Issue24

Welcome back to Collective Bookmarks. This week’s newsletter is a 7 minute read, or about the time it takes to read the comments on a LinkedIn post. Collective Bookmarks is sponsored by HqO, the world’s leading workplace experience platform.

This week we’re excited to announce the launch of our community, Collective Connect. Collective Connect is a bridging community for the professionals at the intersection of work and place. We believe that by bringing together professionals from all the fields of CRE, Fm, HR, IT, EX, DEI, Remote Practitioners, and People – we can go farther. Much more to come soon but for now you can join the waitlist below.

Initial invites will go out August 6th so sign up today!

In This Week’s Issue:

• Three Things You Should Know
  • How Workers Really Spend Their Days
  • Creating a Healthy Meeting Culture
  • Don’t Schedule Meetings After 4pm
• A Person You Should Know: You
• A Product We’re Into: Lambent Spaces

Events We’re Attending: IFMA’s Weekly Mosh Pit Series
Books We’re Reading: Work by James Suzman

As always, if you have feedback or questions please reach out. Lets dive in!

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Three Things You Should Know

From The World of Work and Place

1.How Workers Really Spend Their Days

How workers in different environments spend their time has been a big topic of discussion over the past few years. In a recent WSJ article Rachel Feintzeig dives into the data on how employees in office are spending their time when compared with remote workers. As they noted below the biggest differences lie in what people are doing with that extra time between tasks. Exercise, chores and childcare take up the largest swaths of off time for remote workers. Meanwhile, as noted in the article office workers tend to use their breaks differently but also have more unintentional breaks.

What We Think: The data from the survey and the context in the article point towards something we’ve covered from numerous other studies. Those who are allowed to work from home tend to use that extra time to take care of tasks and parts of their lives that they otherwise would have to handle on the weekend or offload to someone else. This reallocation of time has better enabled balance for those who work from home, but as the article highlights – that leaves some office advocates wondering if they could allocate that time to their work instead. We are in the end humans though, and taking breaks is a vital part of staying productive long term. If we can not be take better care of our health during that break, why not?

2. Creating a Healthy Meeting Culture

In her latest Collective Thoughts article Evelyn Lee shares how organizations and teams can improve their employee mental health and wellness by fostering a healthy meeting culture that focuses on quality communication over quantity. She provides a list of questions and guidelines that will steer you towards more productive and purposeful meetings. As Workplace Professionals, we know time management matters and we highly recommend checking out the article linked below.

3. Don’t Schedule Meetings After 4pm

In a recent VOX article Rani Molla discusses time coordination and why not scheduling meetings after 4pm might just make a lot of sense. In the article they cite evidence that productivity was already waning after 4pm for most people and that for parents / caretakers the 9-5 or 9-6 schedule never really worked. They note as a alternative to the WSJ’s point of view in another article, teams should focus on coordinating calendars and when / how work gets accomplished to enable teams to have balance and productivity.

What We Think: This article was speaking our language. As we’ve noted in many previous newsletters, the research clearly points to employees desire for better flexibility in not just where but when they work. Additionally, employees are capturing the additional time and reallocating it to things that improve their wellness overall. For working parents / caretakers, they seem happy to be able to do some work after the kids are in bed and get that extra run in during the day. Overall as the article points out – managers will need to help coordinate when / how work gets accomplished. However, understanding the priorities of employees at large is vital.

HqO, ranked No. 75 on the Inc. 5000 list, is transforming how people connect with each other and the places they work. The HqO Workplace Experience Platform and App makes it easy for companies and commercial property teams to create modern workplaces through world-class amenities and services that allow people to thrive and produce the best results. Active in over 250 million square feet in 25 countries, 57% of the Fortune 100 rely on HqO to enhance their workplace experiences, improve employee satisfaction, and drive operational excellence.

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