By Jim WareIssue 11 – Spring 2019 pages 19 – 21
Tags: cities • workplace design • facilities management
Future Offices Summer 2018
San Francisco, California
I had the privilege and the pleasure of attending and participating in the Future Offices Summer 2018 conference (FOS18) hosted by IQPC in San Francisco in late August (a delightful time of year in San Francisco, though never as warm as outsiders expect it to be; that’s the tail end of our fog season).
The two-day conference brought together several hundred senior facilities and HR professionals who shared a common interest in the future of the office, in workplace design, and in how technology is and will be changing not only the way we work but the way we use space.
The event chairperson was Tracy Hawkins, Global Head of Real Estate & Workplace (REW) for Twitter, which is of course headquartered in San Francisco. Tracy shared a fascinating “inside” story about her personal history and role at Twitter as a change agent, focusing in particular on using workplace design to reflect and reinforce the culture and brand of an organization.
At first blush that approach may not seem particularly innovative or unique. However, I was quite taken with Tracy’s approach of imagining the “journey” for both employees and visitors as they enter a Twitter building, proceed through the lobby, settle into a work area, and then move around to different spaces like conference rooms, the cafeteria, private “phone booth” spaces, and so on. In fact, that focus on the employee journey, or experience, permeated many of the presentations and much of the informal discussions on the expo floor, at lunch, and over evening libations.
But Tracy went well beyond the concept of a journey to share a very personal story about a Twitter employee who suffered and eventually passed away from a virulent form of cancer. Her name was Lucy Mosley, and while she was struggling with her disease the London Twitter employees all learned to knit so they could create a blanket for her, so she would know how much they loved her and that they were rooting for her.
Lucy felt so much warmth and support from her fellow employees when she received the blanket that she tweeted “keeping cozy with my @TwitterUK blanket #LoveWhereYouWork #Family”.[i]
When Lucy passed away, the Twitter UK employees asked Tracy and the REW team to find a way to commemorate her in a positive and uplifting way in the new office they were about to move to. Tracy, who had never met Lucy, decided the best way to get to know her would be to go through her Twitter feed to understand what sort of a person she was, and the tweet ending #LoveWhereYouWork just jumped right out.
The REW team got to work creating a #LoveWhereYouWork neon sign that was proudly displayed in the heart of the office space known as the Commons – where the employees would meet to eat, have company meetings, and host important events. Those in the know knew it was a tribute to Lucy, but they could also own it as a team since it summed up Twitter’s culture so well.
Since then the hashtag has taken on a life of its own even though Lucy is gone, and now it reflects the heart of Twitter’s culture of caring for Twitter employees. Today Twitter offices all over the world, 33 of them in total, proudly display their own individual neon signs, each one designed in a unique style but all with the same message:  #LoveWhereYouWork.
I find it encouraging that workplace strategy and design professionals are increasingly paying attention to employees and their experiences at work. If that sounds like an obvious, palm-slapping-face “doh” moment, remember that most of the major professional associations in this space still use words in their names like “facilities,” “workplace,” “real estate,” and “design” as a way to describe their professional focus.
We all pay lip service to the importance of people, and every conference I’ve attended in recent years has included at least one presenter who reminds everyone that most organizations’ salary budgets are ten to thirty times the size of their workplace budgets. I do see more and more emphasis on the impact of workplace and office design on productivity, engagement, and employee retention, but I am still waiting to attend a conference that brings HR and workplace professionals together in one event where they can listen to and learn from each other.
That said, the FOS18 gathering came closer to my ideal vision than any I’ve attended in the last several years. Several other presentations highlighted the challenges of managing large-scale organizational change and of the power of biophilic design (incorporating plants, water, sunlight, and other natural elements into workplaces). And this conference included many more opportunities than most for conversations among attendees, rather than relying on one “sage on the stage” lecture after another.
I also enjoyed the sessions by senior workplace executives like Paul Battaglia of Clark Nexson, Al Kinisky of SAP, Art Aguilar of Bloomberg, and Jody Brown of Silicon Valley Bank, each of whom shared their lessons learned from many years in the trenches. We heard plenty of success stories, but we also picked up many of the behind-the-scenes dirty little secrets about what it took to produce those successes.
Even more compelling was the opportunity for attendees to make actual visits to several Bay Area corporate headquarters. The entire afternoon of the first day was devoted to on-site visits to the offices of firms like Twitter, Github, Pinterest, and AirBnB.
And, by the way, I want to commend Tracy Hawkins for being a presence throughout the conference. She attended every plenary session and hosted lunch tables each day. So often the leaders of a conference make brief appearances at the beginning and end of the event but are nowhere to be seen otherwise. Tracy was an active participant in all the plenary sessions, often asking questions herself during the Q&A, and often adding her experiences at Twitter to the conversation.
I am one of those people who takes copious notes during conferences, mostly to force myself to listen to the speakers. And now, a few weeks later, as I review those notes, I find several memorable lines that will forever mark the event as an important one in my own learning….