(light airy music) - [Ingrid] Hi, I'm Ingrid Bakker, and this is Hassell Talks. Welcome back. (light airy music) If you're a longtime listener, you'll be familiar with Hassell's Annual Workplace Futures Survey. It's a survey that investigates the changes organisations are making their impact and where they might be headed next.
(light airy music) Hassell first ran it in 2020, and every year since then we have taken the pulse of the workplace with the number of office workers involved in the survey and locations growing each year. So far, our four surveys have quizzed over 9,000 office workers and created over 1.8 million data points. Data points that have informed, shaped and guided workplaces, designers and the experience of people around the world.
Office workers in Australia, Singapore, the UK, and U.S., have been part of the study from 2020. And in 2022, we were able to include Mainland China, with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong added in 2023. This year's survey great adaptations is the largest survey we've run to date with over 3,500 people surveyed this year. Its title reflects the adjustments workplaces are making and adaptations organisations are making around new work patterns.
With me today, is survey author, Senior Researcher Daniel Davis. Hi, Daniel. - [Daniel] Hey. - [Ingrid] Daniel, we've been doing the survey for four years now. It was first run in the thick of COVID. Before we talk about some of the results, what is really standing out to you now? What feels different?
- [Daniel] I think what's really different this year is that it's really in a moment of transition that in the previous years of the survey, people kinda in the thick of it, they're making changes on the fly. It was very, like, just in the moment. And I think what you're seeing now is that organisations are starting to take a breath a little bit, look further ahead, and they're starting to make kinda lasting changes to the organisation.
I think at the same time, you're also seeing that work itself has changed really dramatically, but the office hasn't always kinda kept up with those changes. And so you're seeing this disconnect at the moment between maybe what people's experience of work is and what the workplace that they're going back to how that is structured. - [Ingrid] Yeah, super interesting. And how much universal alignment are you seeing between markets after years of big differences?
- [Daniel] Yeah, so in the previous years there always a lot of variations, and that was driven largely by what was happening in each of the countries, and so which countries were in the middle of the pandemic, which ones were locking down, which ones were opening back up. This year, there's still a lot of diversity. We have a really diverse sample, you know, like, China is very different from the United States.
It's very different from Australia, Singapore, so there's a lot of variation in the countries. But I think one thing that really kinda comes through in all of that is that, we're seeing this kinda convergence in terms of flexibility. That's a pretty universal trait in all of these different countries. And we're also seeing some similarities in the sort of amenities that people are wanting in the workplaces and the surrounding areas.
We're also seeing some changes, I think, in the number of people that are returning back to work pretty much increasing in all the markets that we're studying at the moment. - [Ingrid] And your results look at, you know, the big global trends, but also break it down into those markets, don't they? Which is particularly interesting for our clients in so many parts of the world. - [Daniel] Yeah, so we have this big data set.
It looks at things globally, but we also break it down by demographic factors like people's ages, industries, and the countries that they're in. So we can look at all these kinda subgroupings of what's happening around the world. - [Ingrid] Yeah, fantastic. Okay, let's jump into some of these insights. - [Daniel] So there were five things that we found in the survey and today we'll just focus on three of them.
The first one was that, people are returning to the office, but that they're returning pretty slowly. So across all the markets that we study, the number of people in the office is increasing and the number of people that are working at home is decreasing. And there's a number of different reasons for this. You know, obviously, the lockdowns have ended in all the places that we're studying, so that makes a big difference.
You're seeing more organisations requiring employees to work from the office or encouraging them to work from the office. We're also seeing, I think, pretty interestingly for the people that can choose where to work, more of those people that have the choice of where they work, deciding to spend more time in the office. And that's something that we haven't seen in the previous years of the survey. - [Ingrid] Yeah, I think that's the really interesting thing from my perspective.
You know, that's great news that people are coming back into the office. There seems to be kind of an upward trend, which is great, but, definitely, hybrid is here to stay. So I think we all need to really embrace that and make sure we understand how to make that work within our workplaces. But as you were saying, there seems to be quite a strong correlation between people's want to return to their workplaces and their organization's flexible working policies.
Can you talk a little bit more about that? - [Daniel] The people in the survey, they have a range of different workplace policies. The ones that I think tend to be doing the best, tend to have a flexible policy. So people want some autonomy over where they work, they wanna be able to choose a place that works best for them. And, increasingly, those people that have a choice are choosing the office, but the only times that they're doing that is really when the office is working for them.
So these offices that have good collaboration space, good space to do, focused productive work and good technology, it's kinda three things that are really key to that experience. And it sounds really basic, but many workplaces don't get that right. And so when those ingredients are in place, you're seeing more people choosing to be back into the office. - [Ingrid] Yeah, great.
And I know a lot of our clients are really focused on, like, the precinct or the, you know, the development, not just within the actual office workplace, but all of the amenity around people's office and, you know, what's happening in the precinct. How important was that in the findings around people sort of, you know, what they want when they come to work?
