Why IKEA’s employees love coming to the office, with Momo Pavlovic

What’s a better life? What’s a better office? Those two questions are inherently connected. Your workspace’s biggest challenge is to stay relevant, and it’s impossible to do so without obsessively making being in the physical workspace an incredible life experience. This is IKEA’s workspace development philosophy and in this episode, Momo Pavlovic shares how IKEA brings it to life through an infinitely iterative process. 

Developing an incredible workspace is work that is never finished. Tune in to discover how IKEA does it. 

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What we discussed
(00:24) Developing Ikea workspaces
(08:12) How the pandemic changed workspace planning 
(13:09) Workspaces vs. team behaviour: what’s the connection?
(16:39) Infinitely changing IKEA workspaces  
(18:04) Feeling forced to be in the office (BIG MISTAKE) 
(23:31)Creating a destination office  
(31:04) IKEA’s 3-part workspace plan 
(33:17) “Why do I have to go in 4x/week, when they come in 2x/week?”
(41:55) Momo’s question to you (about meetings)

3 things you can learn from how IKEA manages its workspaces: 

1. Ask the question “how do we make this a great experience?” rather than “how do we get more people in the office?”
2. Prepare your workspace to support the new behaviours you want your team to embody. But, before you can do that you must concretely understand what the new behaviors you need really are. 
3. It’s important for team members to not feel like they’re forced to be in the office. How many days people spend in the physical office should be a team mandate, not a rule enforced by executives. 

Links 

Momo Pavlovic is the Workplace Support Leader at Ingka Services which is the force behind IKEA’s holistic and in-demand workspaces. 

Connect with Momo Pavlovic: LinkedIn 

Connect with Kursty Groves: LinkedIn | Twitter | Ask a question or pitch an idea: kursty@shapeworklife.com