ABSTRACT
As the world changes around us, the way business is carried out also changes. The last 30 years have seen rapid incremental operational and behavioural change in the way we work facilitated by the physical design of the workplace.
We recognise that workplace change has occurred in the modern era from the early innovators such as Eames in the 1940s and the German ‘Burolandschaft’ in the 1960s. The primary change has been from the static to the dynamic workplace in which we can work apart but still together. The case study of Mirvac is an exemplar which illustrates a change from ‘employer led’ to ‘employee driven’, resulting in a partnership between employer and employee.
Mirvac’s experience in workplace change as early adopters is described from static to agile to adaptive. Making significant changes from cellular to open plan in the 1990s and then two major workplace pilots resulting in today’s adaptive workplace.
A key lesson is that workplace change is driven firstly by people engagement, then by quantitative and qualitative data relating to both behaviour and operation. This continual iterative change has propelled Mirvac’s high-performance workplace culture and rapid incremental change in the way they work, promoted and facilitated by the design of the workplace.
