Event Details
Workplace vitality: Boosting productivity and engagement
Even before Covid, modern employers were experimenting with redesigning office spaces. Since we spend so much of our lives at work, it was reasoned, pleasant workplaces breed happy workers who do better work. Theoretically, a more engaging office space would also lead to creativity. As nearly summarised in January this year by Bartleby, The Economist's column on management and work, "there is a near-universal obsession with turning bits of offices into playrooms: brightly coloured furniture, hammocks, blackboards, chairs that are far too low to the ground for adults."
Rows of desks and cubicles have given way to open-plan workspaces with ancillary features like gyms, yoga/meditation rooms, gourmet kitchens, and high-tech collaboration spaces. Modern, "disruptive" workspaces are believed by some to have led more workers to return to their sites of employment after long periods of working from home during the pandemic. Other companies have adopted hub-and-spokes models, allowing workers the option of commuting all the way to the main office or working at subordinate locations closer to home.
But how important or even helpful are new-fangled workplaces? How popular are they? What kinds of office space innovation are just around the corner? How to improve workplace engagement and creativity without going so far into the comfort zone that people forget to actually work? Will it be, as another Bartleby column offers, the stark contrast between "a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it" or "a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards."
Join us for this intimate roundtable discussion with several experts from relevant industries.
Please note that this event is limited to senior-level executives and per invitation only. If you are not an existing member of The Economist Intelligence Corporate Network, but would like to learn how you can attend our events, please contact us.
