Work Life by Design

Welcome to Work Life by Design a podcast for People & Culture leaders, C-Suite Execs, Entrepreneurs, Designers and anyone who is interested in elevating their experience of work! I’m your host, Mel Marsden, the Founder, and Director of COMUNiTI a Workplace Strategy and Design Studio focused on collaboratively, re-imagining and designing high-performance workplaces for our clients across Australia. Over the last decade I have refined my workplace toolkit to create our signature strategy offering, the Workplace Dynamics Blueprint, exploring the 5 pillars that underpin every high performing workplace. 1. Reimagining the Future 2. Brand &Culture 3. Values & Behaviours 4. Wellbeing 5. Employee Experience This process has seen my clients’ employees achieve results of;  84% employees feeling more productive  91% with increased job satisfaction  100% of employees feeling more collaborative I believe that our environments have the power to positively influence our behaviour and our performance at work. So much so, that I’ve written a book about! “The Next Workplace; Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential” connects the concepts of modern day management theory to the structural design of our physical workplace environments, aligning, enabling and inspiring the human potential of every organisation. If the last few years have taught us anything it’s that change is inevitable, and we no longer need to “go to work” to “work! Through this podcast we explore what it takes to make work, work! I draw back the curtains on my own business, the clients, and projects that we deliver, along with tapping into the knowledge and insights from academics, business leaders and champions of change. Together, let's elevate our experience of work.

It's not about RTO Mandates. It's about Fostering Community 05/01/2024

Season 6 Fostering Community 04/29/2024

That's it for Season 5! The highlight reel from 48 episodes 10/02/2023

The Art of Focus in a World of Distraction with Angela Lockwood 09/25/2023

The Art of Focus in a World of Distraction with Angela Lockwood The art of focus in our modern worlds has become just that. An art. With books like Johan Hari’s Stolen Focus and past guest Dr Kristy Goodwin's, Dear Digital we need to talk, the constant disruption, distraction mulit-tasking and task switching that we are all succumbing to is impacting our ability to truly focus. Add to this all the pressures and competing demands of daily life and we are quickly looking at fatigue, exhaustion and burnout. And whilst the rise of flexible working has given us more freedom to design our days and work lives, it’s a bit of a double edged sword. As many of us have relied on the routine, ritual and structure that our daily to commute has given to us to support our cognitive function and the daily need to “do our job”. We now need to develop a new skill. The ability to distinguish what is worth our attention, to do this intentionally and then to be able to focus. And that’s what today’s guest is here to share with us. Angela Lockwood is on a mission. To empower individuals to thrive amidst the distraction of modern life. As an Occupational Therapist with a wealth of real-world experience working alongside both children and adults, she has developed a unique approach to unlocking the power of our thinking and actions in ever-changing environments. After sustaining a life-changing head injury she became obsessed with learning how we can use our time and energy to thrive and has focused her career on helping others do the same. She is the author of two business self-help books, "The Power of Conscious Choice" and “Switch Off and Find Calm” and the engaging host of "A Kid's Life" Podcast. She’s been featured on Channel 9 Today EXTRA, The Australian Financial Review, Good Health magazine, Huffington Post, Mamamia, Radio 2UE and numerous parenting and lifestyle publications. She also has a regular segment on The Luke and Susie Show which is syndicated across Australia. Angela has an infectious energy and she’s highly relatable. So in today’s episode Ange and I are going to look at; Why the conversation about focus has become such a prevalent one Intentional Focus – what it means and how to manage it The importance of switching off The difference between time management and energy management Plus she’s also sharing with us some tools to get us started A great conversation on how to focus your attention on the things that really matter so that you have more energy for life! LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Angela; | | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/28075194

