Unlock the secrets of Activity Based Work (ABW) with our special guest, Hardeep Matharu who is a Senior Consultant for Veldhoen Company.
As a Change Management expert, Hardeep supports organisational transition to new ways of working, underpinned by a strong sense of community, collaboration and enhancing wellbeing for employees. He envisions a better world of work that fosters genuine connections and empowers individuals to be at their best.
Hardeep is passionate about people development, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion. These passions fuel his support for leaders to drive meaningful and sustainable organisational change. He advocates for the power of a desirable workplace and its impact on enhancing employee wellbeing.
To find out more about Veldhoen + Company please click here.
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Unlock the secrets of Activity Based Work (ABW) with our special guest, Hardeep Matharu who is a Senior Consultant for Veldhoen Company.
As a Change Management expert, Hardeep supports organisational transition to new ways of working, underpinned by a strong sense of community, collaboration and enhancing wellbeing for employees. He envisions a better world of work that fosters genuine connections and empowers individuals to be at their best.
Hardeep is passionate about people development, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion. These passions fuel his support for leaders to drive meaningful and sustainable organisational change. He advocates for the power of a desirable workplace and its impact on enhancing employee wellbeing.
To find out more about Veldhoen + Company please click here.
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Conversations on Wellbeing at Work, the podcast by Wellbeing at Work World, which features speakers from our upcoming summits, which happen in eight regions around the world, as well as various experts and practitioners in the wellbeing space. Do please check out our summits and other activities. We have a global hub. We run a bunch of webinars, uh, etc. And a bespoke division. You can find out about all that at well, our website, wellbeingatworkworld. So, uh, I'd like to welcome our guest today, um hardy matharu, who's a senior consultant with the velton company. Uh, he's going to be speaking next week in Singapore, I believe.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yes, hello John, thanks for having me today.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, it's great for you to be here. So we're going to be talking about activity-based work, abw, and its links to well-being, and my understanding is that you folk at Veldhøen are leaders in the field, so I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more about the process and how that connects into well-being. So perhaps a good place to start would be.
Speaker 2:I think for many people they're probably not familiar with activity-based working ABW so perhaps start with a brief outline of what's involved in that sure, um, I I feel that, uh, activity-based working is probably a concept that has been, uh, over the years, interpreted, misinterpreted, reinterpreted and changed a lot, but the overall principle of activity-based working, of which velton is actually the founder um of, in terms of the principle, the idea of it is really to focus a workplace environment around the activities that people perform in the office.
Speaker 2:So if you think of a typical traditional office, whereby it may be a seat that you sit in for 90%, 80% of your day, you may go to a meeting room to do a meeting, but you've got a very limited choice of the actual spaces that you go and work in.
Speaker 2:You may have an assigned seat because that's where you sit for your day.
Speaker 2:Activity-based is intended to serve the multitude of functions that you perform in your role and in the job that you do. So if you, for example, are sometimes requiring a space for you to focus and have full attention on something, there should be an environment to support that. On the other hand, if you want to sit down and work on something with a little bit of distraction around you, because you may be doing something that you would like to hear what's going on around you, there'd be a setting for that, and then all of the types of collaboration that you would do small group interaction, much larger groups. The idea of activity-based working is to bring workplace settings that suit the needs of the employees into the office, and so that is in some organizations can represent quite a change from the traditional, and most people, I think, work in environments that might be somewhere between the traditional and a full activity-based working environment today, but they may not know what that term of ABW really is. But hopefully that helps to explain a little bit of it there.
Speaker 1:Not know what that term of APW really is. But hopefully that helps to explain a little bit of it there. No, it does. But I already sense from what you're saying that although the phrase is activity-based work, it's focused on the design of the work. It seems to me to be very much a people-focused process.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, so absolutely correct, and we recognize that all organizations are different. The typical flows and behaviors of organizations and the people that work within them are unique to a team and to an organization themselves, because, as we all know and we've probably all worked in environments that have vastly different behaviors in them we don't sort of go in and force fit huge variety if the organization doesn't need a huge variety of work setting, and conversely as well, we do need to make sure that we listen to the needs of the employees that want to have the business and make sure that we're crafting an environment that really suits what that business wants its employees to do, and hence that's why, in some cases, people may be working in an ABW environment, but it will look very different from another organization's ABW environment too.
