In order to build the workplace of tomorrow, we have to dismantle the hierarchies of today and reevaluate ideas of power, control, and productivity. In this wide-ranging conversation, Helen Job (Insights Director at SPACE10) and Shanu Walpita (Course Leader at London College of Fashion and Founder of Emergence of Tomorrow) discuss the cultural shifts that are behind our changing attitudes to work, the radical adjustments in mindset that brands and businesses need to adopt in order to respond to those changing attitudes, and the values that will shape the workplace of the future.

Helen Job

Any organisation that wants to feel like it’s forward thinking or self-aware has got to be questioning how things function, and how they are changing. I have been thinking about the move away from hierarchical business structures, towards this idea of working more collectively, and questioning why this shift is happening, and why it is happening now.  And my first thought is the reason that this is happening is the same reason that any trend direction is happening. And it’s because the world is in crisis. We’ve got a cost-of-living crisis, we’ve got an environmental crisis, we’ve got human rights crises, we’ve got the safety of women crisis – all sorts of things that are going on all at once. And I think when the world is changing at that level, it is going to massively impact the way we work, because work is such a huge part of the world that we live in.

Shanu Walpita

Absolutely. There is a term for it, it’s called permacrisis, where basically we’re in this cycle of permanent crises – multiple. We are in this moment where everything feels very heavy, and it feels like a catalyst zone. The world feels like it is in flux, and all of these permacrises will impact the way we operate in this world. When we are in these moments of crisis, I feel like new forms of kinship develop in response to that. Also, coming out of COVID, we started suddenly seeing more of these collectives, and this collective mindset. And while it wasn’t new, it became much more emphasised or amplified.

H

I think that point you’re making is really interesting because it’s not like the idea of non-hierarchical structures is new. The whole idea of living in communes, and community ownership is something that has happened many times throughout history, whenever there is a need for enhanced cooperation or enhanced connection. And I think you’re right, we saw that need so intensely both during and post pandemic. I find it interesting when people talk about these ideas as if they are something completely fresh.

S

You’re so right, it’s not a new thing but it feels like it’s taken a different turn right now. And I think this desire for things to be less hierarchical is related to this post-trust moment as well. Hierarchies feel almost dangerous, or they are being looked at with a sense of suspicion. There is a desire to be around businesses that we trust, we want to have systems that feel trustworthy. A trust barometer report recently came out, and – generally speaking – trust is massively down. Hierarchies just don’t feel as relevant anymore, especially for young people.

H

The trust barometer from Edelman, which is what I think you’re referring to, found that trust in traditional institutions is very low. And if I remember correctly, trust in brands was found to be higher than trust in institutions. But obviously there is low trust in the government, the press, and traditional institutions. I think there is a desire for accountability and transparency, which is coming in all different aspects, in production cycles and everything that we buy and engage with. There is also this massive desire to be part of decision making. And I think you’re right, with students or younger generations, they expect to be part of the conversation and part of the decision. The idea that somehow one group of people hold power, and they allow access to power or decision making just doesn’t hold water with a lot of younger generations. The idea of longevity of service, or the age of the expert, being the key to power seems really outdated now.

S

There is also a strong sense of co-creation happening across all sectors, creative, and non creative. And I can see that. Now that I have stepped into this new managerial role at the London College of Fashion, I have been building a strategy around what comes next in the course, and in looking at feedback from previous years, the students felt that there wasn’t sufficient space for them to say things. I think employees and employers have a very similar issue to be looking at, in making sure voices are heard, especially voices that may not necessarily have a space to be heard otherwise, culturally or socially.

H

In hierarchical structures you were kind of working up a ladder of success. And the traditional model of attainment, or the traditional model of success doesn’t exist anymore. We’ve moved into a different mindset for multiple reasons. Gen Z and Millennials are both going to earn less than their parents. The traditional trajectory of going to university, getting a great job, getting a house, getting a bigger house – that just doesn’t exist anymore. So our idea of compensation is changing, people aren’t just looking for a bigger salary and a higher job title – moving up in a hierarchy might not even be desirable anymore. Success might be more holistic, like actually liking the work that you do, or that you have the free time that you want. At SPACE10 we just instigated a new menstrual and menopausal policy, the first company in Denmark to do that. And we also have a motto that ‘family comes first’, so that if you need to take time off for your kid, or for someone you care for, we are flexible around that.

S

Completely. And on top of that there is a real desire to align values. We are of course seeing that so much in consumer behaviour, and that has been tracked for quite a while, but what is interesting now is how that translates into work. The work ethos, this idea of aligning with your values, looking for jobs that feel purposeful, and that align with the way you want to live. Post pandemic there was this whole surge of people leaving their jobs, and then the quiet quitting phenomenon. This again is linked to this bigger notion of value systems and ecosystems.