Why you need to guide your people through change 09/18/2023

The Pilgrim's Guide to the Workplace with Dr Agustin Chevez 09/11/2023

The Pilgrim's Guide to the Workplace with Dr Agustin Chevez Is the workplace really just a ‘task’ place? This is one of the thought-provoking questions that today’s guest poses, for us to ponder about our reality of work and the workplace. Dr Agustin Chevez is the author of . It was after reading a book on the diversity of Iguana’s in the Galapagos Islands, that Gus set off on a pilgrimage from Melbourne to Sydney, to explore the impact that isolation has on the diversity of our idea’s. Fast forward a few years and Gus is sharing his insights as 34 signposts from this exploration in his book, inviting us to reimagine our workplaces. As an Architect and researcher, Gus has dedicated his career to understanding the notion of work and uncovering environments that best support our working lives. His interest in the relationship between people, space and technology saw him pursue a PhD on the evolution of workplace architecture as a consequence of technology development. His work has been presented at various international forums and publications. As a sought-after speaker, Agustin has delivered international keynotes and is a TEDx speaker. He has also contributed to workplace strategies in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Gus is the Workplace Futures Lead at the Centre for the New Workforce at Swinburne University and an Honorary Fellow at the School of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne. In this episode we are going to find out How Gus took this idea that he had to explore diversity of thinking to actually, walking from Melbourne to Sydney What the distinction is between a Pilgrimage and a Walk and how this applies to the workplace How the introduction of absurdity to the workplace enables us to bring more human traits to our experience of work Why removing friction from our environments can impact our ability to be innovative and its impact on our personal resilience as we overcome adversity How the conversation and questions we’re asking when approaching the design of workplaces need to change in order to create an enhanced environment for work A fascinating conversation with someone who has incredible mind to explore ideas in a new way to challenge biases and see new opportunity. You are going to love this conversation with Dr Gus Chevez. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Gus; | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27953901

What I Thought Everyone Knew But Doesn't 09/04/2023

To own a Desk or not to own a Desk? What you need to consider when adopting desk sharing with Dr. Jenna Mikus 08/28/2023

To own a Desk or not to own a Desk? What you need to consider when adopting desk sharing with Dr. Jenna Mikus With more of us embracing the opportunity to work from home, it’s leaving our workplaces underutilised as occupancy levels in the workplace drop. The impacts of this vary from workplace ot workplace depending on the design style and approach ranging from limited variety in the spaces available for employees to perform their work through to a lack of energy and “buzz’ that comes from bringing people together in the space. As someone who engages with organisations daily in this delicate dance of who gets to own their desk and who doesn’t, weighing up the commercial realities of leasing costs vs underutilised floor area and the opportunity to provide variety and choice to employees in where and how they work within the workplace, this is a topic of conversation that I am keen to explore. So, when today’s guest Dr Jenna Mikus shared an article written by , questioning if the hybrid office will ever feel like home, with her view of the impact of this approach I was keen to engage her in a friendly debate on the pros and cons of the “to own a desk or not to own a desk”. Jenna shared; While this sounds ideal in theory, this Choose Your Adventure approach to daily working could backfire, as it introduces the risk of proving exhausting and therefore off-putting to workers often already overwhelmed with work obligations. Not everyone embraces change, let alone adventure...especially on a daily basis. As an advocate of creating workplaces that respond to the unique and individual needs of organisations, their teams and their people, my view is that by relinquishing individual ownership of our workpoints, we can inturn optimise our work environments to cater to a greater variety of work styles and activities, further enhancing our experience of work. Dr Jenna Mikus is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Eudae Group, which advises clients on organizational and spatial (both physical and digital) transformational change relating to built environments curated for health and wellbeing. Her clients have included commercial office owners, operators, and tenants as well as military, government, healthcare, higher education, aged care, and more on a global scale, with particular emphasis on the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. As an advocate for bridging industry practice with academic theory/research, Jenna is also a Visiting Fellow with QUT's Centre for Decent Work & Industry, an Honorary Fellow with the Centre for Conscious Design, a former Health Equity and current Research Advisor for the International WELL Building Institute, and a contributor to Harvard University's Human Flourishing Program's Flourishing at Work Interest Group. Jenna leverages her education across engineering, architecture, and design with her depth and breadth of work experience relating to strategy, change management, and design thinking to encourage multidisciplinary cross-pollination in theory and practice and to guide the creation/curation of intelligent, sustainable, and flourishing environments for all. Jenna is well versed in supporting organisations to create environments that support us all in flourishing at work, having worked in organsiational change and recently completing her PhD focused on flourishing health and wellbeing, so I was pleased when she agreed to engage in this conversation, so that we could explore it from a few angles and see where we land. This is an interesting conversation exploring the role of workplace design on the individuals that occupy them. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Jenna; | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27816516

