Hosted by Ryan Anderson, VP of Global Research and Planning at MillerKnoll, About Place explores the evolving role of place in our lives, at work and beyond. Each episode features conversations with thought-leaders, designers, researchers, and more, all of whom bring expertise and understanding about how the places we create can positively impact how we work and live. Visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action for more.
S4, E11: A future for relationship-based planning
Sociologists sounded the alarm on technology’s more negative effects on people and places many decades ago. In season 4’s final episode, we revisit the past to chart a new way forward for the workplace. Listen in to discover how space planning can rebalance our relationship with technology and prioritize human interactions to create workplaces where people want to be.
Host:
linkedin.com/in/ryaningr/
For more About Place, visit:
millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action/about-place-podcast
Connect
S4, E10: Safe to fail
Innovation at work happens when we feel safe to fail, but how can we feel safer with our teammates in an era of distributed work? In this episode, sociological researcher Caitlin Begg and Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson deepen our understanding of psychological safety and discuss how spending more time together as teams can enable smarter risks and unlock innovation.
Guests:
authsocial.com
instagram.com/caityb/
hbs.edu
instagram.com/amycedmondson/
Host:
linkedin.com/in/ryaning
S4, E9: From occupancy to outcomes
This season, we've tapped into the ways organizations are innovating to support new ways of working and people coming back to the office. For this episode, we turn to Sara Klinges, Head of Real Estate and Workplace Effectiveness at Genentech, to find out how social, technological, and place-based strategies can fuel workplace effectiveness long term. Listen in as we discuss the perks of team-based agreements, ways to catalyze workplace effectiveness, and more.
Guest:
Gene.com
Host:
linkedin.
S4, E8: Working toward enticing
Enticing Office, a workplace study authored by environmental psychologist Nigel Oseland in collaboration with MillerKnoll, revealed key factors that attract people to the office, even when they have the option to work from home. Now Nigel joins us for an episode that dives into the topic of making workplaces desirable. Learn insight-driven and sometimes surprising ways designers and organizations can make the office a place where people want to be.
Guest:
https://workplaceunlimited.com
Host:
S4, E7: The impact of aesthetics
As a field that studies the effects of aesthetics on how people think and feel, neuroaesthetics can be a valuable tool for designing workplaces that make everyone feel comfortable and enabled to do their best. In this episode, Joseph White, Director of Design Strategy at MillerKnoll, and Suchi Reddy, Architect and Founder of Reddymade Architecture and Design, cover what you need to know about this emerging field and its impact on the future of workplace design.
Guests:
https://reddymade.design
S4, E6: Learning from innovations in healthcare
The demands of design for healthcare environments can teach us multitudes about creating healthier, more efficient workplaces. For this episode, we’re joined by Michelle Ossmann, PhD, MSN, Director of Research at MillerKnoll, in a conversation on the innovations advancing design for healthcare environments and how to apply them in your next facility project.
For more About Place, visit:
millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action/about-place-podcast
Connect with MillerKnoll:
Instagram: instagram.com/mil
S4, E5: No final design
CBRE’s Workplace360 concept produces vibrant offices for the commercial real estate firm’s global workforce. Listen in as Peter Van Emburgh, Senior VP and Global Head of Real Estate and Karen McCallum, Managing Director of CBRE Design Collective, share the strategy behind Workplace360, how they keep the concept fresh across a global portfolio, and what organizations can learn from their progress.
Guests:
CBRE.com
instagram.com/cbredesigncollective/
For more About Place, visit:
millerknoll.co
S4, E4: Aspiration meets reality
A new mixed-use retail and office space in Bentonville, Arkansas is redefining work and play in the mountain biking capital of the world. Apart from a six-story indoor bike path and art installation, Ledger includes places to shop, gather, work, and move — refreshing notions of what an office building can be. Listen in as architects Christian Callaghan and Haruka Horiuchi dive into a discussion on Ledger’s design and take a deeper look in our article on the Ledger project.
Guests:
callaghanhor
S4, E3: Always innovating
Workplace strategy experts Domino Risch and Kirsten Brown share how companies in Australia are layering workplace hospitality, new technologies, and a “give-it-a-go" attitude to guide workplace innovation and catapult the market into one of the most progressive in the world. And as flexible space outpaces commercial real estate as the new office go-to, they discuss what it takes to integrate authenticity in workplace design.
For more About Place, visit:
millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action/about-pl
S4, E2: Planning for excellence
Designing the perfect operational model gets easier when organizations prioritize their stakeholders in the process. In this episode, Assal Yavari, VP of Global Real Estate and Safety at Workday, shares how rigorous feedback systems help prioritize employees—and drive successful return-to-office rates. We also learn how the team uses “centers of excellence” to nurture talent.
