Ep 1. The Evolution of Workplace Experience: Insights from Tristan Kelly and Mike Galea

Tristan Kelly: 00:00:10

Welcome to High Five, where insight meets empathy. I'm Tristan Kelly.

Mike Galea: 00:00:15

And I'm Mike Galia and we created this podcast to explore the ideas, people and places shaping the way we work and live today.

Tristan Kelly: 00:00:23

From workplace design to customer experience, culture and community, we'll share stories of what happens when people and process truly conn.

Mike Galea: 00:00:33

Each episode will uncover those energized moments, the spark that unlocks potential, inspires action, and remind us why great workplaces matter.

Tristan Kelly: 00:00:43

So wherever you're listening, welcome. This is High Five. Welcome to the High Five podcast where insight meets empathy.

I'm Tristan Kelly and I'm a marketing and experience consultant, having worked in the real estate sector for the last 20 plus years, most recently with CBRE in particular on their M and G account, where I met Mike who heads up their front of house service called Amica. So Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Mike Galea: 00:01:26

Hi, yes, I'm Mike Galia and I am the guest experience director for a front of house brand called Amica. We essentially operate within tenanted corporate buildings on the behalf of certain accounts.

We have roughly around 23 up and down the country as it stands with a beautiful and amazing workforce, very dedicated individuals who are really focused on kind of building up the best experience we can give to the people that we work on on our behalf.

In terms of my background, many years in learning and development, running departments there, and I've worked with various organization on workplace experiments, future ways of working, and of course building up our understanding of the experience when it comes to workplace.

Tristan Kelly: 00:02:18

Fantastic.

And you and I have worked quite closely over the last couple of years and have connected very well and have a kind of shared passion, if you like, for experience, for customer experience, for workplace experience.

Our conversations have always sparked energy in each other and the end of those weekly monthly fortnightly chats have always kind of energized us to go off and do the best we can in our daily work. And that's really what inspired our podcast, if you like. And that sort of high five.

So High Five was born from a simple idea that when people place and purpose connect, something energizing happens. In an era where work is being redefined, we wanted to explore what truly makes workplaces thrive.

Not just the buildings or the tech, but the emotions, the interactions and the human experiences that shape them. This show is about celebrating those moments of connection, the high fives that spark creativity, collaboration and progress.

And it's for anyone who believes that great workplaces don't just support productivity, but they unlock human potential. Our first episode we're going to be talking about workplaces. You and I, we both work in and around workplaces and have done for many, many years.

But this term, workplace experience, has become a bit of a buzzword for you, Mike. What does it actually mean?

Mike Galea: 00:03:42

That is a very good and complicated question, because we all use that term quite a lot in our.

In our business language, where we call it the workplace experience and that, you know, when I first entered this world, I did ask the question, what does that mean? What is the workplace experience? It's actually quite a complicated term because it encompasses the entirety of. Of culture, of that kind of.

The dynamic is created, what happens. And it's not just about the workplace as an office, it's about creating a sense of community, connection.

As you've said already, Tristan, there's a lot of different changes that have to go into that to create what is essentially a really strong experience for people coming back to the office.

Tristan Kelly: 00:04:31

Absolutely, yeah. I think workplace experience is the intentional design of how people feel, you know, how they connect and how they perform within the physical space.

It's where brand, culture and the environment meet. And it's become, as you say, it's become ever more important facet within the working environment.

Mike Galea: 00:04:50

There's a big why around that as well, isn't there? So, you know, why has that become part of our common language, the workplace experience? Why do you think that is, Tristan?

Tristan Kelly: 00:04:58

Well, I think it's become ever more challenging since COVID since the massive change that took place. What is it now? Nearly five years ago.

Since then, we've been really looking at how we reinvent the workplace because it means so many different things to so many different people.

as a consultant, way back in: 2005

And the next 20 years have been an amazing journey, but it hasn't been since COVID that pressure, if you like, or that industry standard that you need to work from a physical place with other colleagues. That's gone. We realized, because we were forced to, that we can be productive out of the office.

And so it now means that that workplace is different for so many people.

And actually the workplace experience needs to be really thought through for each of those individual audiences and how they can engage with the organizations they Work with the customers that they serve, the employees that they interact and engage with. For me, it's completely different to what workplace experience was, say, 10, 15 years ago.

Mike Galea: 00:06:16

I think you're right. So when we look back and I know Covid is such a tight term now, we, we are five years beyond all of that.