Speaker 1:So does that sort of involve an element of co-creation with the people who work in a workspace?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you just kind of come in and you have a little look around, make a few notes on the clipboard and then there's the new workspace.
Speaker 2:Well, it's very possible that probably in the very early days. I mean, our organization, velothone, has been doing these types of transformation projects for 35 years now. In fact, we're celebrating our 35th anniversary in the end of this month, which is great for us as an org.
Speaker 1:But, with that being said, oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually we're all going to be going to the Netherlands for it, which I can't wait for, but anyway, that's a sidetrack. The reality is, I think in the earlier days it would very much have been the. We're just jotting some things down. Looking at what's happening Over the years it's evolved significantly. I think even back then there was an element of co-creation with employees.
Speaker 2:But where we've gotten to now is we do gather a lot of data. We do a lot of research in terms of how an organization is operating. That does, of course, also involve people sometimes observing a space and seeing what is actually happening here, what's going on. But we'll also perform a lot of surveys, we'll do a lot of benchmarking for what we're seeing versus other organizations and we essentially build a bit of data. In fact, we build a lot of data to come back to the organization and say, from how we observe your organization's behaviors, from what we hear from your employees because we do a lot of listening sessions with employees, with the leadership we tend to come back with a picture of how we feel would be an optimal environment for that company. And then it's up to the company to make a call Do they want to go that direction, and then that's the consulting work, where it comes in to it all.
Speaker 1:Great. So I want to dig a bit deeper into how this links to the notion of wellbeing, because obviously there's sort of a bigger sort of change picture going on in in the background there. Before that, I just want to be uh, just get a sense of, of the application of this approach to hybrid working, which is obviously, you know, a very common thing nowadays, and also fully remote working. I mean, is this something that's only really useful if people are in the office, most of us, most or all of the time?
Speaker 2:well, um, I would say I'd say, when we thought, when we think of the activity-based working environment and we're traditionally thinking of the office environment we we've also since covid have really had to look beyond that too. So typically, when we're looking at activity-based working for a company as a whole, we're also bearing in mind the other environments that the people will be working in. So that does also mean taking a step back and saying what kind of home environments are people typically working with? What is the gap that is that they need to have filled in the office environment? So we also have to think about what does the office serve that the home environment might not, and also vice versa.
Speaker 2:So, as an example, obviously being here in Singapore, the needs of the employees can be vastly different.
Speaker 2:We've got quite a lot of people that in Singapore, the needs of the employees can be vastly different.
Speaker 2:We have we've got quite a lot of people that in Singapore particularly junior members of staff they may work in an environment where actually they don't live alone, they may not have quiet in their space.
Speaker 2:So we need to make sure that the needs of the office, which would be a quiet environment for me to get my head down that needs to be incorporated into the office environment, but the vast majority of people here go to the office for collaboration purposes. So when we think of activity-based, we have to think about what is it that the office is being used for typically, and making sure, then, that we craft an office that serves those needs. Because and again I could imagine it may be a bigger challenge to organizations outside of Asia, but including in Asia too getting people to come back to the office and connect with one another is a pain point for a lot of companies, and it's difficult then to assume that people will come back into an office where they don't feel that they can collaborate effectively. So our job is quite big, because we do really have to make sure that office serves a much greater purpose than maybe it ever did in the past.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, I think, in two ways. One is that one of the phrases we often hear around changing work, future work, culture, all that is bringing your whole self to work Absolutely. It seems to me that your approach very much is sort of looking at that from the other viewpoint of someone's whole life and how that relates to their work life and making sure that those complement each other, rather than saying, you know, bring it all on into the workplace. It's kind of an interesting. Is that a fair? I mean, am I mischaracterizing?
