Campaign against boring venues

At WorkTripp we are passionately against boring venues.

Why? In the UK, only 9% of us are engaged at work. 9%!!

That is causing not only those poor disengaged employees harm, but businesses and teams are also paying the price: through lost productivity, lost innovation, absenteeism and staff turnover, not to mention the knock-on effect to the team when disengagement "spreads".

So, engagement then. What does that look like?

How are teams and businesses engaging their teams?

Too often when teams do attempt engagement through strategic "away-days" or "team-bonding" the attempts are unimaginative and half-baked. The primary offenders?

• The beige conference room 100metres from the company office

• Windowless?

• Generic carpets which mean you forget if you are in a bland venue in London, Birmingham, or NY. They are ALWAYS the same.

What do we think this signals how we value and consider our top, indeed, all levels of talent?

When we know the science...

Joseph Allen of Harvard University, a leading researcher, influencer and thinker on the benefits of clean air in office environments and how this can improve productivity found that when working in well ventilated, clean air, conditions the participants scored 61-101% higher in the analytical and crisis management tests they were asked to perform. (2022)

In Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment, Urban Policy professor Justin Hollander and architect Ann Sussman review scientific data to help architects and urban planners understand how, exactly, we respond to our built surroundings. People, they argue, function best in intricate settings and crave variety, not “big, blank, boxy buildings.”

And just recently IDC has defined the future of work as a fundamental change to the work model to one that fosters human-machine collaboration, enables new skills and worker experiences, and supports a reimagined physical workplace and borderless digital workspace. IDC's FoW framework is designed to help organizations structure their work transformation strategies and scope future of work initiatives. The framework takes a holistic, integrated approach, encompassing three interrelated and interconnected pillars: Augmentation, Culture, and Space.

Space, which focuses on how the work environment must adapt to support the new hybrid workforce and new work culture, is the largest of the three pillars, accounting for nearly 60% of all FoW spending in 2023

For us, this all culminates in an increased importance of the imaginative spaces we choose when we intentionally meet.

At WorkTripp, this means:

• Out of city to create the attention needed for deep work and connection

• In natural environments to aid productivity and wellbeing which are inextricably linked

• Unique, not generic to recognise the varied culture of each team

So, have we convinced you?

Will you join our campaign against anti-boring venues?

https://create.worktripp.com/signup