Work-Enabled Places
In the mid-2010’s I co-authored an essay with my colleagues Liz Burow and Hannah Beveridge, which was published as a chapter in the book Creating the Productive Workplace (2nd Edition). Back then we reflected on the growing “modularization” of work — the fragmenting of work, teams, and spaces into increasingly smaller and dispersed units and durations. Like many work-scape changes in the past generation, we point to changes in information and communication technologies that enable the decoupling of work from fixed time and place. We were writing for readers in the field of architecture, so our essay focused on new participative methods for engaging users in the planning and design process in order to gain new perspectives on their needs. This was pre-pandemic and, thus, before the more widespread shift toward flexible work outside of the office. But the reality was that work was happening outside of the office far more frequently than we felt organizational leaders were willing to recognize.
To guide readers in thinking more strategically about how their workplaces impact users in a broader context, we introduced the term “work-enabled places” to describe the landscape of spaces and places beyond the office that regularly support knowledge workers in their everyday professional routines. Through this essay, I wanted to revisit the concept of work-enabled places and reflect on what it means in today’s post-pandemic world of work. Technology enables work to happen from almost anywhere, and many places have adapted their layouts and offerings to accommodate laptop-carrying workers. But as I’ll argue, layouts and design affordances aren’t sufficient for characterizing work-enabled places. Work-enabled places embody a shift in social and organizational norms that regulate and legitimize flexible work behaviors. Work-enabled places illustrate how space, people, and business simultaneously adapt to change for mutual benefit.
You don’t have to look far to find examples of work-enabled places. Coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, fitness centers, airport lounges, and many public libraries have been attracting laptop users for many years. In the years before ubiquitous WiFi, it took some ingenuity to camp out and work from places like these, but in recent years the operators of these spaces have been more intentional in orienting their layouts and services to accommodate a range of users, including mobile knowledge workers. As the quality of knowledge work experience in these places has improved, operators of traditional offices have taken note. Today we hear the term “flight to quality” to describe how the corporate real estate market is experiencing demand for amenity-rich office buildings, even as many other corners of the market are still in a pandemic-triggered downturn. Companies like General Motors, Cambridge Associates, and Belkin are downsizing their offices but moving into notably higher end and higher quality spaces. And as organizations like Adobe are committing to flexible work, they want to make their offices destinations for important moments that matter, even as their workers work from home or other places within their normal routines. We can thank the wider ecosystem of work-enabled places for helping raise the bar on the quality of offices and for reshaping social norms that impact the experience of work.
The remainder of this essay is structured as follows. First, I will define a “work-enabled place” and contrast it with the more traditional concept of an office workplace. I will spotlight the social changes that signify work-enabled places and what makes them successful. Second, I will outline why work-enabled places matter — to individuals who use them and to those who operate them. I will discuss how the end user benefits go beyond practicality by how they help people navigate the complexities of being a modern day professional. I will conclude by offering an unconventional direction for thinking beyond work-enabled places.
What is a work-enabled place
Work-enabled places are places that incorporate affordances for knowledge work (chairs, tables, WiFi access, power outlets, and zone-activity delineation) alongside a mix of community, consumption, leisure, and/or hospitality uses. They are places not solely designed for doing knowledge work; they are designed with other primary uses in mind. But by enabling work and by encouraging the presence of knowledge workers in a mixed-use setting, they cultivate a certain vibe whereby knowledge work complements the other activities in the space. Coffee shops are a common example. They are hospitable spaces that are intended for consumption (buying and consuming beverages and food; or buying merchandise), leisure (taking a break), and community (gathering with others). They also attract workers who bring their laptops to work and linger. The presence of lingering workers increases the likelihood that they will spend more in the store, and it also increases the likelihood of convivial sociability to reinforce the community atmosphere. Lounges operated by airlines that are located in major airports are another example. Newer airport lounges are designed to support business travelers who need places where they can work while they’re on the go. But they serve as more than airport coworking spaces. They also cater to leisure travelers or people who simply want a break from the travel routine by offering food, beverages, and, in some cases, wellness services. Other examples of work-enabled places include certain fitness centers that include cafes and work lounges that cater to workers. There are coffee shops in banks and retail stores that encourage people to linger and work. There are also platforms like WorkChew that help activate restaurants during non-core serving hours by catering to workers while providing incentives on food and drink purchases.
It’s also worth considering coworking spaces in this context. They are more than just work-enabled places; they are workspaces above and beyond anything else. However, like other work-enabled places, they are consumer-oriented. In a traditional way of working, a person gets a job, and the company provides them with a desk at an office. Coworking took something that was once a given and made it into a consumer-facing product — initially for independent and/or freelance workers. Today, large businesses are increasingly buyers of the coworking product, but many coworking spaces continue to serve independent workers who spend their own money to access workspace.
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Coworking spaces often blend the various elements described above — community, leisure, hospitality — with affordances for work. I have written extensively about coworking spaces over the years. One of the points I have repeated in many of these writings is that coworking isn’t a spatial typology — it is a way of working and a disruption to the traditional leasing model of workspace. If you compared the layouts of various coworking spaces with many contemporary offices, they would look very similar. Here I make a similar point about other work-enabled places. It’s less about the spatial typology and more about the social norms that enable certain behaviors to co-exist with one another. For example, fitness centers are increasingly adding coworking spaces in order to generate additional revenue from members. Offices incorporate fitness centers as amenities, and fitness centers incorporate offices as amenities. Or consider the more recent trend of blending travel with flexible work and the growing prevalence of tourist destinations accommodating remote workers. Coworking spaces in popular travel destinations are enabling people to blend work and leisure thanks to the normalization and legitimization of flexible work models. Of course, corporate retreats and offsites already blended travel, leisure, and work. The difference now is the agency afforded to individuals to organize their own preferred spatial routines of work. Each of these various spatial typologies are not new, but the social acceptance of blending work, leisure, wellness, and consumption is increasingly accepted.
