In a changing workplace, it’s essential to design “wide” and “deep” employee experiences
June 7, 2022
The future of work isn’t just about where we work — online, in-person, or a combination of both. It’s about how we help people feel connected and engaged at work no matter how the sands may shift beneath their feet. How you design your workplace experiences can make the difference between an engaged and inspired workforce, and one that feels disconnected and despondent.
I don’t know about you, but to me, it feels like we’re living in the Upside Down right now. The distinct feeling of disorientation harkens back to April of 2020, when we were all learning how to work remotely while becoming masters of online school, and to the summer of 2020, when a racial reckoning on top of a global pandemic had us questioning what, if anything, we could rely on. Now, as we think about codifying the lessons of the pandemic and creating the future of work amid a steady drumbeat of upsetting news, we’re once again faced with making decisions, on the fly, about how we want to work together and stay connected.
This makes our experience at work all the more complex. As people who design workplace experiences for a living, my team and I at Adobe are developing ways to foster an environment for hybrid work that makes both remote and flexible/in-person employees feel included and engaged. We remain cognizant of the very real mental health crisis facing the world, while also bringing our company’s cultural pillars of creativity, inclusion, and wellbeing to life. And time and time again, we find ourselves returning to a planning tool that has served us throughout the pandemic and well before it: Thinking about our offerings through the lens of “wide vs. deep.”
Defining wide vs. deep experiences
When you design experiences, there are times when you’re trying to reach as many people as possible — you expect a wider impact, and you make a bigger investment, but the experience is more scalable. Other times, it’s important to go deep: You want to reach a population that’s by definition smaller, either because it’s an underrepresented minority, and/or because you are trying to foster a level of personal connection or conversation that requires intimacy.
It can be tempting to assume that depth requires being together in-person, but over the past two years, my team has seen time and again just how powerfully it’s possible to connect online, if the experience is designed to foster such connection. As my colleague Jessica Stocks observed in a recent meeting, in a speech that we now lovingly refer to as “Jessica’s TED Talk,” for all the discussion of supposed “Zoom fatigue,” no one talks about TikTok fatigue. The reason? Content is king, and if the content is right, no one cares about the screen. “Zoom fatigue” is really “poorly designed experience” fatigue.
As Priya Parker said at her opening keynote to SXSW 2022, “A great gatherer knows first and foremost why we are coming together, knows what the need is, and isn’t stuck to a specific form.”
Examples of “wide” and “deep” experiences in action
As part of planning the hybrid workplace we envision for Adobe’s future, we’ve learned from our employees that the top five reasons for coming into the office include: connection, collaboration, social and learning events, and access to amenities. This input guides my team’s design process as we create some “wide” experiences to help welcome people back to working on-site, at least part of the time. For example, we know that people are more likely to show up at an event if they receive a warm invitation from the host, because such an invitation signals the likelihood of having a welcoming, connected experience at the event itself (instead of casting about, unsure of what to do or how to strike up a conversation). With this in mind, we’re inviting a leader at each office to volunteer for the role of “host.” Hosts will extend personal invitations to colleagues and personally welcome people to each event. And for those who’ve especially missed the amenities of office life, we’re offering things like great food and the opportunity to get a massage.
“Wide,” of course, doesn’t mean “one size fits all.” For example, if a potentially crowded social event isn’t the most appealing form of connection after two years of social distancing, employees might enjoy using the table-sharing signals my team has designed for our cafes and break rooms, which allow employees to display a simple sign indicating whether they’re looking for company (“join”) or need some alone time (“focus”). We know that connecting with colleagues from other departments over meals invites “casual collisions” that spur considerable collaboration, and it’s something we hear those who have ventured back into office life report as a delightfully rewarding experience.
The theme of connection with colleagues brings me to some examples of the “deep” experiences my team designs in partnership with employee networks. Last month, for example, we created a virtual event for our employees who identify as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) as part of AAPI Heritage Month. We hear from our colleagues that they deeply value these opportunities to connect across offices and regions with others who share a part of their identity that’s important to them. This month we’re planning events for Pride and Juneteenth.
Also in the “deep” category, as part of our commitment to employee wellbeing, which is essential to helping people show up at their most creative, we’ve been hosting informal, virtual learning events with a nutritionist. Even though nutrition is a topic of interest to a number of our employees, most people don’t want to ask personal questions about their health or eating habits in front of a room full of 1,000 of their colleagues. We measure our success not by the number of people who show up, but from the transformative impact these events make on the attendees’ wellbeing, as we hear time and again in the feedback they share.
Designing an inclusive future
Designing experiences that bring people together in meaningful ways — wide or deep, whether in the context of work or otherwise — requires commitment to radical inclusivity, something our employees tell us we’ve successfully achieved over the last two years while many of us have been physically apart. They tell us that they’ve felt like they were on roughly the same playing field in terms of connecting with each other at work — in the same storm, albeit on different boats, across various geographies and living situations. But once they dialed in, they were at the same virtual event and they could share an experience, as colleagues.
How do we ensure this continuity of connection as we navigate a more hybrid work model?
The answer isn’t to focus exclusively on whether the experiences we offer take place in-person or virtually or require a hybrid approach — we also need to focus on when it’s time to go wide, when it’s time to go deep. After all, there’s no formula for a single experience that will be everything to everyone. And there’s no way to make sure everyone is engaged all the time. But when we bring our skill as designers, and our commitment to each other as human beings, fully to bear, we can create experiences that make it easier to navigate this upside-down moment, and the next one, and the next.
To once again quote Priya Parker:
“We have an extraordinary moment right now to pause, and observe — to reimagine. Because how we gather right now is literally up for grabs.”
Shout-outs to the amazing workplace experience designers who are part of the Adobe team behind the experiences I featured: Renee Jackson, Emilie Zanger, Pam Chueh, Noelle Via Borda, Jessica Stocks, Lucy Norris, Damon Guidry, Irene Hipolito, Jamie Villareal, Ellery Schaar, Kristen Siu, Helen Lau-Cheney, Shayna Meliker, Jo Cohen, Patti Portugal
