How To Foster Community In Office Spaces

The workplace change process isn’t just about redesigning space; it’s about using the process to redesign how people connect. The discovery process for workplace change is an opportunity to: 🔥 Build Empathy – Employees share experiences about what they need to do their best work, wherever they are working. 🔥 Drive Innovation – Employees engage in conversations about improving systems and processes, which can lead to reduced friction and improved productivity. 🔥 Strengthen Culture – A workplace designed with employees leads to stronger engagement and ownership of the resulting space. When organizations treat workplace change as a dialogue rather than a directive, they create spaces that don’t just house people—they support them. The process itself becomes a tool for building empathy, driving innovation, strengthening culture, and shaping a workplace that reflects how people actually work today. I recently read a great piece by Eoin Higgins on the rise of hospitality-like workplace amenities. He made key points I want to expand on—because employees, not designers, architects, facilities teams, or HR, should define what best serves them. To engage employees, try this structured discussion in small groups (3-4 people). Each question gets 8 minutes (total of 24 minutes). Have participants write their answers silently for one minute, then take turns sharing (1 minute each). The group selects a top idea from each person’s list to report out. Active Contribution vs. Passive Consumption – What ways of working encourage shared ownership of work, policies, processes, technology, and space? Friction as Meaningful Work – Oliver Burkeman suggests challenges create meaning. If friction were seen as valuable rather than something to eliminate, what would you want more (or less) of in your work? Engagement Beyond Perks – True engagement comes from purpose and shared endeavor. How do you connect with our organization’s purpose and others? What would improve engagement for you? These discussions will inform design decisions and foster ownership of outcomes. Research shows early employee participation increases adoption and support of workplace changes - and also builds connections, strengthening culture. Caveat: Don’t ask if you won’t listen—nothing frustrates employees more. Images by Josef Chalat of people sitting in a circle having a conversation (illustration of a facilitation method called "fishbowl").

Stop seeing employees as faceless figures. Start acknowledging them as unique individuals. That’s how you create vibrant and engaged workplace environments. Here’s how you can lead: ✅ Define collective values: ↳ Work together to create core principles everyone can align with. ↳ Let these values influence decisions and actions across the board. ✅ Encourage open dialogue: ↳ Create regular spaces for all team members to voice their thoughts. ↳ Embrace feedback and implement it where possible. ✅ Foster shared moments: ↳ Plan events, challenges, or volunteer opportunities that connect people. ↳ Strengthen bonds through common experiences. ✅ Highlight individual efforts: ↳ Acknowledge both the large and small contributions. ↳ Show your team that they are truly appreciated. ✅ Prioritize development: ↳ Launch mentorship programs and provide career advancement opportunities. ↳ Help people grow personally and professionally. What to avoid as a leader: ❌ Enforcing participation: ↳ Avoid pressuring people into social activities. ↳ Let relationships develop naturally over time. ❌ Overlooking remote workers: ↳ Ensure your efforts to build community include those working remotely. ↳ Keep everyone connected. ❌ Skimping on resources: ↳ Don’t cut corners on building culture. ↳ Invest the necessary time and resources to make it successful. ❌ Relying solely on top-down approaches: ↳ Don’t assume leadership has all the answers. ↳ Empower everyone to help shape the community. ❌ Ignoring differences: ↳ Stay away from one-size-fits-all solutions. ↳ Be mindful of diverse needs and cultural differences. See your team for who they are, not just what they contribute. Lead the way you wish someone had led you. ♻️Repost for those needing to hear this. ➕Follow Justin Bateh, PhD for more. Want to level up your management and leadership game? Try my free newsletter:  https://lnkd.in/e9xftTyU

Last year, we rolled out an experimental company perk: Ethena employees can expense up to $100/month towards bonding activities with each other. Why? Because even though a good chunk of the workforce has gone remote, employees still crave a sense of community. And as many of us in the HR/People space have had to learn the hard way: *More* virtual happy hours and pizza parties isn't going to cut it. So what's a People professional to do? Explore new and experimental ways to provide the sense of community employees want — while keeping things sustainable for both the People team and the company budget, of course. So how did our little experiment shake out? - The response was instantaneous. All across the company, our location-based Slack channels started pinging with employees eager to organize get-togethers: Dinner, rock climbing, trips to the nail salon for a fun mani-pedi. We've even opened the perk up to virtual bonding activities, i.e. a virtual cooking class with a personal chef. - Our employees are leveraging this perk in exactly the ways we hoped they would. So far, employees all across the US and Canada have met up to: Watch a Broadway play, go out for tapas, spend a day canoeing — and more! - The sense of camaraderie and inspiration around this perk has been incredible to watch. People are sharing pictures of their meetups on Slack, getting others excited about arranging get-togethers for their own local groups, and showing us as a company the many, varied ways of building team culture and employee satisfaction. And before you ask: No, we're not overly prescriptive about it. If the money is going towards hanging out with someone (or several someones) at the company, we tell our employees to go ahead and expense it. Although this is just one of many efforts we've continued to make towards fostering a sense of community at work, it's one that has stood out for the flexibility it allows employees to connect in the ways that work best for them without requiring an incredible lift from the People team. What are your favorite ways of building community at work?