“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

Morpheus, The Matrix

THE AIRBUS A380 is the largest passenger aero­plane in the world. At 73m long and 80m wide, the double-deck, wide-body jet can carry over 850 passengers in an economy-class-only configuration. Many of the airports around the world had to upgrade their facilities to deal with a machine twice as long as a blue whale and containing more than 500km of wiring. And for a while it seemed that this engineering marvel was not going to make it to Barcelona all because of some ducks.

The new Barcelona Airport Terminal One building (the fifth largest in the world) and a third runway were opened in 2009, yet the original plans had designed a much longer runway. In the end, it had to be shortened since it was pushing up against a protected wildlife area. The irony is that the lakes are artificial – when they built the airport, they had to get sand and rocks for the construction from the surrounding area. Then it rained and the birds from the Llobregat Delta on the other side of the airport moved in.

We think this provides an important lesson for businesses and their actions towards looking after the people within them. No matter how bold your ambitions, with the requisite resources in place, the most talented people may flounder unless the right environment is provided to support their work. Two of the seven hacks we detailed in the previous chapter concern the environment; Surroundings and Social, and we detail them further in this chapter. The aim is to provide a guide on designing the right environment for workplace wellbeing.

The company environment

Too many business environments are sterile. Clinical. Devoid of emotion. Too often the new open-plan office which was so well-intended and created for open dialogue and team interactivity, merely suffocates authentic emotional behaviour. Nobody dares to make a noise. Nobody has any private space to exclaim, shout, or cry. Even if you cough or sneeze, heads will turn with possible sneers. In all, emotions are dampened and individuality is further eroded.

Furthermore, in the absence of any regular zone that is yours in the age of the hot desk, where you may be sitting down at any cubicle on any floor and have nowhere to call your own, recent studies show reduced productivity and increased unease. Nobody has any safe territory. They always feel exposed. No wonder people increasingly wish to work from home, which may improve efficiency, but it’s incredibly hard to bond a geographically distributed team that hardly ever comes together. Google famously does the opposite. It will do anything to encourage people to stay at work: people own their space, live at the office, bring their pets to work, exercise and eat at work. It’s not for everyone, though it does create cohorts of enthusiastic Googlers.

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT The idea that the environment you find yourself in, the power you are given, as well as the systems and processes provided to you, can quickly change you as a human being is clearly illustrated by the famous Stanford Prison experiment. In 1971 the US Navy sponsored an experiment led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo to investigate this, and to specifically try to understand the dysfunctional relationship between prisoners and their guards. They wanted to understand what made a guard abusive: was it his inherent personality traits or was it the environment he found himself in?

They selected healthy, middle-class college students and they divided them up into guards and prisoners. They then ‘arrested’ those that had been selected as prisoners, strip-searched them, gave them prison uniforms, and put them into fake cells in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford. Guards were told not to physically harm the ‘prisoners’ but were given wooden batons and encouraged to make the prisoners feel as uncomfortable and disoriented as possible, and with no privacy. Prisoners were relieved of their names and referred to only as numbers. They made it clear that the guards had the power and the prisoners had none.

After less than two days one prisoner went ‘crazy’ and had to be let out. After that, the other prisoners began to show warning signs of mental and physical deterioration. At the same time the guards turned into sadistic megalomaniacs. They were abusive and cruel, and even gave themselves more authority than the roles originally prescribed to them. Their humanity seemed to have been removed, and after only six days of abusing their power the experiment had to be discontinued.

The experiment seemed to prove that one’s role and environment can very quickly erode one’s character, values, and humanity. This is what happens in many companies today. Instead, we need to celebrate the unique character traits of every one of a company’s employees, and not allow them to be eroded, flattened, and swallowed by the system. We detect social and physical aspects of the environment in the Stanford Prison experiment, which we look at now in turn.

Designing the physical environment

Apple Park opened in April 2017 and will eventually provide a working base to 12,000 employees. The new headquarters of one of the world’s most innovative companies, referred to by many as ‘spaceship campus’ due to its flying saucer-like design, was one of the final acts from Steve Jobs before he passed away in 2011. The building is aimed at encouraging collaboration and will provide employees with opportunities to run into each other and interact, reflective of Jobs’ decision in 2000 to scrap plans for three separate buildings at Pixar in favour of one vast atrium-type space. The spaceship will contain a lake, meadow, and orchard within its inner ring, while also offering a 9,290 square metre fitness centre and 3km of walking and running paths across the 175-acre site.