I'm sure everyone remembers where they were when that happened.

I was running quite a big training operation at that time where all of our training was in classrooms and this was for emergency type services, so energy services and stuff, things that had to keep running. We had to get, you know, 150 people all working from home within a week of, of that lockdown happening, with no means, no technology, no support.

And we had to think daily about how we would administer that. But when we look at changing mindsets, that's what this has essentially done. It has changed culturally, the working dynamic.

And, and that's been the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution. You know, we have all grown up with the idea that we do nine to five, we go to the office and we come home. Commune's part of that journey.

That's what we do four days a week, five days a week. That's what we did. That's the norm. Kobe changed that norm.

Now we are in a different world, which is interesting because we have changed culturally so, so quickly through that international event that we're all still trying to catch up with what that means. And that's why workplace experience is incredibly important. Because what attracts people back to the office? How does it all get binded together?

Whether, you know, how do people feel about commuting now when it's not their priority? Because I've shown over five years I can work from home equally as well.

Therefore, my reason for going to an office is different from what it was before because my, my reasoning might be I want to connect with my colleagues or I need to do some work with other people, or I'm attending meetings. That is my sole purpose for going to, going to those, those offices.

But my productivity will, will be less because I do less work, because I'm around people and I want conversations and I take more breaks and I take a longer lunch and I'm, you know, spending all that wonderful time collaborating. That's what happens now in these, in these offices. And we, you know, we, we run experiments. We know that's the case.

We know Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays are the busiest days in office. That is the same for absolutely everyone. So we know there's always going to be a space issue on those Days too.

All of that is part of that workplace experience.

Tristan Kelly: 00:08:32

It should be seen as a really exciting opportunity to completely redefine how workplaces work for, for people.

Potential negative side is that workplaces, before you used to have your cubicle or you had kind of open planned offices with hundreds of desks in and very little breakout space, essentially trying to get as many people into the smallest space as possible to make it cost efficient. Now we need to provide more amenities for our team members and that means that there are less desks.

And when you look at the fact that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays are the busiest, often you can't find a desk on those days. And so that's a potential negative downside. And how do you offset that? Well, you can look at tech. Tech can certainly enable you to do that.

Building apps can enable you to book desks so that you at least you know, you don't actually have to get into the office at 7 on a Wednesday to ensure that you get a desk.

You can turn up at 9 or 9:30 or whatever your time is because you still, you've got to drop the dog off to daycare or you've got kids to take to school that you've become part of since COVID and your whole hybrid way of working. So all of that's got to be taken into account.

Mike Galea: 00:09:36

No, and you're right and you mentioned tech and we know that kind of workplace apps are on the rise in terms of booking meeting rooms, booking desks. You find that though people want freedom of choice without running the risk of not getting a desk on that truly busy day. So they come in earlier.

What happens if their day is interrupted? That shapes their whole day. How do we create that experience then?

How do we make sure that space is available without being too controlling or too restrictive on where people operate and work?

Tristan Kelly: 00:10:09

I think it's a challenge. I definitely think it's a challenge because as we've mentioned, organizations are now competing on culture and engagement.

So they want those working environments, if you like that, that physical place of work to offer so much more than it previously did.

And therefore you are reducing maybe the number of desks, maybe the number of meeting rooms, because you want to put a canteen in now, you maybe want to put some child minding facilities in, you might have a lot more end of journey facilities. There's a lot more, there's a lot more things competing on the space.

And so I think it will continue to be a challenge because organizations are really working hard to be the employer of choice to attract people Back to retain people from leaving to go to other organizations.

And so there are so many more things that people are putting on within the office space and often the number of desks is the first to go in that sense. So whilst I think that apps and tech will help, a certain level of flexibility is required.

Mike Galea: 00:11:05

You know, this term on the rise right now as well, and which is a great thing is that neuroscience and neurodivergent spaces which again, you know, if, if organizations have the space to be able to adapt for, for the, for the array of different needs, great.

But for organizations that don't, when they're in, you know, very static locations, locations that were built in the 70s and 80s and 90s which you see a lot of really, really restrictive people are used to being at home and having their own space and their own them and it's a lot quieter and stuff. People, you know, even, even online meetings, you can choose to turn your camera on or your mic on or off. You know, you have that freedom of choice.

Well, in the office you don't get that you're on, you know, you're pretty much on show the entire time. So again, that's another avenue of the workplace experience. And that, that's what it harks back to what I said originally.