H

And I think you said this idea of user-generated content, or people having a say in the brands and how brands operate, or people wanting to feel that there’s a community of the brand that they’re part of, that’s not new. But I think moving into the work space, this idea that you have some kind of role in the governance of the place that you work, or even some level of ownership, is becoming more important. I’m not saying that every organisation has to become a cooperative, but I feel like there is a fundamental desire for your voice to be heard, that your workplace feels safe because your values are respected, with inclusivity and accessibility, and the language that is being used to communicate. There is a structural change that’s needed.

S

The word that I keep coming back to is ecosystems. Not just planetary ecosystems, but work ecosystems, community ecosystems, how everything is connected. When you work for bigger companies, where it is very hierarchical, you end up in your silos. You have no idea what other people are working on or thinking about. What I have noticed more and more is that there is a move to cross collaboration, or at least a conversation where people want to understand the ecosystem and how everyone is working together. Having that kind of combined vision really makes a difference, because you can see that everyone is aligned on a similar value or manifesto. That can have a huge impact on the way we work together, or how we could potentially be working together ongoing.

H

That brings us onto the next two questions – what does a horizontal community-led organisation look like? And how does a business with a well-established hierarchy begin to transform itself into one?

S

It’s such a good question. The word squad comes to mind, so maybe it’s also about language. We already have such hierarchical language embedded into the way that we work, into the systems that we work in. I know that you folks at SPACE10 have actually done something quite revolutionary, where you’ve stripped titles, right?

H

Yeah. SPACE10 is an innovation lab, and we try to make sure that as a business we are reflecting the changing world that we’re working in, and the advice that we are giving. We did a big piece of work around moving away from more traditional job titles to the idea of highlighting skills. Instead of having all these different titles, we have opted for this idea of giving people two words that reflect the skills they bring to work. So design and strategy, for example, or creative and research. The hope being that it makes the skills offer clearer to us internally, and also externally, to our collaborators. I think there’s a lot to be said for experimentation by doing, say, a lab or something smaller – testing it out in one bit of the company and seeing if it works before trying to roll it out. What it comes down to is the willingness of the leadership to share decision-making. The new core workplace skills are humility, a bit of resilience, and a bit of patience, but that’s the question any big organisation needs to ask itself – are you willing to share decision-making?

S

As you say, it is about stepping back and testing things in labs or squads, and seeing if it does work. At this point, it is about experimenting, and taking account of what is happening externally around us. There is this need for community, this need for empathy, a need for aligned values – how do we embed that into our workplaces and spaces? How do we make them feel safe and horizontal? And as you say, are you actually willing to let people have that? And if you aren’t, there is a systemic issue that needs to be dealt with. It could be as simple as coming up with a collective manifesto, building that system up together. It can’t come from high up, it has to be something that is embedded holistically across the business.

H

There needs to be a huge investment, and I don’t mean a financial investment, but a time and empathy investment in doing this. Because it is a big change in infrastructure. And to do it properly you need to set the time aside. I have been doing some work with Rival Strategy recently, a brilliant agency in London, and we were talking about whether you could shift the focus to the output rather than the internal team. How can you produce a piece of work that really fits all of your brand criteria, fulfils your goals as a brand, in such a way that it can be replicated by other people. You need a lower level of control and ownership over something if you know quite strongly what the brand values are.

S

Yeah, like the idea of a collective manifesto that we were talking about earlier. You know collectively what you are working on, but you also have your mini areas of focus that are going to be developed by individual squads and pieced together again. Something I was thinking about is the physical spaces that we were working in, and how they are also endemic of hierarchies. So another question is how can we also consider the physical space to make it feel more like a collective space. According to a PwC study, 87% of us employees believe that the physical office is relevant in building relationships. So it’s quite a massive percentage. I think there are ways to use the physical space to kind of embolden a sense of community, while still being quite structured.

H

Maybe this brings us back to this idea of accountability, right? If you feel that you have more of a share in the success of something, you have shared responsibility for that thing, which is a more active position, you feel more actively engaged.

S

Absolutely, and especially if you are working in a close-knit team who are relying on you to do things in order for a project to be fulfilled, or to be amazing. So there is also that kind of peer-to-peer accountability, and a lot of young people respond really well to peer-to-peer working groups. If you are just in a room doing your own thing, head down, and you’ve got your KPIs to achieve or whatever, I think you can lose your energy for it. Whereas if you are partnered with other people, and there is a sense of collective peer-to-peer work, that can be really effective in achieving goals.

