Privacy cases.

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[00:00:00.42] Steelcase podcast with behind the scenes conversations on the research
impacting the places where people work

[00:00:06.34] Learn and heal. I'm host Katie pace and today we're going to hear a
conversation between Steelcase as Chris Condon Global Director of Research
Communications and Donna Flynn vice president of Work space Futures.

[00:00:19.29] Chris and Donna sat down recently to discuss the privacy crisis. Many workers
are facing today. Thanks for joining us. Let's listen in.

[00:00:27.33] Hi I'm Chris Condon and I'm the editor of 360 magazine [00:00:30.0] and we're
going to start out our conversation about privacy today with Donna Flynn who is the director of
workspace futures at Steelcase. So Donna when we were working on the most recent issue of
360 magazine and we were thinking about this topic of privacy we really felt like it was
becoming a crisis. Could you talk a little bit about some of the things that you're seeing in your
research that led this to be a crisis.

[00:00:57.13] Yeah I think there's a number of changes happening in the world right
[00:01:00.0] now that are converging to really make it a crisis for individual workers and for
people everywhere. One is mobility and mobile devices which have changed the way we work.
And we're able to do our work anywhere we can pick up and take it to coffee shops. We can
move around our campuses we can do it at home. What that doesn't allow is always going to
the right place at the right time to do the kind of work you want to do. So sometimes it's hard to
find the right place to do your work. Another factor [00:01:30.0] is the proliferation of data that
we're seeing with personal devices with digital content. There's a lot of concern right now
about how people can control their data. And this has raised expectations for privacy and
really made privacy a conversation around dinner tables around the world. What about
collaboration because you know there's such a huge focus on collaboration right now and a lot
of organizations and a lot of people rightly feeling like that's important collaboration

[00:02:00.15] Can [00:02:00.0] have an impact on our ability to achieve privacy to get it.

[00:02:04.38] Yeah it can. And there has been a whole flip in the last 10 years towards more
collaboration and more collaborative spaces and more open spaces in the workplace.
Sometimes we talk about this as a pendulum. In our research that in some ways 10 years ago
there was a lot of private spaces the push for collaboration has created a lot of collaborative
spaces. But that pendulum has flown a little too far to one side. [00:02:30.0] And so what we're
looking for is more balance between collaborative and private. There's a lot of neuroscience
that we've been looking at to inform our research on privacy as well. And the neuroscience
shows that our brains cannot always be in full focused attention mode. There's something
called control the attention that our brains move into. And that's when we really want to focus
and all of our brain is working on the problem or the issue [00:03:00.0] that we're thinking
about. And when we go into controlled detention we want to be able to control our
environment. We want to be able to control the information that we're exposed to. We want to
control stimulations that are distracting us and these are the moments of full focus and control
the tension that privacy becomes really important for people to find. Sadhana when we think
about this privacy crisis going on in the workplace. How is that impacting employees.

[00:03:28.44] Well I think when employees [00:03:30.0] can't find the spaces they need when
they need them to do the kind of work they need to do and sometimes that needs to be private
spaces that that can increase their stress they'll feel distracted. Their level of engagement
productivity is going to go down. A lot of people believe that if someone's working alone that
they're not being collaborative. But we believe that being alone is a critical element of
collaboration. And so [00:04:00.0] instead of privacy hurting collaboration we think privacy can
support collaboration. It gives people the time they need to do some deep thinking. It gives
people time they need to do some creative work or just time to focus on producing something.
They need to produce. It's also important for people to have time to rest and rejuvenate their
mind and body as they're moving across the day.

[00:04:26.97] So then why don't we just go back to giving everybody private [00:04:30.0]
offices.

[00:04:31.77] We don't think privacy is about having four walls and a door. We think it's really
about control. And there's two key dimensions to privacy that we think about there's
information control controlling information about yourself and how that's shared with the world.
And there's stimulation control which is controlling incoming stimulations. And so it's the
combination of these two types of control that is really important to give employees. And so it's
not about going back private [00:05:00.0] offices it's really about providing those choices for
employees to have in front of them.

[00:05:05.43] Yeah kind of a range of places where people can choose where to work based
on what they have to do during the day. Absolutely. So that feels connected to what we found
in our recent well-being in the workplace. Study that we just did in 17 countries around the
world and we saw when we were analyzing the data that there was a distinct correlation
between engagement factors [00:05:30.0] and satisfaction with the workplace and within that
satisfaction of the workplace privacy was a really important component of that. So I'm just
curious what do you think about this relationship between engagement and privacy.

[00:05:44.56] Well we know when people are trying to get something done at work and they
can't find the time or the space to support their activity that they need to do that their stress
can go up and this can impact their cognitive and emotional well-being at [00:06:00.0] work.
And we know that there's a strong link from our research between wellbeing and engagement.
And so if they're stressed out if they're distracted and disrupted by things around them and
they can't get their work done that's going to impact their wellbeing and negatively impact their
engagement and productivity.

[00:06:19.6] So being able to have choices of the kinds of different spaces where people could
work is going to be an important part of achieving that well-being.

[00:06:28.36] Yeah having a lot of choices [00:06:30.0] for different types of places that they
can go based on what they need to get done in the moment is very important.

[00:06:37.51] This research is really fascinating. So thanks for taking some time to talk to us
about this privacy crisis in the workplace today.

[00:06:45.58] Yeah. You're very welcome and thanks for having me. That was still cases Chris
Condon speaking with Donna Flynn vice president of workspace futures. For more on this
topic. Pick up 360 magazine. Or visit 360 desk to. Dot com.