Speaker 2:No, no, you're getting absolutely right, I think. From my perspective, I'm personally very drawn to the topic because of that reason. In fact, actually, my journey into workplace strategy was very personal because I worked in a company where the office environment was very challenging for me to work in and actually Veldhøen was our consultant back then. It was the first time I'd gotten exposed to the fact that people out there do this kind of work right Design offices that serve the needs of the employees and gives us a voice. So my draw to it was very much because prior, when I worked in my own office environment before and I vividly remember it I know no issue with the fact that I mean the employer was great, I really enjoyed the team I worked with, but I literally used to work in an office with no windows around me.
Speaker 2:It was just sit down, get your head down and just work all day, and it was something that didn't make me feel particularly great when I was in the office. So if I think of sort of like what I was lacking, if you think about the needs of most people are having a bit of natural light, having a little bit of chance to move around and just get a little bit of movement going in your day to day. I was lacking a lot of that in that environment that was in. I remember pointing this out in a workshop and people were like, oh yeah, I feel the same way too, and so I thought, ok, this is good work. You know, it's giving a voice to people in terms of raising the hand. What needs do I have?
Speaker 1:um, in the office and that's exactly what we still do to this day.
Speaker 1:It's funny we're seeing that actually with events yes, you're running, running conferences that now these sort of anonymous hotel ballrooms with no windows have become sort of um, you know they're not, they're not, they're not the venues of choice anymore. You know people looking for spaces that more allow people a bit more, a bit more freedom and interaction and stuff. So it seems to me and the other point I'm thinking about, as you were talking about that that I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that that one of the things that covid's done is it's raised the. The notion of collaboration and collaborative workspaces has sort of become got a heightened focus, that now that that there's a greater recognition of the function that the space plays in terms of collaboration. So I want to sort of take that, if that's, if that's a correct assumption, and then and say how does that feed in in your work, in in into two things that have a big influence on people's well-being, and that's around communities and cultures in organizations. So how does your work influence and guide those developments?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's certainly one of those things that is hugely measured when we talk about workplace performance. Actually, there's an index out there, organized by a company called Leaseman, and one of the things that is tracked in there and benchmarked is people's sense of community within the organization itself, and that's again driven by the physical location primarily. It's not the only part of it, of course, but when we think of what we look at creating community, creating a community spirit within a company one of the great levers of doing that is the creating community, creating a community spirit within a company. One of the great levers of doing that is the physical environment right. And again I'll say, it's a lever, it's something that can be pulled, it can be used by an organization. It isn't the one thing that is going to make it happen, but it's something that can be played with right. So if we think about community, we're often thinking how is it that we can break down silos in an organization? Of course you do need to have some element of I've got my team, I feel like I've got a sense of belonging, but how do you also make yourself feel like you're part of a bigger community? There's more people in there.
Speaker 2:So most organizations nowadays typically look at their office environment as being something more like a community space. If you think about community managers, it's a job title that is now part of a lot of offices that maybe didn't exist a decade ago. So people are starting to really con onto this right. So you're right, it is something that can be used. Sorry, john, go ahead. No, no, no, I was just pausing for myself. Please keep going. And it could often be something like I came into the town hall, we were all in an environment and I got a chance to see everyone around me. So that is a great then nudge to say, actually town halls are a great lever to make people feel connected to the organization. So make space for it, make an environment that's conducive. And, as you sort of said, maybe that isn't just going into a meeting room with no windows and very sort of anonymous space. Actually it's represent your brand when you're doing your town hall, right, so make people feel they're part of a bigger whole.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, as well, as can also be nudges like, for example, having open collaboration spaces, because, again, if you think about a traditional office environment, most meetings would have taken place behind closed doors, so how would one know what's going on in another team when they're collaborating. If they can never see it, they can never hear it. So a lot of companies make specific space for open collab. So you could therefore walk past someone having a meeting and it might be the sales team and you might be from, say, the finance team, but you get a little bit of a sense of what are the sales guys talking about and maybe you might pop your head in and say, oh, I know a little bit about X, y, z, so it's again.
