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Engagement-Attractiveness
This is the first main sub-question to answer: ‘Is the learning/work environment adding value?’ It is about people’s well-being at the learning/workplace, employee experience, bonding, and engagement, which are inextricably linked to productivity, organisational culture, team morale, and meaningful social impact.
Providing people with an energising and inspiring feeling of connectedness and belonging requires structured and frequent dialogue with stakeholders to align perceptions and share information to support continuous improvement. At the same time, it is important to be aware of zones and thresholds of user satisfaction and experiences and the impact of cultural context and dynamics.
Do people feel better when they leave the learning/work environment than when they arrive?
A quantitative and qualitative good building positively affects the behaviour, well-being and development process of the students and pedagogical staff who use the building daily. Therefore, we should look at it from a people, place, and technology perspective to shape how, where, and when work takes place. These matters are mainly beyond the current building legislation (minimal thresholds) but affect the quality of accommodation throughout its entire lifespan. Work is no longer a place people go. It’s a thing they do — and when, where and how it happens is no longer written in stone. The levels of workplace satisfaction are also linked to job satisfaction.
Thriving people will give organisations a competitive advantage in today’s turbulent economic environment. They are people who inspire themselves (motivational spark) and/or inspire others (inspirational flame). The learning/work environment should support their well-being, encourage healthy behaviour, allow them to be at their most productive, and provide higher-level life experiences. One should consider individual differences and personal situations while enabling everyone to take charge of their health and well-being.
The ideal workplace satisfies people’s various spiritual needs, connecting their personal goals with professional ones. Our buildings should also be sustainable, with positive impacts on nature and biodiversity.
How can the learning/work environment be made attractive to employees and students who, after the COVID disruption, have more choice in where, when, and how they work? How can the learning/work environment be a greater ecosystem and more purposeful? How can this be measured?
Attention to soft human factors creates hard benefits
Greater autonomy is a trend but requires trust between employers and employees. Trust and confidence in one’s ability are essential factors that can influence employee morale. Humans thrive when there is structure and accountability, not total autonomy. It is about striking the right balance between carrot and stick, between short-term improvement and long-term value, and between ensuring line managers take responsibility for change.
It requires a change from the constant competition model to one of collaboration, harmony and interdependence, where teams will forge stronger bonds and retain historical knowledge. Promoting the practice of self-reflection, awareness, respect, coaching and mentorship, and personal/professional development of employees.
Everyone perceives the world around them in a slightly different way, but there are fundamental principles that describe how people experience their outer environment. The need to belong is a powerful and fundamental motivator of human behaviour. A holistic environment scales down to the individual. Do they have a notion of inclusion and belonging? Is there a social environment (culture) based on respect and trust where people dare to speak up and to self-direct? Does it promote positivity and reduce the effect of environmental stressors?
“There is no such thing as a neutral environment. There is always an effect on people.” (René Stevens)
Does the learning/work environment stimulate and support people’s natural curiosity, creativity, motivation and eagerness to learn? Is the environment enticing with intuitively operable systems and excellent facilities to support learning and working? To what degree can users control and adjust the appliances in their environment?
Does it create relaxed alertness (flow state) for a mix of objectifiable functional needs and subjective personal learning/work styles? Is there a culture of emotional connection, recognition and communication within the teams and the organisation? Do employees feel supported and valued?
Do career development and motivational leadership play a role in creating personal growth and purpose, stimulating intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction?
Are physical learning/workplace perks and experiences already translated to the digital learning/workplace? Do employees and students have the autonomy to choose where, when, with whom, and how they perform their work and hang out? Are the users consulted in the making of the usage and behaviour agreements of the learning/work environment so that they feel ownership of them?
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Does it enable learning, relationships, motivation, and positivity, triggering innovation and creativity? Is there a culture for innovation where people are stimulated to experiment to generate new ideas and are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them? Is there a balance between people’s subjective personal preferences and learning/work style and the objective physical and digital environment dictated by the organisational configuration and management style?
Are the employees and students satisfied with and enthusiastic about their learning/work environment? Does it deliver an enjoyable work-life balance? Does the look and feel reflect individual personality and organisational culture? Does the learning/work environment play a role in their pride, and does it confirm the brand identity and contribute to the organisation’s image? Does it support behavioural change and culture building and make cultural values tangible? How much autonomy are you willing to give your people?