Mindwandering, Flow and Spaciousness - the key to innovation and creativity 08/21/2023

A Community Approach to Building a Company, Culture & Employee Experience with Damon Klotz 08/14/2023

A Community Approach to Building a Company, Culture & Employee Experience with Damon Klotz Establishing a strong and purposeful employee experience in your organisation can take an incredible amount of time, dedication, and invested energy. So, if you could find all the People tools and resources that you needed packaged up in one platform, backed by science and data, how much easier would that make your life as a leader and give you the confidence to know that you were giving your organisation the best possible advantage? Well, today’s guest is here to tell us that this is possible. Damon Klotz, who has what could be described as one of the coolest titles, is a Work Culture Evangelist at Culture Amp, a market-leading employee experience platform. I first discovered Damon and his podcast Culture First, in the midst of the pandemic tuning into his episode with Jen Sauer-Klein, an experience designer in the States. This singular episode gave me a new perspective on the role of our environments in how we influence experiences consciously through design, adding another tool to my tool kit. Jen is among a number of incredible guests that Damon has had the opportunity to engage in conversation on his podcast, so I was incredibly happy when he agreed to join me here to learn more on what have been some of the most impactful conversations that he has had. What I also learnt through this episode is the diverse career that Damon has had that led him to his current role as Work Culture Evangelist. As you’ll hear Damon is quite the overachiever, prior to Culture Amp he was leading community HR groups, through to being the Global Manager of Digital Strategy for Ramsay Health Care, a keynote speaker on the future of work, and the Co-Founder of Spur Projects, a social enterprise dedicated to reducing the suicide rate of men in Australia. And he shares how a desire to be a sports manager and leverage the community of teams has found its way through to the work he and the team at Culture Amp do. You’ll also learn more about Culture Amp and the wealth of data that they have accumulated from supporting the employee experience across numerous countries since launching in 2009, How the platform supports organisations to leverage this “data lake” to continue to enhance the employee, manager and team experience And how taking a community focused approach to building Culture Amp has been a key foundation in its success, growing the company from 100 to 6500 customers, and the role that Damon played in establishing it Plus what Damon has learned about communication, transparency and trust from his conversations about People & Culture throughout the pandemic So many interesting highlights in this episode, along with some great additional listening recommendations over on the Culture First podcast. Damon also leaves us with some insights into how he has consciously continued to grow with the organisation from start up to now and its various iterations, all great self-reflection points for us to consider in our own growth mindset and experience of comfort. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Damon; | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27689598

How a Journey Map Can Design Your Employee Experience 08/07/2023

Building your Leadership Capability with Rebecca Christianson 07/31/2023

Building your Leadership Capability with Rebecca Christianson No doubt throughout the course of your career, you’ve experienced moments where you’ve questioned yourself and your ability to lead not only your team through the next transition, but also leading yourself. Stepping up into a new role, guiding your team through a new project or perhaps you’ve just been swallowed up by the overwhelming wave of pressure of work. I can empathise with you at each of these points, because I’ve been there too. I also know, from the work that we’ve been doing at COMUNiTI across organisations, that many managers and leaders are also facing similar challenges. With our need to manage our teams in new ways due to remote and hybrid work practices, one of the key challenges we consistently identify that requires greater support, is leadership capability. And it's an area that today’s guest, Rebecca Christianson specialises in. Rebecca is an Executive Coach, Facilitator, Speaker and the Founder of Thriving People. Throughout her career, she has partnered with Executive Teams globally to build leadership capability and implement organisational change. One of her many superpowers is stretching leaders to the edge of their thinking to support mindset shifts, with a view to increase self awareness, influence, effectiveness, focus and wellbeing. With her purpose to support senior leaders to love life at the top of business. Having been an executive leader herself, Rebecca brings her lived experience to her work, having walked in the shoes that she now supports. In today’s episode, you’ll hear some of the common challenges that Rebecca observes in the leader she supports along with the one thing that we can all do to start building our own leadership capability, so that we can each build our toolkit to navigating the uncertainty of the world we work in with more confidence and ease. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Rebecca; | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27558051