Speaker 2:It's that breaking down of the sun is making people feel like they belong, which, again going back to that point about believer, you need the culture to be able to make that happen, but the workspace can be a nudge for that behavior. And we talk a lot about nudges, right, because the office environment is a key lever, but you do need to nudge people sometimes to use it as well. So, to answer your question, that's kind of how we think of community. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm very encouraged by your advocacy there for town hall meetings. One of the things I like to do when I'm emceeing and I haven't had an opportunity to do it recently is actually run up in the afternoon, do a town hall meeting where I'll take panelists who've been on during the day. I'll just say, right, 3 o'clock for 40 minutes, we're going to do a town hall. If you were on a panel before that during the day, come on down onto the stage so you might have like five people you know, who are talking about five pretty different things and just open it up to the floor for Q&A and those things can go really well because again, people feel like the speakers then feel they're sort of connected to one another. Those issues are being connected to one another and all those questions that we didn't have time to ask when the thing was going on get kind of packaged and distributed amongst a different group of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, yeah, you know just yeah, it's just a I'm sorry it's a bit of a plug.
Speaker 1:But there you go, um. So I think I think, as you're describing, I think I think that something that strikes me is that, um and we touched on it a little bit before we started recording that for a lot of people, uh, or organizations, sort of first stop on well-being is to say, okay, we've got to provide some well-being resources for our people. You know, let's, let's do a yoga class, let's offer them a gym membership, let's, let's beef up the, the um, um, the uh, the benefits a little bit, and those are all, I think, valid things to do. But you're, you're, you've sort of gone up a little. You're kind of thinking about the context in which that happens and how you can create an environment that but sort of not as you say nudges people in the right direction, versus just offering them a sort of menu of things to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. So in fact, actually, the title of our panel discussion next week that I'll be part of is Wellbeing is Not Just a Yoga Room. So it's a little bit of a cheeky title, but we intentionally thought it was a statement that we felt was important to make because I think it is the reality that you know to your point. I think that that has been deemed as a little bit of the checkmark in the past of oh, we've got a yoga room, we've got a prayer room, we've got a mother's room, we've got a gym in the office, and essentially it's like a checkmark to say, well, we've given people what they need to use it. And I think, actually, that there's a little bit of a challenge with that because, particularly Particularly if you think about nowadays, when people aren't necessarily going into the office every day, they may not have a ritual around using something like that, even if they may have before, maybe they've taken the time to adjust, come back to it. It becomes almost like this whole taking control of one's well-being. It's much more important. I think that people are able to do that much more for themselves now as well. You know they don't have the nudges that they may have had every single day before. They don't always be. They're not always around those anymore.
Speaker 2:So I think what we typically look to do is because we often look at the ways of working.
Speaker 2:The workplace is a part of it, but of course, the way of working is important too, and I think one of the key bits about wellbeing is that, as we've all become more and more aware of how important it is and how useful it is for an organization to have a great grasp on it, I think it's changed from us being able to just give things that people will use on their own accord to actually being more of a conversation in the organization.
Speaker 2:How can well-being be brought to the front when it comes to people taking ownership of their well-being, talking about some of the things that they may be doing to enable their own well-being? So how do we do that? And I think the space is a way to nudge the behavior, but the way of working needs to be able to really nail that piece down. Check-ins is becoming a much bigger part of team meetings, much more of a bigger part of the interactions that people have with one another. Discussing also what options do people have to manage their well-being is becoming a bigger part of the conversation, and this is kind of what we're getting towards in terms of having that more holistic approach to well-being around workplace and everything around it too.
Speaker 1:So that's really how we come about it at this, this point in time right because I did note on your site there was something that caught my eye when I was leafing through some of the background stuff was this notion that that work is, uh, something you want people to, to be something they feel empowered about, rather than somewhere to go. And it seems to me that that that what you're saying about, about well-being, sort of reflects that. That you that you're looking to empower people to take control of their, of their well-being so nashes nicely with that notion of work and obviously that sense of purpose and control are big influences on on your well-being absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I mean you could. You could even take some of the simple kind of piece. If you talk about the physical well-being piece in our case, as I was sort of mentioning the intention of going to a flexible working environment where people go to spaces that suit what they're doing, typically in most people's days they would find themselves moving around the office to suit the activities they're performing. In a traditional office, people don't have that choice and therefore they may stay at one spot, whereas in our case the idea is that actually we encourage people to move around the office. That, of course, comes with this challenge of someone saying, oh, but I had my desk and now I don't have my desk, and that again, is a very simplified looking at it. But the idea is actually the knock-on benefit is well, you're going to move around the office, right, you're going to be having perhaps some serendipitous conversations in the office, but beyond that, physically you're moving right, and I think from a physical wellbeing perspective, that can have quite a subtle but an important impact on someone's day-to-day life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but people do you know they experience losses more intensely than they do gains right. So, instantly people think, well, I'm having something taken away and that sort of desk is. You know, when you think about I mean, I'm obviously a little bit older than you, but I think about the sort of workplace that I grew up in. It was very much about about ownership of that space yeah, I've got.
