How office design can promote inclusion

An inter­na­tion­al poll of 31,000 full-time employ­ees in Jan­u­ary for Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index report found that 73% want­ed to retain the option of work­ing remote­ly after the relax­ation of Covid lock­down restric­tions. It’s clear that many peo­ple aren’t itch­ing to resume office life five days a week after so many months of work­ing at home.

“Many busi­ness­es are won­der­ing why we’re not all rush­ing back. Part of it might be a fear of infec­tion,” says Jean Hewitt, senior inclu­sive design con­sul­tant at Buro Hap­pold. “But I’ve also spo­ken to many peo­ple who’ve been work­ing in their gar­den shed or some oth­er hum­ble envi­ron­ment, yet have thrived in that space.”

So what makes the shed or box room a more appeal­ing place to work than the pur­pose-built office in town? Part of the answer lies in acces­si­bil­i­ty and inclu­siv­i­ty.

There are obvi­ous ben­e­fits to work­ing at home, rang­ing from the weighty – such as the free­dom from com­mut­ing – to the triv­ial – such as the free­dom to wear pyja­ma bot­toms while video­con­fer­enc­ing. But one of the most impact­ful, yet less obvi­ous, advan­tages has been the free­dom to cus­tomise your work­space. Even with­out work­sta­tion assess­ments and expen­sive ergonom­ic chairs, many peo­ple have found this trans­for­ma­tion­al. Maybe they’ve moved their desk so that they can sit in nat­ur­al light; per­haps they’ve kept the radio on in the kitchen; or they might have switched between sit­ting and stand­ing through­out the day.

In explor­ing such options, peo­ple have realised that their prob­lems with one-size-fits-all office envi­ron­ments are about more than pref­er­ence. This may have con­tributed to an increase in the num­ber of assess­ments for autism and oth­er forms of neu­ro­di­ver­gence. A read­er poll con­duct­ed in May by ADDi­tude, a mag­a­zine for peo­ple affect­ed by atten­tion-deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD), found that 26.5% of the adult respon­dents had received a for­mal ADHD diag­no­sis in the pre­ced­ing 12 months. Near­ly three-quar­ters of these new­ly diag­nosed adults said that prob­lems ensu­ing from the lock­down restric­tions had prompt­ed them to seek eval­u­a­tion.

Even peo­ple who were well aware of their diver­gent needs before the pan­dem­ic may have dis­cov­ered new things about them­selves while work­ing remote­ly. And, if they’ve found them­selves more com­fort­able and pro­duc­tive when in full con­trol of their sur­round­ings, they’ll be reluc­tant to relin­quish that – even if return­ing to HQ does promise the ben­e­fits of com­mu­ni­ty, bet­ter facil­i­ties and free teas and cof­fees.

When it comes to design­ing for inclu­siv­i­ty in offices, gen­der is a key fac­tor. Although toi­let facil­i­ties are usu­al­ly the first con­sid­er­a­tion, inclu­sive design doesn’t stop at the bath­room door. Tem­per­a­ture, for instance, is often over­looked. Most offices have their heat­ing set to a lev­el that tends to feel most com­fort­able to cis­gen­der men, which can have far-reach­ing effects. A 2019 research report by Tom Chang and Agne Kajack­aite enti­tled Bat­tle for the Ther­mo­stat con­clud­ed that the opti­mal tem­per­a­ture for cog­ni­tive per­for­mance for women is high­er. Those expe­ri­enc­ing menopause may also have fluc­tu­at­ing tem­per­a­ture needs.

Of course, you can’t know whether some­one is menopausal sim­ply by look­ing at them. In the same way, you can’t know their health sta­tus. About 22% of UK adults self-report as hav­ing a dis­abil­i­ty, accord­ing to the Depart­ment for Work and Pen­sions, yet many oth­ers don’t dis­close a dis­abil­i­ty or chron­ic health con­di­tion – often because they don’t know them­selves that they have one.

Kel­ly and Hes­ter Grainger, co-founders of neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty con­sul­tan­cy Per­fect­ly Autis­tic, have both expe­ri­enced this. The hus­band-and-wife team have two chil­dren with autism and ADHD. Dur­ing the depths of the Covid cri­sis, Hes­ter found at the age of 43 that she had ADHD. Kel­ly, who’d had had a suc­cess­ful career in the cor­po­rate world for more than two decades, was diag­nosed with autism at 44 and ADHD at 45.

“There are lots of neu­ro­di­ver­gent peo­ple who don’t know they’re neu­ro­di­ver­gent,” he says. “They strug­gle with cer­tain things and sim­ply imag­ine that these must be a strug­gle for every­one.”

This is why it would be a mis­take for an employ­er to design an office around the needs it thinks its cur­rent employ­ees have. Not only might new starters have dif­fer­ent require­ments; those of exist­ing staff could eas­i­ly change. More than three-quar­ters of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties acquired these in adult­hood, notes Natasha Davies, access advis­er at the Cen­tre for Acces­si­ble Envi­ron­ments (CAE), a spe­cial­ist in inclu­sive work­place design.