Leading companies around the world are waking up to the fact that physical space matters more than ever. There is a growing realization that the modern workplace is no longer just seen as the desk, but also, and probably more importantly, the area around it. The growing premium on creative work from the workforce at large requires a new type of environment, something alluded to when IDEO’s Tom Kelley observed that “when I see someone at their desk all day it’s suspicious how they pretend to work”.

As we experience profound changes in the world of work and how it fits within our lives, emerging notions of space – supporting positive behaviour, health and wellness, dynamic interaction, and providing options for different configurations – will be present in the leading organizations of the future, regardless of size or sector. Today, we can work from anywhere at any time, yet the design of the physical space will play an increasingly important role in the future of work.

Today’s workplace design goes beyond traditional conversations around open- and closed-plan layouts to incorporate aspects of biophilic design, better-quality air and working options to combat sedentarism.

The last decade has seen significant growth in the awareness of environmentally-conscious building design, supported by increasing implementation of green building standards such as LEED. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most widely used green building-rating system in the world, with buildings gaining points for different features and rated from Certified to Platinum. Strategies to improve human health and wellbeing have played a relatively minor role over the same period, but we view the next decade as being pivotal to that integration, which we believe will go hand in hand with green building design. What is good for the planet is often also good for us all as human beings, and vice versa. When we consider that we spend, on average, 90% of our time inside a building it is only a matter of time before the current societal trend of considering the importance of human health on all levels extends to the building design industry.

So how would an organization get started with improvements in the physical space? Different checklists and standards now exist, which we cover below, but simply starting by remembering we are flesh and bones is key, as noted by Dr. Francesca Mastrogiacomi, former head of learning design for Google’s Digital Academy in EMEA and now founder of Creative [X] Factory in Italy. She has her own checklist for the workspace, which includes elements of “windows, fresh air, green space, daylight, plants, cozy areas, comfy corners, silent spaces, and noisy coffee corners”, believing that the learning journey is improved when people move, stand up, get outside, walk, and talk.

Remembering our human nature again points to the value of a design-thinking approach. We believe the whole process of healthy building design and construction needs to be fuelled at the front-end by human-centred design, in order to support wellbeing and quality creative work. Rather than architects designing what they think will fit the organization on a general level, perhaps as a result of industry trends, technological developments or what worked with other clients, a deep-dive is required to look at the existing working patterns of the workforce, current pain points and a true understanding of employee needs, facilitated by on-site observation, semi-structured interviews, accidental conversations, and prototyping. Only this experience-design approach will allow the generation of non-obvious insights that feed the traditional architecture and build phase of a new space.

Table 11.1. Traditional vs design-thinking approach to building design

	Traditional building design	Human-centred design-thinking
Approach	What has worked elsewhere	What is required here
Input	Demographics, available technology	Observed behaviour
Understanding employees	Scripted transcripts	Dynamic conversations
Experimental space	Controlled setting	Natural context

Some basics of a design-thinking approach were employed at Alpha, Telefónica’s long-term innovation lab and moonshot factory in Barcelona. Ironically for a company whose first moonshot is in health and behaviour change, the team’s own health was being compromised while in startup mode. It was cramped in a small space, and mobility during the day was minimal, enforced by an intensive small-team startup culture, where people worked long hours and ordered food in. The office overlooks Barceloneta beach, yet walking meetings along the Mediterranean rarely ever happened.

HR director David Armengol examined current patterns by setting up a video camera and tracking movement over a number of days. Some of the insights were used in the design of a new larger space. Armengol stated that “we thought about the flow of people during the working day and decided on simple features, including the use of hot desking, lockers, and a larger kitchen and eating area. We were also keen to maintain a balance between visibility and privacy, whether for the individual or team meeting.” Our own engagement and experiments with the team there aimed to leverage the increased comfort and suitability of the larger space, so that actually leaving it and getting outside was a more natural proposition.

Such a process may seem simple and obvious, yet even the leading companies in the world sometimes make mistakes. In spite of a slew of unique and advanced features in Apple’s spaceship campus to make the employee experience as good as possible (even including special entryways that mean people needn’t slow their pace as they enter), reports emerged in August 2017 of an extreme dislike for the new open-plan spaces, where engineers are expected to work at long tables instead of having their own office or module.[1] We assume such issues will iron themselves out over time as the employees find a new work dynamic that allows them to move between private and public spaces, yet this story shows that even by spending $5 billion, the most basic of office design dilemmas still remain. It would be interesting to find out to what extent Apple employees, and the different teams in charge of different divisions, were consulted in the process, and if the very design process that has proved so valuable in the company’s products, was used in the design of its new headquarters.

