You might not appreciate the impact the built environment or a particular place has on you, until you no longer work there. You might not be aware of what type of physical work environment works best for you. Or assume that your place of work is not really significant, and you can perform at your best anywhere. But context and environment matters. All work happens in a physical environment, a place. Understanding both the physical impact of your place of work and your attitude toward it can improve your wellbeing, opportunities for flow, and increase your productivity and satisfaction.
As humans, we have fundamental needs for comfort; first, for physical comfort and then functional and psychological comfort. From years of experience delivering training programs, it doesn’t matter how great the training was if the room was too hot, too cold or the catering inedible, complaints were plentiful and the experience suboptimal. Additionally, as humans we attach meaning to a place, based on our own interpretation, and therefore a person’s attitude toward the physical environment in which they work has an impact on their thoughts, emotions and intentions.
A colleague of mine, spent over 4 years working at the Sydney Opera House. When she joined, her manager told her that in most organisations………