Fol­low­ing some guid­ing design prin­ci­ples will make the office space as inclu­sive as pos­si­ble for peo­ple with both obvi­ous and uniden­ti­fied needs, she says, adding: “An inclu­sive office space can improve employ­ees’ well­be­ing and help to cre­ate a diverse work­force. It removes bar­ri­ers to work and cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for both cur­rent and future employ­ees.”

The Equal­i­ty Act 2010 out­lines inclu­sive­ness and acces­si­bil­i­ty require­ments for UK busi­ness­es, while the British Stan­dards Insti­tu­tion has issued numer­ous pub­licly avail­able spec­i­fi­ca­tions (PASs) con­cern­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty. PAS 6463, Design for the Mind, is the first to focus on neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty and the built envi­ron­ment. Hewitt was a tech­ni­cal author on the draft, which was released for pub­lic com­ment in Octo­ber. 

“For any­one, there will be times when you need to get your head down and fin­ish some urgent work. This requires min­i­mal inter­rup­tion, noise or any oth­er stim­u­lus,” she says. “So I think this PAS is real­ly about help­ing every­one, what­ev­er their neu­ro­log­i­cal pro­file, from neu­rotyp­i­cal all the way through to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive.”

So what are the main prin­ci­ples of inclu­sive design? One is phys­i­cal acces­si­bil­i­ty – for instance, the pro­vi­sion of step-free access, auto­mat­ic doors and desks suit­able for wheel­chair users. A sec­ond is clear wayfind­ing – for instance, using words and pat­terns as well as colours, clear­ly sign­ing qui­et spaces and adding braille to sig­nage. And a third is con­trolled stim­u­la­tion – for instance, switch­ing vivid decor for mut­ed colours, adding soft fur­nish­ings to absorb sound and using par­ti­tions in open-plan offices.

Adapt­abil­i­ty is also key in inclu­sive design. Law firm Pin­sent Masons was an ear­ly adopter of open-plan offices. Its direc­tor of HR and learn­ing, Jonathan Bond, explains that the move “allowed us bet­ter flex­i­bil­i­ty, recog­nis­ing that we want­ed work­spaces that were adapt­able for future changes”.

Employ­ees are encour­aged to work in zones of the build­ing that best suit their needs – from low stim­u­la­tion to high socia­bil­i­ty – at any giv­en time. They can book to reserve a desk any­where in the office. 

“Our design of office space, plus our hybrid work­ing strat­e­gy, recog­nis­es this diver­si­ty of pref­er­ence, so it offers a range of choic­es,” Bond says.

While a full office redesign clear­ly isn’t fea­si­ble in all cas­es, there are small and rel­a­tive­ly afford­able changes – for instance, adjustable light­ing – that can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact. Des­ig­nat­ing a qui­et room in which peo­ple can calm them­selves in iso­la­tion can also make a big dif­fer­ence. If it has to dou­ble as a prayer space, a book­ing sys­tem should ensure that no wor­ship­per is inter­rupt­ed.

Employ­ers can draw on a range of resources to help improve their office design, includ­ing the CAE’s access audits, Buro Happold’s inclu­sive design ser­vices and Per­fect­ly Autistic’s neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty aware­ness train­ing. 

“Don’t be afraid to work with exter­nal part­ners,” advis­es Hes­ter Grainger. “If you want to learn about autism in the work­place, ask an autis­tic per­son who also has the cor­po­rate con­text you need.”

But she adds that everyone’s expe­ri­ences are dif­fer­ent. As well as work­ing with experts, employ­ers need to speak direct­ly with their staff. Grainger rec­om­mends a return-to-work sur­vey as a good start­ing point for such con­ver­sa­tions.

Pin­sent Masons ben­e­fits from hav­ing well-estab­lished employ­ee net­works, which can give the man­age­ment team reg­u­lar feed­back about inclu­siv­i­ty mat­ters.

“We’ve worked with these groups on key office design issues,” Bond notes. “For exam­ple, the dis­abil­i­ty group road-test­ed our Lon­don office to ensure that it was wheel­chair-friend­ly. A num­ber of their col­leagues (includ­ing me) lat­er spent a day work­ing in wheel­chairs to under­stand their lived expe­ri­ence and deter­mine any areas for improve­ment.”

More inclu­sive office design will help encour­age employ­ees back into the office. Along with improved wel­fare, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and loy­al­ty from staff with var­ied access and accom­mo­da­tion needs, employ­ers may see increased engage­ment and a sense of uni­ty in the work­force.

Look­ing for­ward to a post-pan­dem­ic world, Kel­ly Grainger argues that “get­ting your work envi­ron­ment right, mak­ing it inclu­sive, will ben­e­fit all employ­ees. And mak­ing every­one hap­pi­er and more pro­duc­tive sure­ly ben­e­fits the busi­ness over­all.”