A useful design method to look closer at specific requirements is that of extreme user analysis – analysing the needs of some extreme population outside your own domain to provide inspiration for your own context. If we think which sector has an extreme need for their occupants to have better physical and mental health and wellbeing, the healthcare sector itself would seem a good candidate.

Human-centred design consultants are an increasingly-used resource by hospitals and healthcare facilities. A better understanding of specific patient needs has been exploited, for example, in the redesign of healthcare provision for young children. Changes to equipment including MRI scanners can alter what can be a highly daunting experience to something that is fun and connects with the playful nature of children (see photo below).

Figure 11.1. A children’s MRI scanning room

The provision of nature, and natural elements in particular, has been shown to improve the physical and mental health of patients. Until relatively recently in human history, people had constant interaction with living things and their natural surroundings. Biophilia is the idea that humans have a natural affinity with the natural world. Interior environments that are cold, sterile, and devoid of life can diminish our health, mood, and happiness.

Research has shown hospital patients to recover more quickly when exposed to natural light from a window, while other studies show workspaces that incorporate natural elements report a 15% higher level of wellbeing, 6% higher level of productivity, and a 15% higher level of creativity.[2] Biophilic design principles may therefore provide significant benefit for both patients and employees alike. In the office environment, research has shown that adding houseplants to an otherwise sparse space can increase wellbeing by 47%, increase creativity by 45%, and increase productivity by 38%.[3]

Mental wellbeing in a healthcare setting may also provide food for thought. IDEO redesigned the waiting rooms for Planned Parenthood in the US, a network of clinics offering a range of services for sexual and reproductive health. Patients were known to experience significant nervousness and fear from certain members of society as well as the healthcare provision itself. For example. Pro-Life campaigners would often harass visitors to what they viewed simply as an abortion clinic with even a fatal shooting occurring in 2015. Patient safety and empathy were therefore key drivers in the process. Some of the design features implemented include:

• Combination seating, offering patients the choice of a relaxed communal table or more private ‘pods’.
• Good-quality lighting to help combat nervousness and fear, and bright airy colours in general.
• Seating with a view of the reception area, as people like to see what’s going on and feel ‘updated’ during the waiting process.
• Information apps as a type of ‘visit companion’, with FAQ and information on the patient procedure and treatment.

In the building checklist and standards space, researchers at the London School of Economics created the SALIENT checklist as a means of improving wellbeing and also influencing positive behaviour. In applying the framework to an Accident and Emergency waiting area in an NHS hospital in the UK, music was found to increase calmness among study participants, with artwork also shown to help with pain reduction.

The elements and key insights of SALIENT are as follows:

• SOUND: Our attention is drawn to unpredictable and attention-seeking sounds.
• AIR: We are affected by air-flow, temperature, source, and scents.
• LIGHT: Our behaviour is influenced by the source and brightness of light.
• IMAGE: We are stimulated by certain imagery and affected by clutter.
• ERGONOMICS: We do not adapt well to poorly designed furniture and equipment.
• NATURE: We are affected in largely positive ways by exposure to natural elements.
• TINT: Our behaviour is affected by the presence of different colours.

Moving beyond a simple checklist is the Well Building Standard, as maintained by the International Well Building Institute.[4] This is the result of several years’ development by dozens of scientists worldwide. Well aligns with current green building standards, including LEED, and is comprised of 100 separate features divided into the seven categories of air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. These features vary from the highly technical, associated with architectural and engineering design (such as the measurement of air quality) to areas that affect HR policy and things such as mindful eating. Each feature is targeted at improving human health according to 11 different biological systems, including the cardiovascular system, digestive system, and endocrine system.

Growing interest in the Well Building Standard is accompanied by an evolving ecosystem of innovative startups worldwide. One such company is Naava, co-founded by Finnish entrepreneur Aki Soudunsaari. Inspired by Aki’s own upbringing in the idyllic natural environment of Northern Finland, Naava creates natural green walls to improve the air quality of buildings, in order to combat what it sees as one of the most serious health risks worldwide. Biophilic design is at the core of what Naava does and it believes that, from a genetic standpoint, we are no different from the hunter-gatherers of 40,000 years ago and are meant to live in nature (see figure 11.2).

From a genetic standpoint, we are no different from the hunter-gatherers of 40,000 years ago and are meant to live in nature.

Figure 11.2. Environmental triggers from Naava (naava.io)

The fact that our core biology and human needs haven’t changed much in that time explains many of the stress-related illnesses and effects on our nervous system that we touched on in chapter eight, when discussing circadian rhythm. Even simple changes to the physical environment, together with many of the other personal actions we detail in Chief Wellbeing Officer will help reconnect us to our true human selves and improve health, wellbeing, and performance.