“Show me your learning/work environment, and I’ll tell you who you are
and how much your employees and students are valued.” (René Stevens)
All of these questions are central to facilitating health, well-being, and engagement in the learning/work environment. They provide people with an energising and inspiring feeling of connectedness and belonging. There is a growing emphasis on human experience to elevate and maintain positive Engagement, as opposed to the more conventional preoccupation with Effectiveness and Efficiency.
Manage and improve customer satisfaction
Employee satisfaction with the learning/work environment (the interplay of Real Estate, Facility Management, Information Technology and Human Resources) is the extent to which the combination mix meets their wishes and needs. It nudges employees to bring their creativity to work and create and maintain healthy relationships to foster a community of understanding, respect, and inspiration.
The work performance of employees and students’ learning behaviour largely reflects the characteristics of the environment in which they are to work/study. A seamless user experience of the learning/work environment requires an incredibly high level of satisfaction, frictionless, easy to use, and a wow factor.
Does your environment support or hinder your study/work?
We use the eight constraints of a project: Scope, Time, Risk, Experience, Resources, Information, Cost and Quality (STRERICQ). These aspects are made SMARTI, coordinated and integrated into one approach because they are all inseparable parts of the whole learning/work environment.
- EXPERIENCE: How satisfied should the users be? How closely does the outcome of people’s engagement match? Are we able (and willing) to deliver to the employee’s needs and user experience?
To what extent do the physical (Bricks) and digital (Bytes) learning/work environments support people’s activities, well-being and health? However, it is also closely linked to satisfaction with the social (Behaviour) learning/work environment and the work itself.
A marriage of Architecture and Neuroscience can deepen our understanding of how the learning/work environment affects human health, well-being, consciousness, and performance. It can also create great experiences in amazing spaces.
Better informed and engaged
A symbiosis between architecture and its occupants creates (more) value. The physical learning/work environment promotes interaction. Architecture can bring people together and unite them as one force. It protects, supports interaction and engagement and expresses unity and identity. It also invites learning engagement and knowledge generation through quiet, relaxing individual reflection and social spaces for collective conversations with supporting amenities. To make it work, the social environment (culture) should encourage and allow extended periods of thinking/concentrating as an accepted part of the daily work.
Support is indispensable for implementing a good learning/work environment strategy. It involves the right groups of stakeholders at the various stages of your accommodation roadmap. Inform and involve the broad group of stakeholders as frequently as possible. Communicate in a visual, compact, clear, and simple manner. Ask users not only about their satisfaction with the learning/work environment but also about their preferences.
Where relevant, make stakeholders aware of the financial consequences of their demands and the difference between ‘need to have’ and ‘nice to have’. Granting one user group it’s ‘nice to have’ can block the ‘need to have’ of another group because available budgets are usually tight and limited.
When the learning/work environment responds to the intrinsic user needs, it can achieve the desired behaviour of the users for the organisation. Finding the right balance between involvement and pleasantness can also be important for your organisational culture.
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Personal coaching and practice can change the Inner Environment (Body-Mind-Heart-Spirit) of human consciousness. Changing the Outer Environment (physical, digital, and social) of people also gives extra leverage to unleash the capabilities of the multi-dimensional human being.
The Outer Environment of BRICKS (Real Estate/Facility Management) and BYTES (Information Technology) creates impulses in people’s Inner (personal) Environment. These impulses then generate a response in their BEHAVIOUR (Human Resources/Culture/Corporate Identity).
From research, we know that employee engagement and customer experience are interlinked. The more engaged employees are, the better they provide customer experience to clients and end-users.
Health and Well-being
Health and well-being determine our e-motions, or “energy in motion.” The positive or negative energy in motion in an organisation feeds feelings, which in turn determine thinking, behaviour, getting along with others, and performance in the workplace.
The human body is an instrument that, when well-tuned, emanates greater harmony. The physical, digital and social environments provide the backdrop of the learning/work experience and are integral influencers. A vibrant environment is a zone for encounters and impromptu interactions.
The environment generates behaviour, and behaviour drives environment design and management.
- Force of energy – Engagement of Spirit (Being).
- Focus of energy – Engagement of Mind (Thinking).
- Quality of energy – Engagement of Heart (Feeling).
- Quantity of energy – Engagement of Body (Doing).
We are multi-sensory creatures that can see, hear, smell, and touch the environment that we are in. Enriched environments that promote sensory, motor, cognitive, and social engagement can aid neurogenesis and prevent mental decline besides satisfying basic human needs. Complex-place contexts (enrichment + engagement) and positive associations can help strengthen cognitive activity and mitigate the influence of environmental stressors. The brain is malleable and can generate new connections through neurogenesis.
