Ivanhoé Cambridge’s ‘Do You Miss the Office?’ Podcast Back With Third Episode | UrbanToronto
Throughout the last year of global turmoil brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, most people who commuted to offices previously have since been working remotely as a means to limit the spread of the virus. As a result, most offices are currently staffed by small crews, while businesses face continued overhead costs for the currently under-utilized space. While working environments that fostered a spirit of collaboration and community now feel like a distant memory, many people are seeing the silver lining of remote working, free of their daily commutes while being able to spend more time with loved ones.
With all the changes to our work environments since early 2020, real estate investment titan Ivanhoé Cambridge is asking the question “Do you miss the office?” in a new podcast series that launched earlier this month.
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After launching in March with an episode that introduced the podcast series’ main themes, the second instalment focused on innovation that’s shaping future workplaces. Now, the podcast returns with a third episode that ponders a rethink of the physical workplace, with an aim to improve personal connections and the culture that defines a company. Host Annie Bergeron, Design Director and Principal at workplace design firm Gensler, frames the latest episode with a question: “how do you build a culture for a company that’s temporarily without a physical home? And how has that lack of shared space and shared experience shifted how companies think about their culture?”
Joining this week’s podcast from Houston is David Steinback, Global Chief Investment Officer and Co-Head of Investment Management at global real estate leader Hines, as well as Dr. Pragya Agarwal, an award-winning behavioural scientist, data scientist, inclusivity and diversity consultant journalist and speaker, joining the program from England. Returning from previous podcasts is Sylvain Fortier, Chief Investment and Innovation Officer at Ivanhoé Cambridge.
CIBC SQUARE, image courtesy Ivanhoé Cambridge/Hines
Getting the conversation going, Bergeron says “When we ask people what they miss the most about the office, the answer is very informed, but never in the content; it’s the people. We’ve heard this over and over again. But offices are much more than containers for people—the good [offices]—or at least experienced superchargers that influence and shape the behaviours and output of the people spending time in them.” Directing the first question to Dr. Agarwal, Bergeron asks, “do you miss the office and what do you miss about it, particularly in terms of connection and community?”
Dr. Agarwal answered to different aspects of office work, leading by saying in no uncertain terms “I don’t miss it a huge amount because I used to work in an open-plan office, and I think there are some aspects of it that do not align with people who do not like that environment and who can find it an overwhelming, sensory overload.” While some aspects aren’t missed, Dr. Agarwal states that she does “miss that kind of sense of community” while still stressing that “there are other ways of finding community these days, even when you are not physically together in the same place.”
The titular question was then put to Steinback, who made note of the added flexibility remote working brings to the table, while also admitting that certain aspects are not equal to in-person alternatives. “Zoom for me is very transactional and not very relational,” says Steinback, echoing what many of us feel after 13 months of distance-limited communication. “I’ve never felt more disconnected from the broad team in a sense like how you don’t run into the people that I never would normally have a direct dialogue with. And so because of that, I do feel a certain narrowing of perspective and viewpoints in my day-to-day interactions.”
The podcast then segues into discussing experiences unique to physical, in-person office space, including Steinback highlighting a less common sensory association, saying “Within Hines, we’ve started a new effort to look at how to use timber in office construction. And as we were building these projects, one of the things that we heard from people that toured it [with an interest] to lease, is that they remembered how the space smelled. And I just thought that was so interesting. It was almost engaging another sense if you will.”
The topic of the physical and sensory characteristics of an office then shifts to a discussion of interaction, with Bergeron asking guests “how do you think a space brings out the best in people?” Answers cover a broad range of contributions to an office environment, from air quality or natural light to the restaurants and communal areas in the area surrounding a workplace, all missing from the equation when remote working.
As with previous episodes, the topic of a hybrid working model combining in-office and remote attributes comes up, with Bergeron stating “face-to-face interactions have gotten a lot of press lately, mostly about how much people miss them. But even when we’re back in the office, we’re not going to be interacting with the same number of people, perhaps at the same frequency we were pre-pandemic if there is a hybrid work model when we return,” before asking “If we think quantity is going to stay down, what of the quality?”
Fortier speaks to how Ivanhoé Cambridge was already in the process of improving the quality of their head offices even before the pandemic, seeking to create an environment like “what you find in hotels, where there is a place that people gathered, whether the lobby or meeting rooms,” which has been recreated with a lobby cafe and barista. “If you make people comfortable and you create spaces where they can actually run into each other, it will help to create a company culture,” says Fortier. “When we reopened the office very briefly in September, and we basically went on a voluntary basis as to who wanted to come back, that became the space everyone wanted to hang out it.”
The hot-button topic of diversity in the workplace entered the conversation in response to Bergeron asking “how should we think about company culture and what has been the effect of a year of work from home on company culture?”
Dr. Agarwal says “in a lot of ways, a notion of culture fit can be quite toxic because it creates these echo chambers where we are appointing the same kind of people, and are only bringing the same kind of views. So we never hear diverse views. We are creating these kinds of silos, [with] people who confirm our existing views, so it’s not that great for diversity. I think working from home has disrupted that model. Personal and professional lives are colliding, where before, we would always keep our private lives quite separate. So we’ve broken the fourth wall. I think the notion of the whole company’s culture is changing and, and now the companies have to really evaluate from the top down.” Dr. Agarwal returns with her own take on the question, asking “What is the culture now?”
There is plenty more discussed in the third episode, airing as of now, April 29th. Over the course of the podcast’s run through May, the podcasts will feature discussions with more industry-leading architects and designers, tech giants like Microsoft, data scientists, researchers, journalists, and more, to get to the bottom of how these leaders view the future of the office.
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