We spend more and more time in our offices than in any other single space. So, it makes perfect sense to build our workspaces with little nudges all along the design of the physical space so that they help us go back home a little more happier and healthier than we came in the morning.
That I believe would be key in creating an organisation which has healthy, creative, engaged and highly productive employees. Of course, just getting the physical space right doesn’t mean that all other aspects of the culture will be taken care of. But that is a great start.
So, the question is who will design these nudges? Can these be designed in an existing office space or is it only possible during the original designing of the physical space?
I believe that while it gives a lot of opportunity to design nudges if we are starting fresh, we can still have a significant impact on the employee behaviour even in existing office settings by introducing some interesting nudges.
One way to look at this question is to bring in “nudge” experts to design these choice architectures.
Alternately, we can bring together a cross functional team of employees who can start by reading the book “Nudge” by Richard Thaler together and then start to look at the various opportunities to design these nudges in the environment. This will need for them to “observe” very closely the current behaviour of the employees, the various moments of choices and the options available for the employees.
Once we know the moments where choices exist, we can then introduce nudge interventions to nudge the behaviour to pick the choice in the best interest of the person making the choice.
Here is an interview of the authors of the book “The Healthy Workplace Nudge” where they share the reason why they wrote the book and what they learnt in the process of writing it.