It's actually quite complicated to break that down.

And that's why companies, especially facility management and real estate companies, come into play because they bring expertise and they bring experience, working with a vast amount of different companies as well. And that's why a lot of organizations are referring to these types of companies to say, can you come in and can you help us?

Because we, you know, we need to know where we're going with this one, or we need a bit of design or we need to create a touch point journey that's created from the moment someone enters that building to the point in which they leave. And again, that that touch point is part of the workplace experience.

Tristan Kelly: 00:12:34

We spend a lot of time journey mapping for customers and it's the exact same now we're having to do for our own employees.

We need to journey map our employees to ensure that that workplace experience is engaging, it's enticing, it's exciting, it's effective and it's efficient. But interestingly, at the moment we're talking mostly about people entering into the physical office.

But that workplace experience has to translate through to people working from home. It also needs to translate through to people working remotely.

Certainly within our environment, we have a lot of people that work, one or two individuals that work on site. Equally, there could be service engineers that are mostly mobile bound, so they're in vehicles traveling around.

What does the workplace experience mean to them? We're looking at employee engagement. Employee engagement now must tie into workplace experience.

And how do you ensure that people across your whole organization, not just those visit the head office two or three times a week, but those that are out there deployed in the field. How can you ensure that each and every one of them has a similar workplace experience?

Mike Galea: 00:13:35

Well, here's a question for you and a naughty one as well. Does the experience drive the engagement or does engagement drive the experience?

Tristan Kelly: 00:13:47

I think if the experience is poor, there's no engagement. And so for me, I would be looking at what experience do I want my customer, my team member to have.

And then I would be designing that experience to ensure it's a good one so that I can get as much engagement from that as possible. That's how I would be positioning that.

Mike Galea: 00:14:06

I think the, the whole experience, engagement is about feelings. And as we know, feelings are fickle and they change all the time.

Bringing in, you know, boxes of pizza to engage your workforce because, you know, an engagement survey is coming up drives us out. Come to that. I think the feeling and the sentiment is incredibly important because that's the, the foundation of itself.

And that comes down to what kind of food is served in the, in the restaurant or the canteen in terms of what they have right through to how service the areas are to, whether there is tea and coffee available, whether it's heated satisfactory in the winter and people just want to get in there for a bit of heat or it's cooled down in the summer. The physical environment that, that all dry. That experience drives that engagement too, or disengagement.

Tristan Kelly: 00:14:53

What's the first thing you notice when you walk into a workplace that actually does get it right?

Mike Galea: 00:14:57

First place I noticed that gets it right. The lobby.

It's always got to be the lobby when you first walk in and that, you know, the first greetings that you get, how quickly you become acknowledged, that all sets a precedence with me. And you only have to walk into any, any particular kind of hotel and it's that hotel kind of concierge experience.

You notice a bad experience when you walk in and you know, you walk up to that gate to check in and you don't get acknowledged for a few minutes at all. And they're having a little chat between themselves. That's not a good experience.

I think the first step for me is when you walk in through that building, how you are Greeted sets the standard for the culture of that building. That's what I look for when I'm, when I'm on the road, when I go in there.

In terms of how the teams operate, how they communicate with each other, how connected they are to each other, whether they're following a certain sentiment and where they really put the experience of the person walking in front and center, no matter what's going on, that's what I usually look for.

Tristan Kelly: 00:15:52

You shouldn't really see it when it's great because you should feel it. You should, you should feel uplifted. You'll know when it's wrong because you'll feel slightly agitated. You'll feel something's not quite right here.

I came in here, had my AirPods on. I was listening to some great music. I'm really buzzed for the day. I'm meeting my team. I'm really looking forward to the day.

But between going through the revolving doors and sort of getting to my desk, something wasn't quite right.

Mike Galea: 00:16:15

For that to be noticeable means it would be wrong.

Because a lot of people who are coming in, especially when they're, when they're day in and we all do it on ourselves, you are, you're listening to something. Your brain is connected to your working day. You're thinking ahead, you're thinking about preparing for that meeting that you need to get to.

Getting to your floor, I think were that that front of house experience comes from is attention to detail, being observant of you, your body language, what you're doing, where you are at that moment in time.

If you're dripping wet because it just suddenly started raining between your walk from the car park or the train station to that lobby, you know, that's where the team really want to step in and help you.

