Herman Miller and the Workplace Intelligence Unit

The Workplace Intelligence Unit (WIU) was an idea hatched by us with the then UK MD Jeremy Hocking and his Marketing Director Mark Catchlove at Herman Miller. I met Mark at an event at Cambridge University back in 2002. Herman Miller were then and still are a global brand much loved by the design community and purveyors of the world’s best office furniture solutions (in our opinion, anyway!). They wanted to form closer strategic relationships with occupiers, the firms who occupy large office buildings, all over the world. To do that, they needed to understand the occupiers’ strategic needs and challenges more deeply so that Herman Miller could support clients in delivering their workplace strategies.

We set up the WIU as an informal joint venture to conduct research into the workplace arena and to develop thought leadership content as stimuli for informed discussions with their clients. We would share our thinking in client seminars and see where the conversations moved to afterwards. The relationship between us worked brilliantly, and Herman Miller remains a client and Jeremy a good friend today. Jeremy left the UK to lead their operations in Asia Pacific and we undertook some interesting assignments for them over there in Australia, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Jeremy later spent time as Head of Strategy in their Grand Rapids US headquarters and has only recently returned to the UK as President of Herman Miller International.

Back in 2002, agile or flexible working was a relatively new concept and occupiers everywhere were wondering how to capitalise on the phenomena, which helped them manage their office footprints more efficiently as well as to support the evolving needs of their employees, and young employees in particular. For decades offices were organised along factory lines, very linear, private offices increasing in size relative to rank, wires dictating the location of furniture solutions. Poor distribution of natural lighting because Directors’ offices tended to sit around the perimeter of office floorplans stealing light from those working in the informal settings in the centre of the footprint. Flexible working models could potentially help cultures become more open and less siloed but back then clients were concerned about the implications for employee effectiveness and productivity and sought to understand the dynamics of the development of culture in their businesses.

Our research work opened up a whole new world for us, very consistent with our vision of helping clients grow the strength of their value-driving intangible assets – human, relationship and brand capital, all impacted by workplace dynamics. We developed an understanding of social capital in organisations, what drives it and how leaders can develop strategies to strengthen it. We have recently been working with a new client, WeWork, to help them measure and manage the development of the social capital in their offices across London. We also developed a methodology in 2004 to help clients to understand how their offices communicate their corporate brand and how to better manage that communication. We are in the midst of such an exercise with Turner Broadcasting right now.