S4, E1: Powered by play
What does workplace planning look like at a global company in the business of play? Timothy Ahrensbach is LEGO Group’s Global Director of Workplace Innovation. Listen in as he shares intuitive models for planning workplaces that are inclusive, productive, and of course, a bit playful. Plus, learn about the developments powering the LEGO Office 2.3 concept.
Season 4 Preview: Let's talk about place
In this season of MillerKnoll’s podcast, we’re deepening our focus on the impact of the workplace on organizational outcomes—and our lives. What new ideas or practices are making the places where we work and live better around the world? How can we all apply them? We get into it in this season of About Place. Start listening.
millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action/about-place-podcast
S3, E11: A last look forward
Two experts from MillerKnoll’s Global Research and Insights team recap last episode’s conversation on the Harkin Institute’s inclusive design, before revealing new insights from our Global Workplace Assessment and examining the current state of work location policies. Next season, we’re reshaping the podcast to examine the future of work, plus our clients’ most pressing near-term needs for supporting new ways of working.
S3, E10: Designing for progress
The road to inclusivity stops for many buildings at ADA compliance, but two architects for The Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement at Drake University are charting a different path. Listen in as they discuss replicable design principles of the institute, which combines sustainability, accessibility, and inclusivity for people with an array of disabilities.
S3, E9: Advocating for inclusion
Thirty years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), there’s one research institute still pushing for more inclusive spaces for all. The Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement at Drake University was created to deliver lasting support for social justice issues such as disability advocacy. Listen in as its founders, Ruth Harkin and former U.S. senator Tom Harkin—who authored the 1990 ADA—revisit the fascinating makings of the ADA and share about the in
S3, E8: Evolving the workplace
What does it take to create workspaces people actually want to be in? Using smart technology as a sandbox, our guests explore how workplaces can forecast employee needs, measure results, and use data to ideate new people-centric solutions for using space. Listen in as Alea Fairchild, Ph.D., Director of the technology policy think-tank The Constantia Institute, and Jeremy Pollack, CEO and co-founder of the workplace experience platform Calven, talk about how we can effectively push the needle on
S3, E7: Back to basics
Office density before the pandemic didn’t provide an ideal workplace experience for anyone. That’s just one of the takeaways from our chat with two experts from the Global Research and Insights team at MillerKnoll. Listen in as Katie Finlayson, our Workplace Strategy Manager, and Bertie Van Wyk, our Insight Programme Manager, touch on employee connection and belonging and unpack the power of purposeful, personalized strategies for supporting employees whether they work remotely, in the office, o
S3, E6: Reimagining cities
For this episode, we welcome two guests from the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS). Carsten Beck is Director of Research and Lovisa Volmarsson is an Advisor and Futurist. Our conversation started with a question about the implications of remote work on urban centers, but wandered into issues of livability, sustainability, economics, and public policy. The discussion generated plenty of ideas about how cities might adapt to become more affordable, regenerative, and desirable places t
S3, E5: Leading toward belonging
Like most weeks this season, we welcome two guests to this episode. However, since both have a knack for looking at issues from multiple angles, it feels like we’re packing in more insights per minute this time. Pallavi Shrivastava is Head of Workplace Consulting, West Asia for global real estate services firm JLL. Mike Petrusky is Director of Podcasts for global worktech company Eptura. He also hosts their Workplace Innovator Podcast and Asset Champion Podcast. Pallavi offers perspective on the
S3, E4: Redesigning work
Our guests for this episode come bearing research from their respective organizations to spark business leaders to think differently about the physical environment. Despina Katsikakis is an Executive Partner and Global Head of Total Workplace for global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. Kevin Delaney is CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and co-founder of Charter, a future-of-work media and research company. They balance eye-opening data with practical advice throughout their conversation wi
S3, E3: Still a work in progress
When the insights come at you as fast as they do in this podcast, sometimes you need a chance to reflect and consider how they apply to your world. So, this season, we’ve invited members of our Global Research and Insights team to join Ryan to discuss the themes that surface every couple of episodes. This week, we welcome Michelle Ossmann, PhD., Director of Healthcare Knowledge and Innovation, and Mark Catchlove, Director of our Global Insight Group. They reflect on themes that stood out for the
S3, E2: Redefining wellbeing
This week’s guests explore workplace wellbeing in both theory and practice. Gethin Nadin is a psychologist and Chief Innovation Officer at Benefex, a UK-based employee experience software company. He also consults with organizations like BT Consumer, where Andrea Kilgour serves as People Director. Together, they challenge listeners to think more strategically about employee wellbeing, from the role of the physical workplace to the link between wellbeing and productivity to the psychological bene
S3, E1: Facilitating connection
To kick off Season 3, host Ryan Anderson welcomes Matthew Boyle, Senior Work Shift Reporter at Bloomberg News, and Annie Dean, VP of Team Anywhere at software development firm Atlassian. The dynamic among the three of them is fast-paced and the insights come one after the other. Listen as Matthew shares takeaways from his reporting on what he calls “the messy present of work,” while Annie adds practical advice for leaders looking to understand the purpose of the office today and build well-conne
Season 3 Preview
Welcome to Season 3! To kick off this season, your host—and our VP of Global Research and Insights—Ryan Anderson offers his thoughts on the state of the workplace today. Get his take on the variables affecting the future of work around the world, how the workplace can better support flexibility (hint: it’s not just through hybrid policies), and why organizations need to do more to address employee wellbeing. We hope you’re looking forward to going even deeper into these themes throughout the sea
Season 2 Wrap-Up
We’ve come to the end of another season, but there’s still time to look back in our season wrap-up. Host Ryan Anderson puts a bow on Season 2 by sharing new data that challenges listeners to shift their focus from returning to the office, and toward a reimagining of the office for this new era of work. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.