Speaker 1:I've got the photo of my families and you know, some things on the, on the uh, on the cubicle wall that reflect my. This is how I bring my whole self to work is through these little nuggets and things that I put around on my desk, and that's mine and you know, don't you dare come anywhere yeah, so that sort of territorialness is is something that people can be quite attached to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I would say probably, amongst the change management challenges. When it comes to making a change to an office environment, it's invariably that will come up along the way, and I understand Don't get me wrong I think we all understand that it is a bit of a pill to swallow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, understand, don't get me wrong, I think we all understand that it is. It is a bit of a pill to swallow, yeah, yeah, and I think there's also I have not seen anything on it recently and I'm a sort of pre-covid that there was this sort of um everyone was going open plan and they seem to be doing that by and large, without maybe a lot of thoughts. Right that it was a well, yeah, we'll get rid of the cubicles, we'll put open des. Yeah, we'll get rid of the cubicles, we'll put open desks, we'll have hoteling and everything I don't know, without really thinking much beyond that and there was quite a backlash.
Speaker 1:People say, actually we don't like this, we're not very productive because it's too noisy. I've got no, so you're sort of fixing that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah absolutely, because the idea really is that, um and I think the elephant plan, as you sort of said it does have its downsides and it isn't for everyone, you know. It's why I was sort of saying before the intention isn't to come in and force fit what works for a company A is going to be for company B, because it's the that's still your. The best way for you to mess up a project is to assume, right, that that's going to be for them and so for us. We always have sort of the approach there to really understand what is the DNA of the company, what suits the DNA, the activity of the company. As an example, more recently we've been working with a shipping company, and shipping is an industry that has quite a lot of traditional routes.
Speaker 2:So for us to come in and sort of go oh yeah, let's go fully flexible, fully open plan, I think it would be a bit of a time bomb, you know, just waiting to explode for us, and we recognize that it would be quite a push for them to go there, not that that's what they want or we're pushing them to, but we do feel like there is an ability to go slightly more flexible. So that's probably what we'll build into the plans alongside with the client, and who knows, maybe in time they might find actually that works great for them. Then it could be a baby step in that direction, or not perhaps, and they stay where they are. So from our perspective it's really about listening to the company and not just force fitting what is fashionable today, which, like you said, for a period was open plan. Now maybe it is. I still don't know, but I think people are getting a little bit smarter that they can't just take a floor plan that works for another company and assume it's going to be right for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so another thing you mentioned there just just briefly, you talked about serendipity around connecting with people and two things that I mean. One of the things that I think one, one of the really strong links, I think, between people's well-being and their productivity is around the sorts of connections that they have in the workplace and in the world so often. I mean, I just this morning did a podcast on loneliness and belonging, and belonging is obviously a big thing for organizations right now and loneliness is a huge well-being problem. Organizations right now, and loneliness is a huge well-being problem.
Speaker 1:And often people think, well, if, to fix well loneliness, I've got to have lots of, I've got to have more best friends, right, I've got to have a, you know, a deeper relationship with my next door neighbor or whatever it might be, whereas what you actually need is a, is a range of interactions with people. You need to chat to the, the person who walks the dog and that you see in the park once a week, or the barista, as well as your spouse and friends, and it's that sort of mix. And in the same way, at work, it's not about, it's not just about having really tight ties to the people that you work with on a daily basis. It's those casual interactions that actually feed in innovation in a lot of cases. So it seems to me that that notion of serendipitous contact is very closely aligned with the need for human connection as a well-being issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I've got a very personal relationship with that. I live in Singapore. Singapore itself has a tendency to sometimes make you feel somewhat isolated. It just is a society like myself being foreign. Here I live alone.