Because a lot of the time, especially for people that work in offices, they just want to get to their desk, they want to get logged in, they start their day, they're getting in the moment again in the zone. If you had someone kind of interrupting that flow, that would be a bad experience too. Despite the intention of the person.

Interrupting the flow would be to engage with you and make conversation with you. So actually that front of house experience is a really fine line of when do you engage, when do you not engage?

But knowing that you're always there to engage.

And it might be that engagement happens at the end of the day when you're about to leave and your day's over and you're, you're starting to kind of, you know, get ready for Your evening. The teams have a really fine line to play on that one.

So, again, that's part of workplace experience and especially in my world, we really do spend a lot of time talking to our team about that and around how to be so observant and emotionally intelligent at the same time, to know when to engage with someone and when to just take that step back or ready to be there proactively when they actually need something that they don't know they need. Like, I saw that you were wet through coming in this morning. We offered you a towel to dry yourself up. We now know you're leaving.

Would you like an umbrella? That's where the team operate and that does make someone's day. They're like, oh, an umbrella.

Never thought that I left mine in the car because it wasn't raining or whatever. Again, just to answer your question, that's little moments that make up someone's day, which is part of our component and why we exist.

Tristan Kelly: 00:18:04

All those high five moments that they're engaging.

Mike Galea: 00:18:06

High five moments. Yeah, for sure, yeah.

Tristan Kelly: 00:18:09

We're sort of talking around the employees, they are the customers.

Now, if you're talking about workplace experience, so it's not as if you're an Apple Store and you're looking at the lighting, the layout, the design, how many staff you've got in there, all that kind of stuff that now needs to be the focus within the workplace, that each and every individual is treated as a customer. Their expectations are shaped by the best experiences within their personal lives.

So if you've been to an Apple Store that morning on your way to work, to, I don't know, get a new watch strap or whatever it is, you're going to have a great experience because that's really been thought through.

And then if you turn up to your office and you have a bad experience, well, you're certainly going to be judging that experience based on the experience you've recently had at Apple. So there's a real challenge there that you.

You have to be taking a lot of this stuff into account and a lot of things go towards providing a great workplace experience. And as we've discussed, it's now a differentiator.

So it's not just, oh, we've got an office in Birmingham or we've got an office or just off Oxford street, it's, we've got an office just off Oxford street that has a great workplace experience. We've got a great canteen, we've got events that take place on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

I can take my dry cleaning on a Tuesday and then I take it home with me on a Thursday. All these kind of things go towards that workplace experience.

Mike Galea: 00:19:23

And there are two sides to that one. One, one side is the employee expectation of what they expect. The other side of that is the employee being open to the experience and embracing it.

And that's the responsibility on that side. Otherwise it just doesn't work.

When I mean being open to that, I mean more on the social side of things or the esg, more on the getting involved and being, you know, socially interactive and using that time in the office to engage with others. That's ultimately it's about people to people and pulling them together. I see that as being the office experience.

Tristan Kelly: 00:20:06

Mike, we've talked a fair bit around what is workplace experience, how it's kind of evolved. It's clearly becoming more and more important from an employee point of view.

Employers need to really factor that in, certainly if they're looking to attract talent and to retain loyalty from employees.

You're really at that forefront of workplace experience in the sense that you're kind of working in that buffer zone, if you like, from the front door through to people getting to their offices. Where do you see workplace experience moving?

Mike Galea: 00:20:39

So really great question as it's such a big subject and certainly in terms of the future workplace, I'm going to focus on my own area for now and then as we record more episodes, we'll bring in some guest speakers and I think this should be a posing question that we could ask many different experts from different areas. I'm not going to answer on their behalf.

I will just look at for me, certainly when it comes to, you know, amica and our, and our front of house service, now we classify ourselves as a premium service and we've done a lot of work in the last year to, to build that up. Truly move us from guest services, which is what it was formerly known as, or reception services if we want to go back a little bit more.

And what does that mean?

Well, that means, you know, what you would expect receptionists to do, work with couriers, take in mail, answer the phone, greet visitors, give out passes, conduct kind of vista management and support the wider business in terms of flow through people coming through meetings and all that stuff. Well, but when we look at the guest experience side of things, and that's the future of where we are, we start to look at the lobby as a social hub.