Can people make time to connect, charge, and relax so that they can feel good mentally, physically, and socially? As Janine Vos, CHRO and board member of Rabo Bank, put it, “Work is so much more than just earning money. Work is having meaning, structure, learning, being social, and being seen.” People generally want Places to connect socially.
Behaviour
Is an organisation’s culture such that employees still feel connected in a hybrid working model, where they split their time between working at the office, at home, and in third places in between? There is a sense of pride when you belong somewhere, and the learning/work environment is an important part. The environment is an element of job satisfaction and, therefore, compensation.
The design of the learn/work environment is often businesslike on the outside and soulless on the inside. It should be inextricably linked to an organisation’s identity and culture and the health and well-being of the users—a physical and digital environment in which people are immersed with these qualities. Eventually, the organisational policy and work culture (social environment) influence our happiness at work more than the physical and digital environment.
A holistic approach to the learning/work environment ecosystem is an essential precondition. It’s about the entire play, not just the script, the actors, the audience or the physical theatre. The building has physical characteristics such as its geographical location, size, layout, design, climate (thermal comfort, air quality, light, daylight, sound acoustics), biophilia, safety, etc., but also intangible characteristics such as appearance to the user and what they feel when they are interacting with it, atmosphere, privacy, etc. These characteristics colour the message. It’s the tone that makes the music.
Various characteristics of the learning/work environment can influence users’ well-being. Relatively small adjustments in the physical, digital, and social environment can already have a positive impact, such as improving concentration or mood.
It’s easier to think outside the box when you’re not staying in one.
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The environment generates behaviour, and behaviour drives environment design and management.
A learning/work environment for “free-range” people or “battery-cage” people?
A change in the learn/work environment will lead to a specific outcome in the behaviour of people.
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It is essential to provide customization within the learning/work environment, individual freedom of choice, and some user control to accommodate individual preferences and perceived importance of physical, digital, and social environmental characteristics for a specific activity over time. Besides the physical place and space plus the digital connectedness and interface, the social dimension of privacy, interaction, and autonomy also plays an important role in people’s performance and learning outcomes.
Job surveys and student surveys should look at not just what is being taught and experienced in the learning/work environment but also the environment in which it all happens. The interdisciplinary field of environmental psychology investigates people’s interactions with their environment—their perceptions, attitudes, and actions and how they affect one another. It also examines how people act individually or in groups and create and use their environment.
Structural behavioural change
The environment is a catalyst for human performance and, therefore, has a strategic impact on the core business of any organisation. However, it also comes with social responsibility because it affects people’s health, well-being, and consciousness on a body, mind, heart, and spirit level. Consciousness is the state of being aware (or sensitive) of and responsive to one’s surroundings.
Change begins with a choice. Personal coaching and practice can change the inner environment (Mind, Body, Heart, and Spirit) of human consciousness. Changing the Outer Environment (physical, digital, and social) of people is an extra leverage to unleash the capabilities of the multidimensional human being.
Spirituality at work connects the physical realm with the metaphysical, the mundane with the transcendent. Like Sacred Geometry, it is associated with venerable structures such as cathedrals, temples, henges, and pyramids that serve as conduits between the human spirit and the enigmatic forces that shape our world. This may sound unreasonable to modern people who perceive everything spatially and materially. However, for those more conscious of their inner life than their outer material surroundings, it represents a concept that speaks to a true and profound experience.
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A growing body of research demonstrates that it is not the objective environmental conditions but the subjective interpretation of them that affect people’s well-being, resilience, and performance. The workplace is also a state of mind. That is why the way people experience their environment also influences their potential, health and well-being, effectiveness, and efficiency.
The employees’ Inner Environment dynamics of doing (body), thinking (mind), feeling (heart) and being (spirit) are cogs in the human experience. The Outer Environment influences them, including natural, built and social dynamics. Each of the Outer Environment components enables or constrains human performance. The inner and outer environments are distinct but not separate; they are a continuum of the same universal energy flow. All parts are interconnected and interdependent.
The Integral health and well-being of people are determined by the balance and harmonisation of quantity (doing), focus (thinking), quality (feeling), force (being), and energy in the inner environment, in addition to personal traits (preferences for privacy, interaction, and autonomy) and situational factors like sociodemographic characteristics.
Your physiology and personality are equal to how you think, act, and feel. Multiple DOING and/or THINKING creates a FEELING that is stored as an automatic program in the Spirit/Soul (BEING).