Speaker 2:I think I have like some of the things that would be a good nudge to say hey, you're on that, you're on that path to perhaps going down there, and I've had moments, especially during COVID if you think about how COVID was was sort of locked in my space and didn't really have a lot.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, I have a very personal connection to what you're just mentioning and you're right there, as you sort of said, that the things that really helped me and do continue to help me is really, as you sort of said, having a range of interactions with people that I feel very close to.
Speaker 2:Also the acquaintances who I get together with and I have a very purposeful conversation with, but I'm not sort of talking to them every day or every other day. You know it's just those, and so you said the range of interactions. I also feel, now that we've been able to get out more often and have meetings with people in person, go to offices where people are together. I do as well notice that myself. It feels a lot easier for me to feel connected out there. Now, you know, even that five minute conversation at the water cooler when I'm in an office environment with someone that I don't know very well, it just brings a bit of spice to my day that I otherwise wouldn't have Right, and it inspires a little bit of. If I have that conversation, maybe I should have another one, you know, and it's a little bit of that snowballing effect and something that I personally thrive on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that brings in from the outside ideas that people you maybe work with very closely may be thinking.
Speaker 1:You know, you get into a habit, a way of thinking and of working. It's like, actually, the fellow I was interviewing this morning on loneliness, his experience was probably not unlike yours. He was a diplomat and he he had where he felt which, you know, I don't have those sort of social connections that I thought I I had before because I've been so busy working like like, like, like, like, yes, so I do think that that, um, uh, there's a, there's a group I've done a bit of work with in toronto and they have this week, that one week every year it's it's a talk to strangers week. Oh, I like that. So, because talking, talking to strangers, actually has a big impact on your well-being, um, so of course, that's something we're told not to do mustn't talk to strangers. Um. So the other thing you touched on, which I think it is um, yeah, I know that there's like a whole range of well-being impacts of the work you're doing.
Speaker 1:We're not very touched on all of them, but you did mention that thing about activity, about about moving around, um, and I have to say one of my early work experiences I used to work in construction I was always going to different sites and stuff. When I moved here to canada, I got my first office job and it drove me absolutely. I couldn't, I was, I wasn't, well, I would. I might as well have been literally chained to my desk because it was a fairly regimented environment. So that activity is obviously something we associate very strongly with well-being, physical fitness.
Speaker 2:But the flip side of that is rest. I mean, are you creating space for?
Speaker 1:people to rest.
Speaker 2:It's funny you say that because, again, it was probably a bit of something eye-catching for me was when I was a client of Velotone in the company, what I noticed when they presented the data that they gathered actually they measured the amount of time they observed people resting in the office or relaxing, I guess, is the term that they use. But it's amazing when you see again, when you look at different teams and how they are actually resting versus others right, how much time they're spending socializing versus others. What you really notice is that those teams where the rest is a healthy amount probably you don't need to have, probably you don't want to have half of your day resting, but you probably want to have, you want to have some time in your day carved out for that. 10%, 15% of your time there or thereabouts is probably about right.
Speaker 2:So when you observe that in the teams where they're around the amount that they should be perhaps resting, it's where you really see actually there is a sense of connection. There you can see that they know each other well. They have a little bit of sort of interaction that just feels a little bit more like they're comfortable with one another. So it has a great effect there, not just on the bonding piece, but, as you sort of said as well, it's a human need for us to rest right, we can't go a hundred miles an hour all day, because at some point we're going to crash, and so we do need that time to rest. We do need that time to give to ourselves, and so, when we think of designing office spaces, we're always very conscious of what kind of rest environment is needed from the employees and how can we make sure we carve space out for that? Um, yes, so absolutely.