S2, E10: The metaverse demystified
As our Digital Marketing Strategy Lead at MillerKnoll, Chris Coleman has been helping Ryan Anderson answer questions from customers wondering whether they should start hosting meetings or other work functions in the metaverse. These questions get asked so often that Ryan invited Chris to join him on the podcast to share a digestible explainer of all things metaverse—or, as Chris prefers to refer to it, Web3. If you’ve ever found yourself lost in conversations about blockchains, NFTs, virtual rea
S2, E9: Workplace strategy for employee experience
This week, we welcome Corinne Murray, founder of Agate Studio. As a leading workplace strategist, Corinne helps organizations think differently about how they approach the creation, management, and evolution of their places of work. In an enlightening conversation, Ryan and Corinne explore the nuanced world of the future of work, touching on several approaches employers can use to evaluate both the built and social work environments to improve employee experience. For more MillerKnoll insights,
S2, E8: How human experience can shape real estate
Disruption has been the theme of Ronen Journo’s 28-year career, so his perspective on this period of rampant experimentation in corporate real estate is particularly prescient. Ronen is Senior Managing Director and European Head of Management Services & Operations at Hines, a privately owned real estate investment, development, and management firm. In this episode, he and Ryan discuss how the pandemic provided an accelerant for challenges that had been on a slow burn for decades, and the need fo
S2, E7: Moving beyond accommodation
Inclusive design is a topic not nearly enough people are talking about. This week’s guests are working to fix that. Jolene De Jong is an Applied Insights + Design Specialist at MillerKnoll and Joseph White is the company’s Director of Design Strategy. They recently collaborated on a white paper for the peer-reviewed CRE Journal. In it—and in this episode—they unpack the need for architects and designers to move beyond accommodation of unique needs and toward a more widespread adoption of the not
S2, E6: The business case for flexible working
Host Ryan Anderson could not wait to share this episode with you. Our guest, Cali Williams Yost, has spent her career helping organizations reimagine not just where, but also how and when their people work to improve performance and well-being. With a mix of infectious enthusiasm and the truth-bomb directness of someone who has been advocating for these shifts for 27 years, Cali makes a strong business case for embracing flexible work and remaking the office into an intentional enabler of a more
S2, E5: Expanding the concept of workplace
On this week’s episode, we chat with Craig Robinson, Chief Growth Officer at flexible workplace provider, Industrious. With more than 20 years of experience in the commercial real estate business, Craig helps organizations to be more innovative in their approach to real estate by expanding their concept of "workplace" and providing greater employee choice while managing costs and risk. Join host Ryan Anderson and Craig as they discuss ways to support optionality, flexibility, and environments th
S2, E4: Fixing what’s broken
Our guest this week is on a mission to convince organizations everywhere to take the double disruption of COVID plus inflation as an opportunity to change for the better. Debbie Lovich is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. She brings her sharp wit and analytical mind to this conversation about the need for leaders to model flexibility, how our reasons for being in the office today have increased demand for shared space, and what the future of work looks like for t
S2, E3: The pros of dynamic work
Season 2 rolls on with a visit from Samantha Fisher, Head of Dynamic Work at Okta, an identity and access management company that’s actually expanding its number of offices even though it does not require its 5,000-plus employees to come into the office. In an insightful conversation with host Ryan Anderson, Sam breaks down the implications of enforcing a standard eight-hour workday and shares how a dynamic work schedule and environment encourages productivity, equity, and empowerment. For more
S2, E2: Rethinking the future of offices
Host Ryan Anderson welcomes Phil Kirschner of global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. A self-proclaimed “accidental workplace strategist,” Phil fell into managing workplace strategy transformation efforts at Credit Suisse more than a decade ago and never looked back. As a result, his openness to supporting new ways of working fuels this fast-paced exploration of the need for executive-level change management, for widening our perception of what “hybrid” means, for using AI to ident
S2, E1: The science of social connection
Kristin Leimgruber, Ph.D., joins us to kick off the season. Kristi is a behavioral researcher at BetterUp, the virtual coaching and mentorship platform whose science-based approach helps people thrive in the workplace. She and host Ryan Anderson link the rise in workplace burnout with the decline of our sense of social connection at work—an unintended consequence of remote work. It’s an important and timely conversation—and ultimately, an optimistic one, as Kristi and Ryan explore strategies for
Season 2 Preview
Host Ryan Anderson takes time to share some highlights from Season 1 and set the stage for Season 2 by answering the two most frequently asked questions he gets asked once people find out what he does for a living: What is the current state of return-to-office? And what does it mean for the future of the workplace? For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.