We want to create more events, invite local businesses to participate, to, to encourage social interaction and turn what was traditional in front of us team it's like more of a, you know, these are the people to go to, these are the ones that, that have the answers, these are the ones that incorporate that five star service through to how we concierge, to how we work closely with security.

Now part of that strategically is how we utilize that as an attractor certainly when it comes to tenanted buildings and we, we bring new, new companies in that want to operate and want to work in that really engaging, dynamic environment right through to attracting people into the business and breaking that cycle of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

So how do we build up Mondays, how do we build up Fridays, how do we eyes across the week without mandating it, but also how do we create a consistent experience that really elevates the mood and the culture of that organization whilst incorporating their own brand into it too. So for me I think the future is really exciting, it's really important. And premium front of house services are on the rise.

Before it's, it's been bundled in, it usually incorporates an element of security led front of house services.

Now a lot of businesses are, are starting to look at it as a, actually we want something a little bit more and we expect a little bit more from the, from the team we put in there. We are moving way beyond the traditional idea of receptionist.

These are now considered to be hosts and that host controls that lobby and ultimately the rest of the business too and working really, really closely with, you know, with their stakeholders and with any of the third party businesses that we come in to create a consistent culture.

So I think for me the future of the workplace experience when it comes to those buildings you step into, it should be evident, it should be clear and you get a real sense of joy when you walk in there because you can feel it as a, as a, as a real dynamic environment. And we're not there yet, we're on that journey, but we're getting closer and closer to it.

Then we start to explore, well, actually how do we integrate technology and AI into that which is always up and coming.

Now, now the thing with it is at the moment you can go down a technology route and you can go down a kind of automated route where you go in, you see a tablet there, some hotels are doing it already. You just punch in your details, it prints out your room, it gives you the room key and all that kind of stuff.

Well, there's no people interaction there and there's someone there somewhere that's there for help if you need it. Well, I think that takes away a massive chunk of that wonderful experience. And interaction.

How we integrate the two into a balanced experience is the bit that we need to consider and focus on.

When you're in, when you are signing into a Vista management system, which is a tablet mounted on a desk and you're doing it, you're not interacting with anyone, you're not engaging in conversation. So for me, again, we've got a real job to do to incorporate the both seamlessly, to go into the future as well, without losing the people element.

Tristan Kelly: 00:25:05

It's a great answer, it's great insight into where things can go. I think there's a lot we can take from what's worked well in the past and what's working well currently.

So if we look at destinations, office destinations, workplace destinations, we can start to look at places like White City Place, the former BBC studios, we can look at Chiswick park, we can look at King's Cross, which is now almost fully developed.

Those environments create amazing workplaces and they do that with many, many occupiers, all of which will have their own employee engagement strategies, they'll have their own CX strategies, they'll have their own ESG departments, their own drivers and ambitions and objectives as organizations. But they choose those environments because they create amazing atmospheres for their employees and enables them to, to retain the best employees.

It enables them to attract great teams and kind of grow and develop those teams.

And I think what they've done, they've moved away from that traditional FM model where landlords and property management companies, all their focus is on this. Other lights working, are the doors open? Is the temperature about the right for, for the average person? And that's been their focus.

But places like Chiswit park have thought, no, we need to kind of build this from the ground up. What's the experience going to be like for our customers?

And so organizations that look at that, landlords that really take that on and look at the experience. First model, yes, the building needs to be secure, things need to work properly, all of that needs to be in place.

But actually the differentiator is going to be, well, what's the experience like when people turn up? How do they feel? What vibe are they getting? What's the environment like? Are there pop up coffee stands when you get to the office?

What's the front of house teams like? What's the deco? How does it sound? Is there any music? What retail units have you got within that area?

There's so many factors that go into that that will create the workplaces of the future.

We can just take a lot of Influence from what's gone on in the past and what's been working well currently and create experiences, so that could be events, that can be amenities. So many different reasons to get people energized and doing their best work when they're in those environments.

And that's what great workplace experience can do.

Mike Galea: 00:27:29

As we said at the very beginning, it's complicated. It's a complex process to get that right. But we're getting closer and closer and learning from each other too.

As, as you've just given from all those wonderful examples there, we're kind of.

Tristan Kelly: 00:27:42

In agreement then that it's all about the feeling. It's about the emotion that we are creating. That's what workplace experience is. So can we measure emotion?

Mike Galea: 00:27:51

I think you can measure emotion in, in what we spoke about already. So, you know, engagement surveys, happiness surveys, does measure emotion of a sort, because that's what you're reporting on.

