This is a blog post from the Global Scanning Network at The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. For more information visit www.cifs.dk or contact us here.
The features of the future workplace are well known. Thought to be characterized by virtual employees, who are highly mobile, always available via technology and frequently not interacting with colleagues in the physical world or a physical workplace. The work is and will be, highly transactional and workers are employed on a task by task basis with no assurances of permanent work. Long-term employment is usually not part of the equation. The term gig economy has evolved to represent this domain of ‘digitally enabled marketplaces where companies use websites and apps to pair workers with tasks that occur both online and offline.’
Value creation in the future workplace is also not necessarily tied to a single organisation or place. Value is instead produced through a network of organisations, customers, negotiators and freelancers. Furthermore, by 2020, millennials who will comprise 40% of the workforce, will make decisions about where they work based on their values. Research by the Global Wellness Institute has shown that millennials will have expectations for a workplace environment that considers wellness.[1] Given these factors, how will the wellness trend in the future workplace impact and intersect with the casualised and highly mobile workplace of the future?
Examining the wellness trend
The wellness trend is manifested through new requests for healthcare products and services, the opening of new health and wellness markets and a movement towards the holistic treatment of diseases.[2] A recent example of a wellness trend that is purportedly gaining momentum has been the building wellness movement.[3] This reflect a growing awareness of how building design, construction and maintenance influences how we sleep, eat, and feel.[4]
Recognised since 1980, the World Health Organisation estimates a proportion as high as 30% of new, remodelled or renovated buildings have occupants with sick building syndrome (SBS).[5] Sick building syndrome describes a situation in which the occupants of a building experience acute health or comfort-related effects that are linked directly to the time spent in the building.[6]
While not originally clear what caused these sicknesses, eventually the occurrence of SBS was linked with people’s exposures to VOCs or volatile organic compounds from new builds. Chemicals such as formaldehyde, that have in some contexts been recognised as cancer causing, continue to appear in the production of everything from synthetic carpets to fibreboard making the physical environments in which we work less than ideal. [7]
The profound effect that building design and its materials can have on health and wellbeing has led to the emergence of building design standards that focus on occupant health and well-being. Interest in wellness certification programs, such as the WELL Building Standard and FitWel, is gaining momentum as more awareness grows of the impact of the physical environment on health.[8] The WELL Building Standard involves judging a built environment against seven distinct “concepts” including:
- air quality;
- water quality;
- nourishment (the sort of food available in a staff canteen, for instance);
- light;
- fitness (for example, how well the building’s design works to promote exercise);
- comfort; and
- mind (mindfulness).
So how does the building wellness movement and the broader wellness trend fit with the future of work as it automates, outsources and is increasingly more casualised? With the casualization of employment, the workforce has become more temporary and mobile. Being able to create the psychosocial factors that have been traditionally associated with work, such as teamwork, will diminish as people come and go within the workplace or are increasingly virtual to their workplace.
Research by RMIT University shows that people judge the environment in which they work essentially on the relationships that they hold and the quality of those relationships in meeting their own mental and psychological health needs.[9] A casual and contract based workforce may prove challenging as teamwork and the relationships that are developed through this are removed. Therefore, other factors may become necessary to satisfy mental and psychological health needs.[10] This may mean that people will place more emphasis on the physiological aspects of the workplace and its environment. A clean environment that meets the workforce’s wellness needs may become a priority.[11]
Challenges of wellness in the virtual future workspace space
While wellness is increasingly viewed as an important part of the workplace and recognised as the most important macro trend affecting building design it will be difficult to measure, particularly in the future workplace, one which is virtual or highly mobile and designing for it would be highly challenging task.[12] Critical to meeting this challenge would be communicating to the users the advantages of the design to ensure that the intent of any designed space or project would be appropriately applied in the workplace of the future. Just as the wellness trend has seen objects such as food packages displaying all kinds of new information aside from traditional nutritional value and ingredients: extra functional values, carbon and water footprint, food miles and more health-related indicators such as time needed to digest (such as GI level), and side effects when consumed with medicines.[13] This level of transparency could be extended to wellness covering the gig economy workers where wellness ratings and information related to a company’s values become common place.
[1] Global Wellness Institute, The Future of Wellness at Work, January 2016, http://www.globalwellnesssummit.com/images/stories/gwi/GWI_2016_Future_of_Wellness_at_Work.pdf
[2] Kyle Brown, Perception of Wellness trend, CIFS, 2015.
[3] Future Tense, ABC, 2017, accessed on 10 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/building-for-wellness-imagine-if-your-office-made-you-healthier/8490030
[4] Sick building syndrome, World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, accessed 11 May 2017 at https://www.wondermakers.com/Portals/0/docs/Sick%20building%20syndrome%20by%20WHO.pdf
[5] Sick building syndrome, World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, accessed 11 May 2017 at https://www.wondermakers.com/Portals/0/docs/Sick%20building%20syndrome%20by%20WHO.pdf
[6] Sick building syndrome, World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, accessed 11 May 2017 at https://www.wondermakers.com/Portals/0/docs/Sick%20building%20syndrome%20by%20WHO.pdf
[7] Sick building syndrome, World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, accessed 11 May 2017 at https://www.wondermakers.com/Portals/0/docs/Sick%20building%20syndrome%20by%20WHO.pdf
[8] ASID 2016-2017, accessed on 13 May 2017 at http://interiordesign.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/07/ASID_2016-17_OutlookState_of_the_Industry_Report.pdf
[9] Future Tense, ABC, 2017, accessed on 10 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/building-for-wellness-imagine-if-your-office-made-you-healthier/8490030
[10] Future Tense, ABC, 2017, accessed on 10 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/building-for-wellness-imagine-if-your-office-made-you-healthier/8490030
[11] Future Tense, ABC, 2017, accessed on 10 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/building-for-wellness-imagine-if-your-office-made-you-healthier/8490030
[12] ASID 2016-2017, accessed on 13 May 2017 at http://interiordesign.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/07/ASID_2016-17_OutlookState_of_the_Industry_Report.pdf
[13] Kyle Brown, Perception of Wellness trend, CIFS, 2015.
