while meeting the needs of the future workforce? This question is top of mind for every leader today. Many recognize that if we subscribe to one solution for a remote, hybrid, dynamic, or anchored work model, we overlook the need for multifaceted solutions, ones uniquely tailored to employee workstyle preferences and how to design for them. The need to explore, vet, and iterate ideas to arrive at strategies and solutions that account for these evolving preferences in the COVID era is making this a unique moment in rightsizing and reimagining what returning to offices will look like.

Research indicates that many employees do not want to go back to old ways of working, they want a hybrid-remote office model moving forward. At the same time, data also consistently shows what employees miss most are social interactions, team collaboration, and connection to culture in ways that only physical office space can distinctly provide. This virtual session will dive into how organizations create a roadmap for the way forward: addressing data-driven approaches to understanding employees’ needs and preferences, to space planning, rethinking square footage and amenity spaces, to thought provoking ideas that deliver an ideal employee experience – one that is safe, healthy, and resilient and can withstand the shock of any future disruptive event.

As the design industry recalibrates post-COVID, Noah Waxman and Lucas Werthein of innovation firm Cactus will explore how the workplace can evolve into the future through holistic, personalized experiences built around user bio-markers and health data. Touching on various case studies, including a groundbreaking Miami ‘healthcare hotel’ set to debut in 2023, this session will discuss how health data is the new raw material for designers, will explore how to utilize cutting-edge technology to promote wellness, and will analyze the intersections between healthcare, technology, and the workplace.

There are no facts about the future, but how we feel about it — our posture and sense of agency around it, the processes that we use to understand and interrogate it, and our set of practices and tools to shape it. Those are very much available to us today. Building on her research, writing, and classes at the Stanford d.school, best selling author and educator Lisa Kay Solomon will offer some opening reflections on what it means to lead like a futurist in today’s rapidly changing context.

Continue the conversation about Reimagining the Future of the Workplace with Emily Klein and Jennifer McGrory, and network with other Summit attendees in breakout rooms.

From the moment California offices locked down Primo Orpilla’s firm Studio O+A began to explore what the next generation of the workplace would be. The result is “A Toolkit for the Times,” O+A’s guide to going back to work not just safely, but happily. It’s a map through the uncertainties to a workplace based on individual agency, health and wellness, creative engagement, and harmony with nature. The new typologies O+A is designing address this moment by imagining where we want this moment to take us and demonstrating how we get there.

Millions of employees are now months into a home working experiment, and their mood may well be changing on which experience is better — home or office. Or do they all hanker for a hybrid, blended mix of the two? Do organisations help them decide, or do employees decide for themselves? Join as Tim Oldman, Founder & CEO of Leesman, discusses the home vs office competition and shares insights from the world’s largest employee experience database.

Sukhi is strengthening mental resilience in the modern workplace to foster effective collaboration and reduce burnout. They do this leveraging data analytics to customize guided meditations, workshops and mental wellness challenges for the private sector’s most demanding environments. Think of them as the Peloton for Emotional Wellness – data driven, wellness solutions with live coaching (offered remotely) for employees / teams. Sukhi has acquired +30 clients (Amazon, Bain, McKinsey, MIT, Verizon, etc.) in 2020 alone. The platform collects wellness data via pulse surveys / emotional sentiment analysis to calculate interventions at the individual, team, and company level. The solutions are all remote, personalized to team performance, and culturally sensitive. 

We are all in sales, regardless of role. Learn tricks and tips from the world of Design to help you be more effective and have more fun. We will learn a few tools and then breakout and try them out. Walk away with something you can apply right away to be more effective wherever you sit in your organization.

Continue the conversation about mental resilience in the workplace with Rahul Kulkarni, and Rahul will lead everyone through a group meditation.

In this 90-minute session, LUMA Institute’s Tyson Weinert will lead a “virtual chalk talk” to explore how using human-centered design can help you develop more meaningful, relevant and impactful solutions to the workplace disruptions we all face. Tyson will share a collection of stories, vignettes, mini-activities, and provocative thought exercises using design methods from the LUMA System. Everyone will come away with ideas and opportunities for how to keep a human-centered lens on developing creative solutions that people want, need and value.

In this multimedia and energizing talk, founders of Project Inkblot, Jahan Mantin and Boyuan Gao introduce participants to Design for Diversity™ (D4D), their relational and strategic framework for racial equity centered design. Through real-life examples of equitable and inequitable design, design concepts and high-level critical questions from D4D, participants are invited to reframe their thinking and explore mental models that consider racial equity in the people, processes, and products of their orgs.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading developers and corporate occupiers were starting to increase their focus on how the office influences the health and productivity of the occupants inside them. The pandemic has accelerated what may have been a 10-year healthy building movement into 2. In this session we will share new research that explores people’s concerns with returning to the office, the challenges with working at home, and the strategies that will restore confidence in the office environment. We will tease out the solutions that address short-term problems related to disease transmission from those that have staying power once the pandemic is over, and demonstrate the impact that buildings have on other aspects of health, such as cognitive function, sleep, and mental health.

We are living in a time of increased numbers and awareness about individuals with neuro-sensitives and special needs, such as ADHD. In fact, 1 in 8 people are considered neurodiverse but fewer than 50% know it. But these individuals can be high energy, out of the box thinkers, excel in a crisis, and be bold problem solvers. Not only is designing to be inclusive the right thing to do, there is a compelling business case for it as well. investigation the various aspects of neurodiversity and explore how to create spaces that are more physically and culturally inclusive for people with a wide spectrum of neurological conditions to allow them to thrive.

When considering the workplace in a post-COVID future, there is a tendency to focus on the material aspects of the floorplate: furniture and space design, surface, and textile cleanability. But once we’ve agreed on how many can inhabit a space together after completing the prerequisite screening form and temperature check, what of the person? This topic explores how work might facilitate our human needs in order to support what truly matters for our personal and collective well-being – everywhere you work.

At least two generations of employees have been vocal about wanting more flexibility in redefining their work environment. Whether we have been listening or not, employees have been telling us more and more about who they really are. While COVID may have been the catalyst for most organizations to shift how (and where) they work, it has also served as an amplifier for the voice of the employee. In this session, we will unpack some of the themes that have been elevated during COVID and the elevation of social justice issues, and what this means as companies work to recruit and retain top talent. In this session, we will explore the significance of leveraging your employees’ insights as design principles.

In 2019, under the direction of Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Hackett, Ford unveiled a new masterplan for its world headquarters campus redevelopment. On March 16, 2020, Ford’s 34,000 US office employees went home. Inevitable questions focused on the future of work immediately followed, specifically, the future of the campus masterplan and our workplace – “where do we go from here?”

Led by Global Design Director Jennifer Kolstad, ASID, Associate AIA, Ford assembled a coalition that deconstructed the “big wicked problem,” harvesting opportunities and course-correcting historic pain points. Research-led design substantiates outcomes by leveraging expertise and evidence at the outset of the design process. Kolstad will demonstrate the importance of diverse perspectives and share some of the ideas that emerged from Ford’s Future of Work Think Tank. “If we believe that design is an evolving hypothesis then constructing the framework and expertise with which to design can be as powerful as the outcome itself.”

Continue the conversation about designing spaces with neurodiversity in mind while networking with other Summit attendees — led by Kay Sargent.