Case Study:

Agitated by Agile Seating

Introduction

With new employees joining the team every week and a stronger need for collaboration within and across teams, the Hooli Cloud Product Marketing team explored a number of options to adjust workplace seating. After planning behind the scenes, the Hooli workspace planning team sent a memo announcing a new agile seating setup.

Just two weeks later, eating areas in the workspace shifted from assigned to fully agile seating.

Symptoms

Since the transition, the workspace planning team has had growing concern that this abrupt change has negatively impacted culture. Conversations and observations on the floor have indicated dissatisfaction and many employees felt agitated by the shift.

Diagnosis

Given that this shift was a significant change for employee workflow, getting employee buy-in was necessary to gain momentum and make the shift seen more positively.

Communication about agile seating began with an email from the workplace planning team stating what would be changing, with scheduled changes planned just two weeks after the email date and not many opportunities for feedback. While the office managers promised to meet with each squad pod to understand “what works,” these meetings never came into fruition.

Solution

Seems like it is time to call Time Out on this Agile Seating Train. Relinquish some control to employees by providing a total open slate and facilitate the team to design a solution for their work space.  Relinquishing control would mean freeing the team from the boundaries of designing within agile seating framework.