Episode 9: Everyone wants belonging
For the final episode of Season 1 of Looking Forward, we welcome john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. After a thoughtful discussion of belonging in general terms, john and host Ryan Anderson pivot to focus on what organizations can do to foster belonging in the workplace. From the impact that belonging has on employee retention to the long-term effects more flexible work arrangements will (or won’t) have on workplace culture,
Episode 8: Rebuilding our organizational networks
Our guest this week on the podcast is Andreas Hoffbauer, Ph.D., a sociologist by trade and the founder and director of the organizational and behavioral design studio Atelier Kultur. In a heady conversation with host Ryan Anderson, he explains how our organizational networks have been weakened throughout the pandemic—and how prototyping spatial interventions can help strengthen them. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.
Episode 7: Putting our insights to the test
This week on the podcast, we offer a glimpse behind the scenes of our recently renovated Design Yard facility in West Michigan. Home to several teams that have embraced hybrid working, our transformed Design Yard provides choice and bolsters engagement. Matt Stares, Senior Vice President of Global Real Estate, Architecture and Development here at Herman Miller, and Gretta Peterson, our Senior Manager of Global Workplace Strategy and Development, join Ryan Anderson for this enlightening conversat
Episode 6: Architecting interaction
Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes, Founder/Lead Architect of AKKA Architects in Amsterdam, is the type of guest we could talk with for hours—but you’ll have to make do with 37 minutes on this week’s podcast. She joins host Ryan Anderson to discuss how organizations can design spaces in a more participative manner and create environments that are ready for the future of work—a future in which workplaces actually support the diverse needs of the people who use them. Their conversation is a master class in
Episode 5: Know your customer
Our guest this week is Steve Todd, AVP, Global Head of Workplace at Nasdaq, and creator of Open Sourced Workplace—a resource for real estate and workplace information. Steve joins host Ryan Anderson to share how he’s been able to move Nasdaq beyond a spreadsheet-driven understanding workplace ROI and toward a more user-centered approach—including some of the factors he’s identified that influence productivity. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.
Episode 4: Better experiences through smarter buildings
This week, Ryan welcomes Andrea Chegut, Ph.D., Director of the Real Estate Innovation Lab at MIT. A data scientist first and foremost, Andrea’s work involves listening to data and leveraging what she learns to help designers and business leaders align the built environment with the needs of people. In a fascinating conversation, she and Ryan cover the four biggest struggles corporate real estate needs to address and touch on how the pandemic has surfaced connections between physical space and he
Episode 3: Rethinking the concept of workplace
This week, host Ryan Anderson welcomes one of the most experienced and insightful leaders in the workplace strategy space: Adrienne Rowe, Head of Workplace Strategy at Raytheon Technologies. Their conversation starts with the current state of workplace strategy as an evolving field of practice, and springboards into a range of topics, from activity-based working to the challenge of balancing flexibility with providing an equitable experience for all employees. For more MillerKnoll insights, visi
Episode 2: Remote work for inclusivity and better living
This week, Ryan tackles remote work with one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic, Darren Murph. Darren is Head of Remote at GitLab, a DevOps platform that helps co-located, hybrid, and remote teams collaborate and build software. Darren shares lessons that GitLab has learned as a completely officeless company with more than 1,400 remote employees—including boundary-setting at the organizational level, balancing synchronous and asynchronous tools, and the benefits their people have enjoy
Episode 1: Embracing a more flexible future
For our inaugural episode, Ryan welcomes Brian Elliott, Executive Leader of Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack to help companies rethink work in our digital-first world. Topics include managing distributed teams, the effect of the pandemic on employee expectations—including the ripple effect those changing expectations are having on HR policy—and avoiding "false flexibility." For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.