You're reporting on how you feel, and the feeling is an emotion. So I think they both belong, whether you're getting a true sense. Because when you're measuring emotion, you're measuring a moment in time.

And it depends what's going on at that moment in time.

You know, if you run an engagement survey over the announcement of the annual bonuses and it's not where people think it should be or that the companies had to pull back, that drives an emotion. We can measure it through the engagement survey.

You might not get a true feeling of the sentiment, but I think storytelling and narrative is, is equally as important because it validates those feelings.

And that could be through retention or attraction, certainly as a, as a mechanism to say, if we are losing too many people, there's something wrong internally with the business or the building or the environment or the culture, or people tend not to leave equally. So that 10 year time means there's an embedded culture, and is that the right culture that we want to have? And that's hard to change too.

So I think they do belong. It's just how you use it, how you track it. And the ultimate question is, why are we doing it?

Tristan Kelly: 00:29:10

Perfect. Great insight there. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Galea: 00:29:28

So, Tristan, as part of this as well, I think we should widen our scope a little bit because we talked a lot about our own experiences, our own little worlds. But I'm gonna ask you a question. Have you heard of a study called Five Weeks in the Wild?

Tristan Kelly: 00:29:40

No, I can't say I have.

Mike Galea: 00:29:42

at the University of Levin in: 2024

And it actually looks at semi autonomous mobile partitions in open plan offices. Have you heard of this?

Tristan Kelly: 00:29:56

No. Sounds slightly scary. Partitions are moving on their own.

Mike Galea: 00:30:00

What they were looking at was can we automate the an open plan office through robotic partitions that can preempt how busy the space is going to be and also how people wish to work. So things like trapping sound would be one of the reasons why they're doing it, or trapping sunlight that comes through.

You know, there's a high degree of neuroscience in there too, which is a good thing. But you know that application when it comes to AI could work with how busy the office is on, on any particular day in terms of expanding the space.

So on a Monday when it's less busy, it's 40 full.

The autonomous partitions will close up to create a smaller environment in which to work, which compresses the people that are working there to encourage more social engagement. On busier days it opens up, but then the partition.

So believe it or not, with their study, there was 43 possible variations of office office space design and it was controlled through a panel. Now, of the 13 people that were a part of this experiment, each one had a different day where they could design their own space.

Really what it came down to was there was six that was most commonly used, six spaces, which was an indication of how people like to work.

Most of it was creating smaller partitions, cubicle style to do deep work or concentrated work, or to block out the sound of the canteen that was happening, or to block out sound of co workers.

I think that's quite an interesting study because I've operated in work modes before when we've done workplace experiments and we have all these different zones in which you would like to work in, you know, that, that freedom. I have a panel and I can create my own environment and space around me. I find interesting.

What before I answer that, my own question, what's your thoughts on that? What's jumping around your brain? As I've gone through this experiment, I'm.

Tristan Kelly: 00:32:01

Looking at the data first. In essence, 50% of people liked working within a tighter workspace. So out of the 13, we had six common layouts.

And of those six they were tighter, smaller workplaces. Maybe there's a level of intimacy around that.

Maybe people want to be in a more wouldn't say confined space, but to have various barriers up so that it's not too open planned. Maybe it's a comfort thing. Maybe there's something around having a smaller office.

Maybe we like the ambient ambition we all have is to have the corner office. Well, if you work in a massive open plan office, that dream's entirely gone.

Maybe having those dividers up creates a sense of intimacy, creates a sense of your own space, and enables you to feel more in control of that environment.

Mike Galea: 00:32:45

They want their own space. They want to be in. In that environment where they feel where they can work more concentrated.

And they have the freedom to be able to do that and the freedom to step out of that space to communicate and collaborate with other people as and when they need to. But I have some participant quotes from this experiment which I'll just read out because I think that brings it to life a little bit more.

So what they said on noise and acoustic relief, which is one of the experiments they did, someone said it really helped reduce the noise from behind me. It covered the sound from the kitchen and the cafeteria. I made a quiet space for myself just in case.

It was very cozy because there was less distraction when they ask a question, wanting a fixed installation after experiencing the benefits. So in terms of that dynamic office design of how would you then create this design?

I think a real wall should be installed to cover the cafeteria here, because a partition helped me a lot to focus. So again, the noise of that coming through seems to be a prevailing problem. Social signaling.