A case from professor MacGregor Rubén Galcerán is the head of Global Workspace Solutions at CBRE Spain. His office in Barcelona is the first to be certified in both LEED and WELL from the design phase. He believes that both complement one another to ensure that the building preserves the energy and precious resources of the planet as well as the people who work there. Though many building occupiers today are on-board with sustainability certification such as LEED or BREEAM, Galcerán sees world-class companies starting to recognize the strategic importance and advantage of wellbeing. He also sees increasing wellbeing demand from employees, which not only contribute to improving employee satisfaction and productivity, but also in improved talent attractiveness and retention. In fact, according to the latest CBRE global report, 85% of young employees recognize wellbeing at their workplace as a key factor.

He details that: “WELL certification makes CBRE Barcelona a space committed to the health, wellbeing, and comfort of its employees, through best practices, both in design and construction. This is reflected in some of the measures implemented, such as low-emissive materials, optimum ventilation rates and filters, fresh and healthy produce, ergonomic and active furniture, low-noise equipment and fitness activities, among others. Design and technology strategies have been defined to provide a physical environment that is able to optimize mental and cognitive health by incorporating vegetation and art into the workspace.” The results obtained from the implementation of these measures have resulted in considerable savings of energy (12%), water consumption (40%), and printing (25%) for the company, as well as a 30% increase in productivity and 76% increase in employee satisfaction. In addition, having innovative and healthy offices has contributed to the company’s inclusion in the Best Place to Work ranking, which recognizes the 50 best companies to work for in Spain.

Physical environments therefore influence how people feel and provide signals about how to behave. Such ‘nudging’ and the use of behavioural economics links closely to the human-centred approach to building design that we advocate here. In this way, leaders can help make the emotional parts of a space as important as the functional, and thereby promote a sense of purpose and belonging among employees. Emotional wellbeing is improved by the physical environment, but we must also consider the social.

Designing the social environment

The individual view

A common thread in the self-management and coaching domain is reflecting on who we spend time with. Advice, some of which we covered in chapter three, ranges from being careful with people who are a drain on your energy through their negative attitude, to simply saying no to requests for your time. Surrounding yourself with enthusiastic, inspirational people, and indulging in more interesting conversations with them can make a significant difference to your own energy. It can also positively influence any negative traits or complaints that come in to your own language and behaviour.

In the previous chapter we highlighted the Jim Rohn quote that “we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with”. Whether this exposure to other people’s behaviours, opinions, and habits is face-to-face or online through social media, we will be influenced by it and likely assimilate more than we realize. Taking a key area of focus from the social media world, this exposure could be termed our ‘feed’.

For companies such as Facebook, much of what they do comes down to feed. Design decisions, client engagement for selling ads, user attraction, and audio and video habits are all related. And it’s true of all social media channels. The feed is what promotes use and those repeat visits (often hundreds) during the week. More time spent on the feed means more revenue to the leading tech companies. Our behaviour is greatly affected by and through this feed. It is part of our social environment.

Persuasive psychology principles are used to grab your attention and keep it. The alarming thing is that several dozen designers living in California and working at just a few companies are impacting the lives of over a billion people around the planet. And spending increasing amounts of time scrolling through feeds on different channels isn’t the best thing for health, wellbeing, or performance. Think about your own habits in the past year or two, and how any changes in behaviour, and specifically spending increasing amounts of time with your feed, have made you feel.

There is another element of feed that affects our behaviour. We design our own feed (though heavily influenced by those several dozen designers). We connect with friends and colleagues we like, and follow companies and public figures we admire. And the source of this attraction and connection often stems from some similarity that we see in them – we may hold the same values or opinions, come from the same place, or work for the same company. Maybe we like the same music, support the same football team, or believe in the same causes or politics. Our feed gives us a world view that is anything but worldly. It is segmented and we are blindsided to the opinions, values, preferences, and affiliations of those we don’t connect with. We need not look any further than the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016 to show how our customized feeds lead us to believe how one set of events will unfold. In the final days of the election campaign The New York Times predicted the probability of a Clinton win at over 90%.

