4.1.4. Food and drink at work
Food and drink are often ignored in today’s workplace,
provided only because employees expect coffee and tea, and
because employers use lunch to keep people in the building.
But above and beyond fuelling people through caffeine and
carbohydrate highs, most organisations see food and drink as
a cost, rather than a benefit to the business.
But research has shown that by providing the right types of
food and drink, organisations can increase productivity and
concentration as well as promoting healthier living, leading to a
drop in absenteeism through illness and lower insurance costs.
Furthermore, by intelligently designing environments to bring
meeting space and food space together, companies can see
significant benefits through increased collaboration with food
and drink. These food spaces can also be sites for engaging
with customers and potential customers – essential in a world
where the banking industry is refocussing on the customer.
4.1.5. Changing culture
Increased cost pressures, lower margins and the continued
consumerisation of global society has driven the market-leaders
in banking to refocus on the customer in the last two years.
The leading banks we spoke to believe that this significant
culture change from a singular focus on profit to a greater
understanding of and service to the customer, will be one of the
key differentiators of their businesses in the coming years.
One of the consequences of the shift to the customer-centric
bank has been a number of global players pulling out of key
business areas, cutting staff numbers in high-risk activities
and simplifying structures and operations so that they are
sustainable at a lower return.
This has led to investment in people and infrastructure – to
deliver better for customers and better business outcomes.
Banks have defined new ways to motivate employees to meet
the increasing challenge of incentivising and retaining skilled
staff, in the face of intense scrutiny from regulators and the
public. But there has also been an increase in investment in new
technology, payment mechanisms and online communication,
as a visible sign of their customer-centric approach.
To achieve this, transparency is key. And transparency will
require meaningful changes in workplace culture. Market
leaders are investing heavily in training and development
as a lever to drive customer-centric business; executive and
managing functions are coming out of offices into the open
plan on a scale not seen before; and published corporate
strategies place people and culture far more prominently
than before the 2008 crisis.
4.1.3. Engineering serendipity
Understanding social dynamics in the workplace can be a
challenge, but a company called Sociometric Solutions has
pioneered a method that puts sensors in employees’ name
badges which monitor how they move around the office,
who they talk to and in what tone of voice.
One client discovered that its more productive workers
were those allowed to take their breaks together (a study in
a call-centre environment), in which they let off steam and
shared tips about dealing with frustrated customers. The
bank took heed and switched the rota to collective breaks,
after which performance improved by 23%, and stress
levels in workers’ voices fell by 19%. Recognising the data
protection issues in such a study, employees were asked to
volunteer for this. We do not believe that all organisations
need to go to the length of conducting a similar study, but
should use the conclusions to better understand how their
own organisation works.
Banks have large knowledge-based workforces and
we believe that modelling internal social networks and
connections (for example who is emailing who) and providing
expert directories and relationship science will result in a
more real time building that knows ‘who’s in’ and cannot
just engineer encounters and interactions, but seat or locate
people together who should work together.
Technology will see a collision between ‘bricks and clicks’
and banks will be able to achieve competitive advantage
by adopting ‘real time real estate’ (RETRE) principles that
focus on teams, clusters and communities – modelling the
occupancy of a building on the real work that takes place and
not the organisational chart.
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The future of the financial workplace
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September 2014