- [Daniel] Yes, so we had a question this year or a couple of questions this year in the survey, asking people with what they were doing before and after they came to work and also what sort of amenities they wanted around their building. And I think there's two things that really stood out to me from that. One is that, when people are coming into an office they're not just going there to work, they're often linking that trip in with other things that they wanna do or have to do.
So they might be visiting a grocery store, they might be going to a bar, they might be going to a gym. And so they're making that commute into the office worthwhile by linking it with things that they would've, and trips they would've otherwise made anyway. The other thing that we saw in that data was that the amenities that people want, particularly around, like, office buildings are pretty universal actually in all the markets that we studied.
Grocery stores came out on top and then retail and cafes and coffee is up there as well. - [Ingrid] Yeah, I'm super interested about the grocery store, 'cause I noticed that that was quite, you know, really at the top of every country's list almost apart from a couple. And I think that's quite different to what we've seen in the previous surveys. So why do you think that's really risen to the top this year?
- [Daniel] Yeah, so obviously, there's a lot of concern at the moment around things like the cost of living, inflation, and I think you're seeing that in the way that some people are prioritising or making decisions at the moment. So I think for the grocery store, you know, like, part of its appeal is that you can go there and pick up a cheap lunch and go back to the office. I think also part of it is that you can pick up something fresh and head back home at the end of the day.
So I think there's something there about the kinda cost of living that makes the grocery store an appealing amenity at the moment. - [Ingrid] Yeah, that makes sense. I've been talking to a lot of our clients and particularly the tenants that kind of saying, "What's the one thing we can do that's gonna, you know, bring people back or what's the one thing we can do that's gonna make our workplace amazing?" Does the data give us that kind of insight?
- [Daniel] Yeah, so we really hope that we would get that kinda insight in the survey this year. And we asked a lot of questions about changes that organisations were making to the workplaces in terms of, like, were they adding phone booths in, were they adding perks in, were they adding more wellness spaces, whatever it was. And we wanted to look at that and see whether that correlated with higher rates of return or more satisfaction with employees.
When we really dug into the data, the thing that we, that stood out was how much the changes depended on the nature of the organisation. So it wasn't one kind of universal change that every organisation could make that would suddenly make the workplace attractive to their employees.
It really depended a lot on the size of the company, the kind of management style and philosophy, the location of their company globally, the industry that the company was in, and some of the cultural factors around that. And when you look at those kinda factors altogether, you begin to get a sense of which changes makes sense for a particular organisation, but it's really not a one size fits all magic bullet available right now.
- [Ingrid] Yeah, and I think that makes sense, given that every organisation is different anyway. Given this was the first time that everyone we surveyed was out of lockdown, all the previous surveys, someone was in, going into lockdown or coming out of lockdown, it kinda skewed the data probably a little bit, but this was the first year everyone was out of lockdown. Was there anything that surprised you in the data?
- [Daniel] So the thing that surprised me was you're never too sure when you run these surveys, like where things are gonna end up. And I think, particularly, with the end of the lockdown, you weren't sure kinda how hard things were gonna bounce back in different regions. I think probably the thing that surprised me the most was just seeing how China was, how strong the return to office there was.
When I talk to people there, it's almost, like, things are close to being back to normal there, which definitely isn't the experience of people in places like the UK or Europe or America. So just seeing that strength of the return there really stood out to me, I think, as being an outlier in terms of that. - [Ingrid] So, Daniel, this is the fourth survey that we've run. We're definitely gonna run another one next year. What do you think we'll see next year in the survey?
What kind of things might we expect? - [Daniel] So I'm assuming this year we saw this sort of gradual increase in the return to the office. I think that we're gonna continue to see that year over year for the next couple of years. I'm not expecting things to bounce back to where they were. I think you'll still see this kinda continual focus on hybrid work and employees wanting flexibility.
I think there's also a whole bunch of kinda macro factors that are outside that are hard to anticipate where they're gonna go. Like I think how the economy goes in the next year is really gonna drive a lot of this and might end up influencing a lot of what happens next year in terms of the return to work or where people are working. - [Ingrid] Yeah, great. I look forward to next year's, but for this year's, where can people go to get the risk of the insights from your research?
- [Daniel] Probably the easiest place to get it is the house of website. We have a insight section there and the white paper is available there, along with a blog post about it. - [Ingrid] And also if people want us to come and present the insights, we can also do that either via Teams or in-person, depending on location. So we're really open to people reaching out and if they want people within their organisation to hear about this great research, please just let us know.
Well, thanks for your time today, Daniel. - Thank you. - I think it's, you know, it's so fascinating. I love reading the insights as soon as they come out every year. I think a lot of our clients do as well. There's a lot of anticipation building around what's next. So I think this is really, really valuable insights into what people really want from their workplace.
So, you know, and, obviously, we wanna thank our clients and our workplace collaborators who we have so many terrific conversations with about these insights and their observations from their organisations that kind of helps us to build the questions each year to really understand, you know, what is going on. I'm Ingrid Bakker, I co-lead the workplace and commercial sector. And if you wanna know more about this great research, as I said earlier, please reach out.
Either send us an email to [email protected], and we'd be really happy to continue the conversation with you. (light airy music) This episode was produced by Prue Vincent. (light airy music ends)