Another interesting political story from history shows how our feed can exist in different areas of our life, not just online. In the year 1929, and nearing the end of his second, ill-fated term as the president of Argentina, Hipólito Irigoyen began to receive filtered news from his closest aides. The Great Depression was having a devastating impact throughout Latin America, and the country was sliding inexorably into crisis. Highlighting only good news and passing over some of the more negative events in presidential communication, no matter how slight that actually was, was exaggerated greatly, leading to one of Argentina’s most popular myths: that a special newspaper was printed for Irigoyen which included only good news. El Diario de Irigoyen or Irigoyen’s Daily, is a well-known phrase in Argentina to this day, and used when people want to push back against a sugar-coated version of events.

Parallels with today are unmistakable. Putting aside recent reports that President Trump only likes to receive good news and that his aides have their own special way of communicating to him, never mind the growing controversy around fake news, we are each surrounded by our own version of El Diario de Irigoyen, on and offline.

So how may we push back against this and redesign our feed? Start with breaking out of autopilot and try a simple exercise. Take a look at the social media feed of another person – maybe your partner or (if they let you!) your children. Perhaps even a close colleague at work. Instantly, it will give you a slightly broader view that also seems more vibrant due to its differences. Perhaps you can also follow or at least check-in with accounts and people you would normally stay well clear of due to your differences.

How about having a higher percentage of your daily feed from offline sources? Actions with some of our coaching clients have included eliminating email from their phone (having access to email on other machines is more than enough when the person in question isn’t travelling) and moving any feed-based apps out of the phone’s home screen and into different folders to cut down on impulse checks.

How can you talk to people outside your usual network in order to broaden your perspective? In our client work we often encourage people to join a new club, as being held accountable by new people will help make habits stick. Forming new relationships, perhaps something we do less and less as we get older, helps change our views and perspectives. Even listening to those you vehemently disagree with is, we believe, a healthy exercise.

The organizational view

Many companies are guilty of removing the individual characteristics that make people human. They put employees into categories and are then surprised when performance actually correlates to the category they have been forced into. Cadres of so-called high performers (‘Hi-Pos’) appear and are invested in. How do you think this makes everybody else feel?

We should of course encourage excellence, but labels can be dangerous. Measurement systems are often unable to identify real high performance and excellence, and are more likely to highlight employees who play the game better. Employees may ask themselves, “If I’m not a Hi-Po’, does that make me a Lo-Po? Am I useless?” This hardly encourages inspiration, creativity and initiative.

More recently, another group has been identified as ‘Po-Pos’. These are the ‘passed over and pissed-off’ people. They are often cynical and disruptive, but they are survivors. They will be long in the company after the Hi-Pos have left. The whole thing resembles the donkey Benjamin in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Benjamin’s famous cynical remark; “Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,” reminds us how time and energy sapping these people can be unless they are encouraged. The point is that these donkeys, these Po-Pos, are likely to be just as intelligent as everybody else, just a bit cynical.

In this way the company becomes great by celebrating diversity, rather than weak by encouraging sameness.

The company should be asking: how are we going to help these people? How are we going to leverage their unique intelligence and get them on to our side, rather than marginalizing them and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of neglect, cynicism, and low performance – not unlike the Pygmalion effect we discussed in chapter three?

We detailed the importance of authenticity in chapter seven, and the key is to create an environment that allows employees to be themselves. Talent development should not be about filling skills gaps, but rather enhancing what skills and strengths people already have. In this way the company becomes great by celebrating diversity, rather than weak by encouraging sameness. It’s all about creating an environment of trust, openness, and honesty, where emotions (laughing and crying) are encouraged and welcomed. If an employee wants to bring his mouse (or even super-rat) to work, then why not!

The physical and social environment contains a multitude of opportunities to improve wellbeing and work. We are shaped significantly by our environment in these two dimensions, and, in turn, help to shape it. We spend increasing amounts of time at work, mostly indoors, and the boundaries between work, rest, and play are increasingly blurred. Workspace design is a hot topic, yet some people may take a cynical view of the physical changes to squeeze more out of the employee if changes are not present also at the social level, including culture and leadership behaviour.

Remembering the Stanford Prison experiment, there’s no doubt that many people’s mental health is severely compromised at work. Different issues may be at play, yet a thorough consideration of environmental design, driven by the right process, will help address many, and is a critical piece of Chief Wellbeing Officer.

Both the natural and manufactured environments around Barcelona Airport continue to thrive. The birds of the Llobregat Delta seem not to have been overly inconvenienced by the arrival of the new super flying machine. Today, Les Filipines is one of the best beaches in Barcelona to go for a run – and we think the A380 which flies overhead at 3.30pm on its way to Dubai adds to the experience and spectacle of the natural environment. Just be aware that the local ‘wildlife’ also includes most of the nudist community of Barcelona!