How wellness in the workplace must change after Covid

Niall Gaffney, chief executive of IPUT Real Estate, knows that for too long the modern office has done too little to support the wellbeing and health of the people using it. Now, he hopes the coronavirus pandemic will force change. “We recognise that we have a problem with office development,” Gaffney says. “There’s a great opportunity here to retune how we develop workplaces in our cities. We want to try to use our creativity and the creativity of our partners, cultural partners and designers to make a place that’s worth living.” The Dublin-based developer has teamed up with architecture firm Arup to survey 1,300 office workers, grilling them to get fresh insight into the nature of office work, city living and the impact on real estate. The pair’s subsequent report, Making Place, proposes a new urban design practice they are calling “workplacemaking”, focused not only on changes to modern offices but also the neighbourhoods around them. “If workplace design has traditionally been about creating productive corporate environments, and placemaking has traditionally been about the making of public space, workplacemaking sits somewhere in the middle,” the report says. “Offices aren’t necessarily positive spaces in cities,” Gaffney tells EG. “What the pandemic has done has put that into sharper focus. It’s accelerated a lot of trends that were already there. Everybody’s got collaborative space. Everybody’s got town hall space, breakout space. A lot of those reference points, though, are internal. They’re in the offices space. What we are looking at is the spaces in between offices, the spaces in between the workplace and the home, the workplace and the city.” Heart of the city In Dublin, Gaffney says, lockdown has “ripped the heart out of our city”. Encouraging people to stay away from urban centres is “devastating”, he adds, and “not sustainable in any way, shape or form”. IPUT’s survey shows just how much people miss their workplaces, but also suggests that few want to use them in precisely the same way as pre-pandemic. Of the 1,300 office workers questioned by IPUT and Arup, 84% said office working offered them social and personal benefits, and 79% said office work provided professional benefits that would not be replicated while working from home – with some fearing they are missing out on promotions and other opportunities by being “out of sight and mind”. In particular, younger staff have a fear of missing out, with more than half saying their opportunities for career progression have been hindered through homeworking. But homeworking has brought benefits too. Some 56% of women and 46% of men said their sense of health and wellbeing had improved during their time working at home during the pandemic. And just 11% of respondents said they would prefer to work in an office every day, with most saying they would ideally now work for three days of the week in an office and two days at home. Much of IPUT’s report explores how design in and around offices can now support staff as they adjust their working practices. The pair zeroed in on five typologies that they think will help workers: watering holes, where people can socialise; street classrooms that bring people together to share knowledge; cultural canvases in which communities can curate and create; mind labs where people can brainstorm challenges; and mind gardens to support what the authors call “restorative thinking processes”. Welbeing is a thread running throughout the study. “Things like pocket parks, mind gardens, cultural canvasses – they’re three typologies that we [at IPUT] have been working on for many years,” Gaffney says. “We didn’t necessarily badge them as such and we didn’t necessarily say ‘that’s all about wellbeing’. We created them because we felt it was the right thing to do – to make our make our places more attractive and also to be more valuable over time.” For some developers, the typologies outlined in the report will require a different approach to design, Gaffney says, and will likely be a far cry from the campus-style offices beloved of many corporate occupiers. “The impact major FAANG [Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google] companies have had on cities has been profound,” Gaffney adds. “Some is for the good, in terms of the amount of employment and opportunity they create. But the negative is that if you feed 10,000 people and give them every amenity internally, they don’t need to leave your sealed campus. “What does that do to their mental health? What does that do to their wellbeing? What does that do to the neighbourhood and community? All of those things are now in incredibly sharp focus because you have ghost towns around a number of these major cities and major campuses.” Inflection point By focusing on the right design, Gaffney says, developers can play a greater role in contributing to sustainable communities filled with healthy, happy people. And although the offices are important, he returns again to the spaces in between them, singing the praises of some of his favourite places to unwind in major cities – the High Line in New York, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. “They have a softness to them – they’re somewhere you can go and relax, have a walk in between work,” he says. “Some have public art, some have events, catering. In our projects, in building pocket parks around our office schemes, we’ve been collaborating with local communities and artists, putting artists in residence facilities near our developments. We’ve been providing cultural canvasses where we use our hoardings on buildings to showcase local artists. It’s a way of thinking about work and placemaking and workplaces in their broadest sense.” Gaffney and colleagues hope IPUT’s 600,000 sq ft Wilton Park office development will be the first example of the company putting “workplacemaking” into action. The scheme, set to complete next year, is centred on an acre of restored park and will include a new public square. Gaffney hopes other developers are also thinking differently as they look to their own post-pandemic schemes. “We are at an inflection point,” Gaffney says. “I’m optimistic that because of the level of impact this pandemic has had, and the shortcomings in our cities and our buildings that it has pointed out, change will come.” To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@egi.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @estatesgazette Pictures © FTI Consulting