JLL has launched Social-Spatial Design, a new workplace design service that incorporates disciplines such as behavioural science and social dynamics.
The service is being offered through its JLL Design business and was developed along with organisational and leadership development consultancy Thompson Harrison.
It grounds its approach in the belief that while work patterns, technologies and organisational models evolve, human cognitive limits, social behaviour and team dynamics mostly remain constant.
Understanding those constants, says JLL, allows it to make practical design decisions that directly affect how teams focus, collaborate, learn and make decisions.
JLL Design experts observe how teams focus, collaborate, move and connect. They then use proprietary tools to diagnose performance gaps and identify what is already working.
These insights allow it to develop evidence-based priorities to inform choices about layout, acoustics, adjacencies and spatial settings across the workplace.
Unlike traditional workplace strategies that focus on space efficiency and utilisation, the firm’s Social-Spatial Design service measures return on investment through factors such as workplace performance indicators, including collaboration effectiveness, focus and concentration, learning and knowledge sharing, employee belonging and engagement and overall team performance.
It translates those variables into weighted performance scores, allowing organisations to more accurately identify where workplace conditions support or hinder performance.
One of the methods that JLL used to assess how the physical environment affects focus, stress and collaboration, were to use electroencephalography (EEG) to observe brain activity.
The International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign, an initiative of University College London (UCL) and Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), developed studies that simulate real work tasks in mock office settings where variables such as lighting, sound and layout could be controlled.
“For decades, professional sport has applied science to improve results by fractions of a second. Work can be just as mentally demanding, yet there has not been enough science behind how the workplace can help people perform,” chief executive officer JLL Project and Development Services Cynthia Kantor says.
“Social-Spatial Design moves beyond efficiency and utilisation to focus on the conditions that most strongly influence how teams perform.
“Our goal is to eliminate guesswork and give business leaders actionable intelligence about how to build workplaces where people can do their best work. By understanding how people genuinely respond to their environment, we can design spaces that help teams – and the organisations they power – perform better.”
Image: Luca Bravo, Unsplash
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