Why they matter
Work-enabled places play an important role for many people, including the sizable segment of the workforce that works from home, works under some flexible work arrangement, and/or is self-employed. According to the latest figures released in June 2024 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), over 22% of the total workforce works from home, which represents an increase from 19% a year earlier. According to a 2022 survey conducted by McKinsey and Ipsos, 58% of surveyed workers have the ability to work from home all or part of the work week. Also according to the BLS, just over 10% of the American workforce is self-employed. People desire the ability to have flexibility in terms of how they work. The McKinsey/Ipsos survey reports that having a flexible work arrangement is the third most significant motivator for why people choose to look for a new job (trailing behind greater pay and better career opportunities). Regardless of role, people want variation in terms of where they work. In 2022 I conducted a study in collaboration with the design firm Pophouse, which surveyed 750 knowledge workers across the United States. We asked respondents their preferred work location, assuming they had complete flexibility in structuring their work schedules. Just over half (54%) of respondents would prefer to work from an office; while 26% would prefer to work from home, and 20% would prefer to work from someplace else. The “someplace else” options include a mix of work-enabled places such as coffee shops and libraries. Looking across these various statistics, we know that a sizable proportion of the American workforce has flexibility to choose how they work and from they work. While working from home or an office still matters to a lot of people, work happens in a variety of spaces, sometimes out of necessity. This variety helps people integrate their work within the rhythm of other life activities.
Taking a step back and reflecting on this widespread flexibility that defines modern knowledge work, we see a great deal of fluidity and uncertainty in the economy. People change jobs, work multiple jobs, try out different career paths, and even construct a living from multiple projects and endeavors. Regardless of what people do, various data sources suggest that fewer people are doing their work predominantly from traditional offices. The pandemic normalized flexible work arrangements that were once limited to a narrower segment of the workforce.
This flexibility comes with some drawbacks. One drawback is the erosion of boundaries between professional and personal aspects of our lives. Managing these boundaries can be hard to do if everything happens at home. Many stories in the media in the spring and summer of 2020 when the pandemic was raging spotlighted this issue. Many families juggled work, school, child care, elder care, and most other aspects of life at home. Social ties become frayed when people don’t have time to withdraw from even those with whom they are closest in order to restore and rejuvenate. In the subsequent years, life has returned to some form of pre-pandemic “normal” for a lot of people, but certain things have changed. Many people are not willing to yield the flexibility they gained during the pandemic years. This is because they recognized the long-term benefits of having the ability to structure their lives to accommodate professional and personal priorities in ways that worked best for them. Today it is easier to manage boundaries and maintain flexibility thanks to the ecosystem of places that support people whether they need to get out of the house in order to be more productive in their work or to combine work with leisure and/or other everyday activities.
Work-enabled places also play an important symbolic role for some people. For the segment of the workforce that is truly independent — that is, without an affiliation to a formal organization and its workplace — work-enabled places play a key role in helping those feel connected to something that evokes their professional identities. A research study by Gianpiero Petriglieri, Sue Ashford, and Amy Wrzesniewski investigated the lives and routines of independent workers to understand how they navigated the ambiguities of their professional identities when they lacked formal affiliations to defined professions and specific organizations. To make their work feel less precarious, the authors found that independent workers “cultivated connections to routines, places, people, and purpose — that helped them manage [emotional] tensions and sustain their productivity.” Independent workers cultivate connections to physical spaces that put them in a psychological and social mindset to be productive at work. Later in their paper, they write, “most participants described having a deep bond to specific workspaces that confined and evoked their working self” — helping them invest emotional energy into their work.
The quality of a space can greatly affect how one feels about their work, and it can affect their productivity. At a minimum, in order to be a work-enabled place, the setting needs to fulfill some practical needs for workers. However, the research study cited above suggests how work-enabled places do more than fulfill a practical need. To a certain segment of the workforce, the real benefit they provide is anchorage to something that evokes their professional selves. For a long time, “going to the office” provided people with a meaningful routine that separated work from other aspects of their lives, and it provided many people with a professional identity and tangible symbols of their professional lives. With this separation disappearing in the face of greater flexibility, other places are fulfilling a much-needed role in peoples’ routines that help them feel connected to their professional selves.
Food for thought
Rather than end this essay with a list of take-aways or action items, I’d rather conclude by offering a counter-point and provoking some new directions for dialogue. There are many benefits to work-enabled places, but perhaps the concept has gone as far as it needs to — for now. Americans are obsessed with work, and there are buzzwords and phrases like “quiet quitting” and “working your wage” that reflect this broader pushback against a “workism” culture. Maybe it’s time for our built environment to reflect this too. Let’s assume we have enough places and spatial typologies for work — practical needs for doing productive work, finding meaning through our work, and balancing work with non-work activities have been met. So what’s missing? I would argue we need more places that bring people together to strengthen our sociability. Headlines show that individuals are lonely, communities feel polarized, and basic social skills have atrophied. The concept of work-enabled places illustrates the comfort people feel in doing things in the presence of others by combining everyday life activities in experiential settings. Maybe the need is for more “socially-enabled places” or “community-first places” or “anti-loneliness places.” I would call on designers to radically imagine new possibilities for prosocial spaces and experiences that not only help us manage the boundaries across our life activities, but also bridge divides among each other.
