It’s Time to Reimagine Your Workplace
By: Rebecca Cressman
Tags: Work, Change, Design, Change Management, Workplace

It’s Time to Reimagine Your Workplace

As a change communications consultant, I’ve spent the past year gearing up for 2021’s return to the workplace by reading, researching, testing and trialing a long list of books, courses and online tools.

Why? Because to help people adopt new ways of working when we return to the office (even if it’s only part-time), we’ll need to do a much better job bridging the gap between the digital, compliance and organizational changes necessary — and an employee’s individual well-being, skill set and physical environments.

So to save everyone else some time — and money — when planning for your own return to the office, I’m sharing my favorite free expert and digital resources below.

1. Collaboration Tools

As someone who runs workshops and spends LOTS of time organizing, photographing and then (sometimes) losing post-it notes on the way back to my workspace, tools like MURAL and Conceptboard are lifesavers!

If you’re not already familiar with them, they are basically shared, digital whiteboards that allow users to organize virtual post-it notes (in addition to text, designs and images) the same way if the meeting was being held in person. Even if people decide to start holding in-person workshops, I still think these tools are a great way to collate, save and share information after the discussion.

MURAL offers a free trial period and I’ve been creating playbooks, process maps and user personas on Conceptboard for free the last few months.

2. Online courses

Even if you’re already familiar with design methodologies, the IDEO.org and Acumen Academy Introduction to Human-Centered Design course is the perfect excuse to go out and help people solve some of their biggest problems.

I spoke to people about what frustrated them the most about working from home (lack of boundaries topped the list) and then came up with ideas for new ways of working (mainly around how to resolve frustrations with email overload).

I also audited the Berkeley X Science of Happiness course. This eight-week course provides students with a selection of scientifically-proven ‘happiness fit activities’ to test out, in the hopes of finding a few that create higher levels of life satisfaction. My favorites focused on achieving a state of flow, goal-setting and getting plenty of physical activity.

Given the emerging trends in workplace wellness, I can easily see ways to incorporate many of these into my daily office routine. Berkley X also offers a range of courses with organizations in mind, focusing on everything from the Science of Happiness at Work to resilience and emotional intelligence.

3. Webinars

MURAL ran a great free webinar series using step-by-step visual tutorials to showcase how companies like Spotify, Zapier and Atlassian build different types of OKR, UX and other playbooks using their collaborative platform.

InVision and Prosci also host regular webinars if you’re looking to keep up with the design and change communities.

4. Playbooks and templates

I’m calling out Atlassian’s playbooks separately here. These come in handy if you don’t have time to create new workshop templates for agile, team building and/or project goal-setting sessions.

IDEO.org also has some great human-centered design kits and field guides — because the need to create solutions to solve people’s ACTUAL frustrations has never been greater.

5. Books

I’ve read about 50 books this past year (for free on the Libby app using my San Francisco library card). The following had the biggest impact on me:

Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

because it reinforced my belief that people whose job survival relies on maintaining the status quo is one of the biggest reasons people resist change at work.

Transitions by William Bridges

because it gave me comfort knowing that real change happens gradually, and that’s totally normal and OK.

The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky

because it includes a practical assessment which identifies the best happiness fit activities for your personality type (perfect for people who don’t have the time to do the Berkeley X Science of Happiness course).

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett

because everything in this book makes me feel better about uncertainty and change, especially the ‘Reframing Failure’ worksheet which reminds me to turn my setbacks into growth opportunities.

Tiny Habits by B J Fogg

because it forced me to think about more innovative ways to reinforce change at work by helping people cultivate new habits.

In fact, I have the Tiny Habits book to thank for finally finishing this post — one small step at a time.