Your personality, the state of BEING, is created, and you carry out the thought/action on the automatic pilot (unconsciously skilled). The end product of an experience is an e-motion (Energy in motion).
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There is a growing understanding that structural, behavioural change requires much more than merely physical and digital facilitation of desired behaviour. In addition, attention should also be paid to awareness, stimulation, and coaching to provide appropriate cultural development in the social environment. This is the Human Resources (HR) department’s field of expertise.
An integrated HR approach with the Real Estate (RE), Facility Management (FM), and IT departments can make the learning/work environment a powerful tool for inducing culture development, facilitating innovation, and enhancing a learning (knowledge-based) organisation. It can also enhance people’s health and well-being.
Behaviour is about respect, trust, autonomy, and flexibility, which determine motivation and satisfaction. A well (re)designed physical and digital environment can contribute to healthier thinking and behavioural patterns and effectively support behavioural and cultural development programs in the social environment.
A place where employees are treated with respect, valued for their unique contributions and empowered to make decisions that help the organisation, their community, and the world thrive.
Motivation does not only come from money but also from meaning, mastery, and autonomy. Employees with motivation that comes from within experience their work as meaningful and more often want to be the best in their field.
Identity
The identity of an organisation does not stop with printed material and the website; it also expresses itself in the building and its location. A building can support the image of your organisation, an image that is going to be imageable and memorable. Space is an opportunity to communicate as an organisation. How one is accommodated says a lot about the organisation, just like clothing says something about the person wearing it. The environment’s design conveys information and produces psychological effects influencing the occupants’ engagement.
“What clothing is to a person is accommodation to an organisation.” (René Stevens)
The learning/work environment is a means, just like a sports outfit for a football club. Putting on another fashionable outfit doesn’t make you a better football player. But it does help to radiate connectedness, team spirit, and belonging, promote values and success, give a proud feeling, and perhaps intimidate the opponent.
Therefore, the learning/work environment is much more than a functional shelter alone. The physical and digital environment can potentially support the strategic objectives of the educational and communication functions. People seek an organisation’s core, heart, inspiration, and purpose. Accommodation helps to manifest this tangibly.
Education institutions can be seen as an ecosystem where explicit and implicit knowledge and skills are developed and exchanged (a place to construct knowledge). Informal meeting places with regularly changing thought-provoking displays encourage conversation between lecturers and students outside of conventional learning spaces.
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The aesthetic lifespan (corporate and brand image) is one of the three fundamental qualities of a building, in addition to the functional lifespan (fit for purpose) and technical lifespan (solidity and durability).
Making this ‘soft’ and subjective aesthetic quality measurable is challenging but not impossible. It focuses on people-centric design concerning the psychological, social, cultural and aesthetic performance of the learning/work environment.
It makes tangible what an organisation stands for, their product brand(s) and the overall employee and customer experience. This is reflected not only in the education curriculum but also in the accommodation.
The integration with economics results in a value-adding environment. A place where people feel connected to a sense of purpose, solidarity and community that extends well beyond the job contract.
Accommodation is ideally tailored to the rational and emotional needs of the target user group—a symbiosis of business styles of organisations with the work/study styles of individuals. However, there is no average employee or student. A ‘persona’ segmentation based on personal characteristics and needs of employees/students can help make choices in (differentiated) accommodation and Facilities, IT services offered, and appropriate policies (e.g. Mobility policy or Smartphone policy).
Integrating the campus with the local community
When education, business, and government work together, the vitality of the region can be strengthened. This connects education and research with the region and ensures a good, context-rich learning environment.
The learning/work environment can be used to give physical shape to collaboration with partners in the education chain, knowledge alliances, the business community, incubators and student startups by sharing buildings and facilities. This not only makes the connection between educational practice and the results of science and research but also affects innovation and economic spin-off. By working together, more can be done with the same budget.
The learning/work environment can be actively used to facilitate collaboration and knowledge alliances and have a community focus to improve the quality of life in the neighbourhood. By (partly) available shared (green) spaces, places of connection for work/live/leisure/retail. Having adequate student housing and short-stay facilities on the campus creates a competitive advantage over other universities that haven’t. All of this adds to the university rankings and student enrolment.
By breaking the question ‘Is the learn/work environment adding value?’ up into chunks it becomes more manageable. To answer it, four main sub-questions must be addressed. But be aware that Engagement, Effectiveness, Efficiency and Evidence are not ends in themselves but means to an end. Pay attention to what is essential, not just what is quantifiable. Go for the good of the whole.