Transforming Work with Sophie Wade 155: Sara Escobar & Corinne Murray - Intentional Design for Modern Work/Place Experiences
Corinne Murray, Director of Global Workplace Experience Strategy at American Express, and Sara Escobar, Founder of Wielding Workplace, are co-authors of newly-released 'WORK then PLACE'. Corinne and Sara draw on rich backgrounds from Gensler, WeWork, Hulu, and Netflix to share insights on culture, workplace experience, and productivity. They explain the need for intentional work design driven by employee experience—digital, physical, and experiential—and how human-centric, flexible approaches empower performance in the distributed modern work ecosystem.
TAKEAWAYS
[01:50] Sara starts out in TV production and then moves to Hulu.
[03:01] Joining Hulu as a startup, Sara chooses to develop their workplace experiences.
[04:10] Corinne's time at CBRE, Amex, and Gensler, inform her strategic research at WeWork.
[05:23] Strong cultures at Hulu and Netflix differ but are both developed with intentional design.
[06:12] American Express builds its strong culture based on benefits resulting in long-tenure norms.
[07:02] Organizations are not prepared for formal hybrid models before 2020.
[07:56] Employees pushed experience and flexibility into focus post-COVID.
[09:20] Architects' and Real Estate's periodic interventions limit impact on ongoing work design.
[10:45] Flexibility jumped to a top employee after their pandemic experiences.
[11:36] Empathy influenced leaders to formalize more balanced, hybrid work options.
[12:45] Executives reacted emotionally to shifting work models, resisting a major overhaul.
[14:30] Mandates fail to justify office returns since workplace experience is not just physical.
[15:44] Corinne and Sara connect in 2021 amid return-to-office debates.
[17:08] Sara launches a consultancy to inform and facilitate new workplace strategies.
[17:54] Sara reaches out to Corinne to co-author a book, sharing practical strategy frameworks.
[20:05] Corinne shifts focus from productivity to effectiveness.
[22:56] To 'fix' productivity, it must be shared across teams, not owned by workplace.
[24:56] Managers must hold accountability and measure output, not observe activity.
[26:02] HR, IT, and workplace must partner to enable teams' effective outcomes.
[27:21] Physical-first remits clash with flexible work goals.
[28:36] Employees now better understand what makes work function well.
[30:17] Team agreements are key to performance in modern work environments.
[30:48] Trust grows from enablement, not perks or parties.
[33:27] Change must be incremental to facilitate adoption and avoid burnout.
[37:10] Start with high-impact, low-effort changes for users.
[39:40] Strategy must flex for global, regional, and role differences.
[41:03] 'Standards' can allow interpretation, like principles, to enable adaptability.
[41:50] The "Daisy" model supports incremental workplace changes.
[42:59] Corinne highlights knowledge work – its growth, volatility and success factors.
[47:01] Sara highlights external research, such as parenting models, that offer workplace insights.
[48:30] WORK then PLACE encourages humans to focus on what technology cannot replace.
[49:15] Start by auditing what works to incorporate rather than rebuilding from scratch.
[51:25] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To shift workplace experiences and outcomes, find an executive sponsor, then clarify why and how the change should happen, and how to measure progress.
RESOURCES
QUOTES
"The companies that I've worked with where the culture has been truly wonderful and truly driven forward the company's mission are where that culture is intentional." — Sara Escobar
"We are workplace people. We do believe in the value of the physical place. But it's not the catchall for everything." — Corinne Murray
"The workplace environment is truly physical, digital, and experiential." — Sara Escobar
"Productivity is the responsibility of everyone from the individual to the executives to workplace to HR to IT." — Sara Escobar
"We need to do this in a way that doesn't feel threatening and doesn't feel like an extra burden." — Corinne Murray
"If you think about, you know, old factory lines, you watched the widgets being produced. That is what we've still fallen into in knowledge work. But you can't watch knowledge work get done." — Sara Escobar
"We've identified things that are fundamentally harmful to the ability of knowledge work succeeding. And if knowledge work isn't succeeding, that means the humans doing the knowledge work aren't succeeding" — Corinne Murray