JLL has launched a workplace design service that assesses how physical space affects team performance.
Developed by its JLL Design business with Thompson Harrison, an organisational and leadership development consultancy, Social-Spatial Design uses behavioural science and evolutionary psychology to inform decisions about workplace layout, acoustics, adjacencies, and spatial settings.
Moving the emphasis away from desks, occupancy, and space utilisation, the service examines how teams focus, collaborate, learn, move through the workplace, and make decisions.
“Workplaces have traditionally been designed around desks, policies or organisational structures, rather than around how teams actually function,” said Nicasio Gutierrez, Project and Development Services Global Head of JLL Design.
“Social-Spatial Design brings behavioural science into the heart of design, allowing organisations to invest with greater confidence in spaces that genuinely support team performance.”
Team behaviour informs workplace design
Social-Spatial Design is based on the premise that work patterns, technology, and organisational models may change, even as many aspects of human cognition, social behaviour, and team dynamics remain relatively constant.
JLL Design specialists begin by observing how teams work. They assess patterns of concentration, collaboration, movement, and social interaction, using proprietary diagnostic tools to identify both performance gaps and existing strengths.
The findings are then converted into design priorities. These may determine where teams are located, how different functions relate to one another, what types of work settings are provided, and how sound is managed.
Proposed changes can first be tested through limited trials before being introduced more widely across an organisation’s property portfolio.
The approach treats the team, rather than the individual employee, as the main unit of workplace performance. According to Tracey Camilleri, co-founder of Thompson Harrison with Samantha Rockey, organisations frequently invest in individual talent without giving comparable attention to the conditions in which teams operate.
“By socially ‘tuning’ workspaces, designing with the science of human biology, chemistry and physics in mind, organisations can optimise performance and human thriving,” Camilleri said.
Measuring more than workplace occupancy
JLL intends the service to assess workplace investment against performance indicators beyond space efficiency and utilisation.
The methodology considers collaboration effectiveness, focus and concentration, learning and knowledge sharing, employee belonging and engagement, and overall team performance. These factors are translated into weighted scores to identify where physical conditions may be supporting or impeding work.
JLL said changes in employees’ perceptions of their workplace can typically be detected within one to three months. Behavioural adaptation may take between three and six months, while effects on retention and performance are expected to take between 12 and 24 months.
The launch comes as employers continue to refine long-term hybrid working arrangements while scrutinising the cost and purpose of office space.
JLL extends its workplace science research
Social-Spatial Design expands JLL’s research into the relationship between the built environment and human performance. While earlier work examined individual cognition and brain health, the new service concentrates on the team level.
JLL is also exploring the use of electroencephalography, or EEG, to study how physical surroundings affect focus, stress, and collaboration. The wider research involves the International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign, an initiative of University College London and Research Institutes of Sweden.
UCL and RISE are developing studies that recreate work tasks in mock office environments, where variables including lighting, sound, and layout can be controlled. The research is intended to improve understanding of how people respond to different workplace conditions.
“Our goal is to eliminate guesswork and give business leaders actionable intelligence about how to build workplaces where people can do their best work,” Kantor said.