Partition could not make a sound barrier for me, so I used it send a message to colleagues to please let me focus. So again, it's putting that do not disturb sign on your teams. That's saying when you see these barriers around me, you know not to bother me.

When they look to urgency and social dynamics, it's like I made the space for myself instead of when I've been forced into a space and on fairness and wanting group consent because they had like a kind of wizard of Oz panel where people could go in and just change it. Somebody said, actually, you know, it was fair. We all agreed on how we would operate this. But it draws out some interesting facts.

Now, okay, it was 13 people over five weeks, but people were defaulting back to cubicle style working, which is really, really interesting. Now we call that in our. In our modern lexicon, post Covid, we call that like kind of deep work.

You know, it's a wonderful book about deep work in terms of how you get into that zone and how long it takes you to get in there, how long you can stay in that concentrated environment for. So I think it's quite interesting. Now, do I think it belongs in offices, as in AI robotic spaces and partitions? No.

But if it comes to experimental design and Neurodivergency. Yes.

I think there's a real, real market for there where you can play around with an open space to find out what works before you commit to building that space itself. I think it's one to watch. Now, partitioning is nothing new, but robotic and AI partitioning creates something completely different.

So I'm interested to learn where that's going to go in terms of that predictive business in the office and people selecting how and when to work. I just found that very interesting.

Tristan Kelly: 00:35:21

Thanks for bringing that. If people want to find out a bit more about that study, can you remind us of the study name?

Mike Galea: 00:35:27

Yeah. So it's five weeks in the wild. It's Goan and Van de Moore. They have released their paper and.

And I'm sure on the comments we can put the link to that paper in there that people are interested in reading that study.

Tristan Kelly: 00:35:44

One of the reasons we, we came up with the name High Five for our podcast is that it's a way of signaling great moment. So you do something and then you be, oh, high five.

And that kind of, that sort of clap, that coming together really signals the energy and your experience of. It could be a sports game, your team scored a goal. Wow. High five. Amazing. You know, there's a real kind of impact to that.

And so we've got a little section called High Five Moments, and they are, in essence, a memorable service experience. My recent High Five moment came on holiday, as I always do, take a few books with me. And so I put them on the bedside table. We got out for the day.

I came back, grabbed a book off the side, sat down to read, and I noticed that they had put a bookmark in each and every one of my books, which was an amazing little thing they'd put a bookmark in. I thought it was such a lovely touch. And I had enough for each of the books that I had had since then.

From a marketing point of view, it's a great thing because I'm now back and I've. I've got that bookmark in a book and, and I'm yearning to go back and lie on the beach.

And so clearly there's a, there's a, there's a marketing link in there. But from a high five moment, I thought it was a great thing.

And interestingly, we were in the lift probably about a day or two later, and a new couple had come into the hotel and she was telling her partner the same thing. She's like, oh, my God, they put a bookmark in and the Same excitement I felt I could hear in her voice.

And she's clearly, you know, really enamored with the whole thing. Oh, amazing. It didn't devalue the fact that someone else had got a bookmark.

I was quite interested that she was sharing that story and I could kind of feel her energy and, and almost her and myself could have had a high five. We'd have been. It would have been like a bookmark. Hey, did you get a bookmark as well? Cool. That's high five.

But another thing that clearly wasn't marketing.

Same hotel, probably a day after I received the bookmarks, I had my laptop with me and there was a glass table and my mouse wasn't really picking up the glass. And so I'd used, I think there was a notepad. And I turned the notepad over and I was using the underside of the notepad as a temporary mouse mat.

Came back in the afternoon. So once they've done their turndown service, I jumped on the laptop to check some emails and I noticed that there was a mouse mat there.

Now, I hadn't asked for it. It wasn't branded. It was just an unbranded simple mouse mat. But it was such a lovely touch, an amazing piece of. Of customer service.

And so for me, those two elements, probably the mouse map more is a great high five moment. So, as we mentioned, in the future we'll be looking for your high fives, so feel free to get in touch with us. Share recent high fives.

Every episode, we will share our most recent high five. And we'll also be eliciting high fives from our guests. That's it for this episode of High Five, where insight meets empathy.

Mike Galea: 00:38:34

We hope it sparked a few new ideas and maybe an energized moment or two.

Tristan Kelly: 00:38:38

If you enjoyed the conversation, follow the show and share a high five with a colleague who'd love it too.

Mike Galea: 00:38:45

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.