Speaker 1:it's a big part of the work that we do yeah, because a lot, a lot of a lot of consultants will. We use sports metaphors around performance and productivity and it's always about, you know, giving 100 or 110 and rah, rah, rah, whereas in fact, if you go to high performing athletes, what they do is like it's about, it's about the routine, the rhythm of their work around rest and performance. Absolutely so. I think that's something that, versus the other way, that sort of emerges sometimes. Again, something I've not seen lately around workplaces was there was a trend at one point of putting in like nap pods into workplaces which seemed that the sort of not so hidden agenda around that was.
Speaker 1:You know, we don't want to leave work ever, you know, versus just casually, sort of resting as you were needed.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and to be fair, as you sort of said, you know. So I'm just going to add on a little bit. For some organizations it's appropriate. The working hours of some companies are such that that's required. So absolutely, you're right. But it does, as you sort of said, I think it's not for every organization, some companies out there. It would be the last thing for them because the cadence of the work it doesn't suit it. It would be a very much a white elephant, you know, in a sense. But for the companies where it's appropriate, that's a great way to provide a rest space. In other cases it might just be a quiet room, it might be a social room, but again, whatever configuration works. I think it's what organizations need to be clear on and also make sure they make space for it absolutely no, I'm a, I'm a cute.
Speaker 1:There's a woman and I think she's in, she's in new york and, uh, I can't remember her real name, but she goes under the name of the nap, the nap bishop. I love it and but, but but for her it's quite a political thing. There's a whole thing around sort of race and relaxation, where, you know, people of certain ethnicity are late, they're lazy, they're not working hard and therefore she's trying to sort of rehabilitate rest as being a legitimate activity for everybody, but particularly um, you know, um, people of color etc. And I think there's some, there's some truth in that that you do take, you know, you can be easily labeled as as lazy if you just happen to be taking a well-needed yeah, a well-needed, absolutely yeah, rest of some kind yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I know there's a few I feel like that. So I think there's some important things we haven't touched on and we're sort of up against our self in my my, my self-imposed time just a couple, just a few things that that again struck me, that that were very much related to your work, that have big impacts on on well-being, was around sort of flexibility, choice and autonomy. I mean those seem to be very central to your approach.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. When we look at organizations in terms of adjusting their ways of working, a huge part of it is really having conversations where we try to figure out what is that level of accountability people are feeling in the organization, what is that level of trust they feel that they have within the company, and also, how focused are they on actually driving towards outcomes, rather than it's a little bit like sort of taking away the idea of focusing on the outcome and not just the form and everything that it looks like internally. And I think that the conversations that we often have that in some ways dance around. That is that some companies are further ahead when it comes to making people very clear on that sense of accountability and empowerment and some are really not. And I think that's an area that we need to spend some time with with our organizations and I think, invariably speaking, I think if people are and it does speak to people's sense of wellbeing, because I feel that if people are clear on the purpose, what is it that they're doing when they go to a space? Right, I think if they feel that they have that, it's hugely empowering and it's hugely impactful for how good they feel about being there. It also helps to drive performance because if you feel like you know why you're there, you're going to do whatever you can to get there, versus if you don't know.
Speaker 2:And there have been companies I've sat with in terms of workshops and I say what do you feel is the outcome that you're driving towards in the team? And actually people say I actually don't know, I just want to make my boss happy and that's a little bit of a missed opportunity, right To make someone feel bigger, that their outcome and their work is bigger than just that report they're writing, you know. So I think us bringing that piece in line, you know, making people clear on what they're driving towards, what part they play, is a huge part of the work that we do in our workshops, the trainings that we do to make sure that we open, even if we can't solve it. We don't come in and tell them, but we need to open up a conversation and that's the way that we can hopefully get there, help them get there.
Speaker 1:Well, you're clearly going to be generating an interesting conversation come next week in Singapore. Yes, and I think just from this brief conversation we've had, you really seem to be you very much. So I think deepening the conversation around, around well-being, by focusing on some of those sort of contextual determinants, um, and the sort of sort of the physical, the cultural context which ties in very much with I know you know well-being at work's own approach, to look at this as a well-being, as being a strategic activity. So, thank you, I appreciate you joining us here today and I wish I was joining you in Singapore. Thank you, john, I'll be desk found next week. So all the best with that and I look forward to I'll make sure I watch the video when that comes out Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me Thank you, thank you, bye.