H

And also there is a need to recognise that not everybody likes to work in the same way. When we started our new research and design team my partner in crime, Alison Rowe at SPACE10, instigated a session on Miro about how people like to work, when they like to focus, when they like to have meetings and how they like to receive feedback. I think there’s two things: I think people want to be actively involved in decision making, but I think as an employer, you also need to think about care.

S

Wellness is such an important topic for us to be considering when it comes to workplaces. Right now, in the permacrisis, mental health is massively affected by what is happening around us. Everyone has complex things happening outside of work, and that is part of the peer-to-peer collective mindset, wellness has to be embedded into it.

H

There is a misconception around wellness, it’s like this multibillion-dollar industry. There is this idea that you can cover off wellness by giving your team an app, or giving them shiatsu at their desk while they are sitting there for eight hours a day until they get shaky. But wellness is really about understanding what people need, and providing support for different ways of working that can fulfil those needs. Wellness needs to be a lot more holistic so that people feel they are supported at work and want to be part of your organisation.

S

Yeah, I think more than anything in talking about horizontal workplaces, we are actually talking about empathic workplaces. Giving space for people to be people, and not just workers, or numbers, or ways to hit a KPI.

H

There is this stat I read recently, that the number one reason people leave their jobs is that they feel undervalued. It’s not about pay, that is actually quite far down the list. There is a whole lot of work that needs to be done in reimagining the work space and how people feel valued beyond financial compensation.

We can’t have this conversation without talking a little bit about Web3, something you and I both spend a lot of time thinking about. My understanding is that what happens in Web3 facilitates the sharing of information and power and rights in a way that we didn’t have before. Take for example some of the main ones like Boys Club, a female non binary led DAO [Decentralised Autonomous Organisation], or Krause House, which is a DAO for basketball fans, who came together to have their own NBA team. I think people get scared by the word Web3 and they think it’s something way more complicated than it is. Whereas I think it’s a facilitator of this decentralisation.

S

The ethos of Web3 is essentially decentralisation. But there are still systems, but they are very nuanced and niche. The most interesting thing about these DAOs is that, yes they are non-hierarchical, but they also sort of seed fund each other. If someone needs support, say monetary support, you’ll see these DAOs sharing and uplifting each other. That’s a new behaviour we haven’t seen before. Web2 is much more individual, and Web3 as it stands feels much more collective. I think that’s been catalysed by the context we are living in, there is a strong need for us to come together, for us to find our voices within these niches and nuances, because we can.

H

100%. Web3 provides this opportunity to make actionable change at scale with strangers, who maybe become your friends, as opposed to your doom scrolling on Twitter or Insta, which are owned by megalith companies like Meta. There are things like Polis or these political DAOs that are launching where you are involved in governance. I think you’re totally right. It’s a response to all the other doom that’s going on. It’s a response to not trusting traditional institutions. It’s a response to not feeling included or safe in spaces, and it’s all interrelated in that way.

S

And it comes back to what we were talking about in terms of how we can move toward those safer spaces for work and more generally. What you said earlier was really poignant, about listening, actually understanding. As an organisation, are you ready to step back, are you ready to reform? Are you excited about developing these non-hierarchies? And thinking about alignment – my advice to any organisation is that you need to have an aligned vision, and you need to work on that together. And if you are thinking about your value system, embedding that empathy, that sense of collective, and that sense of work ecology is just as important as well – even if it is just conceptual at this point while you work out how to make it a reality. This might take time, and it’s going to be a testing ground with failures and wins, but it’s about being open to that. So it’s about allowing your organisation to be agile and flexible, and that agility is actually where the power sits for any business.

H

I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s about investing in infrastructure change, but also about being clear on how much power, as an organisation, you are willing to cede to have an engaged workforce that feel valued and seen. You must be willing to give up some power in order to get that level of investment back from your team.

Helen Job is Head of Research at SPACE10 – the Copenhagen-based research and design lab. She previously headed the foresight teams at Flamingo and WGSN, and prior to that was the director of trends at MTV. A teacher at the University of the Arts London, she conceptualised the Global Trend Forecasting Curriculum for Parsons and Hyper Island and co-founded the insight and strategy labs, The Akin and TCOLab. Helen has spoken at SXSW Interactive and Cannes Lions and was named one of The Drum’s 50 best female speakers in the UK.

Shanu Walpita is the founder of the online discussion space and community think-tank Emergence of Tomorrow. Prior to consulting for agencies, brands and retailers, she was the youth editor at global trend authorities WGSN and Stylesight. Shanu is Course Leader of Creative Direction for Fashion at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.