4 Ways to Redesign Work with Empathy 07/24/2023

Permission to Pause | The impact of one simple action with Dr Ali Young 07/17/2023

Permission to Pause | The impact of one simple action with Dr Ali Young In last weeks episode I spoke about wellbeing rhythms in the workplace and the need for us all to be building in moments of self-care. I then read an article in the by author Greg McKeown, who’s written two of my favourite books and are recommended reading at COMUNiTI; Essentialism & Effortless. In this article Greg says that for organisations to build top performing teams, they should only be asking for 85% effort. The premise that when we consistently perform at 100% we burn out. Prior to this Dr Meg Hooper and I discussed the recent legislative changes around psychosocial hazards in the workplace. I see a theme emerging… the conversation as to the health and wellbeing of our people is being elevated in our workplaces and is at the core of all business performance. So, this week I’ve invited Dr Ali Young to join me, to better understand what is that we can be doing to support ourselves individually, and what we can be doing as teams and organisations to practically support the health and wellbeing of our people. Dr Ali Young is a health strategist, who works with mums owning and operating health practices. After recovering from burnout in 2019 and writing a book about it, she has become passionate about supporting other health practitioners, particularly mums, to navigate the same stressors with a different outcome. In this episode Ali shares with us not only the science that backs up why we should be taking better care of our health, but if we are not giving ourselves the permission to pause, no amount of sleep, trips to the gym or healthy eating is likely to change our perception of stress and impact our wellbeing. We discuss how a simple conversation with your team can uncover opportunities to support everyone’s wellbeing and the simple changes in schedule that have led to increased performance in her own practice. She also shares with us her three tips to ensuring maximum wellbeing in our work week. So, why not take a walk, tune in and use this 30mins as your permission to pause. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Ali; | | Connect with Mel; | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27428277

Wellbeing Rhythms for Work & Life 07/10/2023

Pyschosocial Risks at Work with Dr Meg Hooper 07/03/2023

COMUNiTI Turns 10!! 🥳 On the Couch with Dr Meg Hooper 06/26/2023

Rehumanising the Workplace with Deanne Boules 06/19/2023

Rehumanising the Workplace with Deanne Boules As we approach the mid-point of the year, I would hazard a guess that you’re already feeling like the tank is near empty! And you are not alone! Thanks to the events of recent years, COVID, lockdowns, floods, new ways of working, to name a few, what’s resulted is a lack of physical and emotional connection. Which has been at the expense of our human relationships, our creativity, and our emotional intelligence. A situation that today’s guest is all too familiar with. Deanne Boules is the Founder of Insync Workplace Solutions & a highly respected People, Safety, & Culture Consultant, Coach, Facilitator, & keynote speaker. With over 30 years of experience, she has developed a proven track record of building high-performing, inclusive, physically & psychologically safe workplaces that enable individuals to bring their authentic selves to work, feel valued, have a sense of purpose & belonging, thrive & go home safe & well each day. Dee is passionate about supporting organisations to rehumanise their workplaces, by putting people back at the core of the business. Having started her career as a police officer with the NSW Police Force, she traversed a number of other roles, before founding Insync Workplace Solutions in 2012. A specialist WHS and HR Consulting and Training Practice, fulfilling her passion for redefining and re-humanising how human resources, workplace safety, and all things people, safety, and culture-related are practised worldwide. During her career, Dee has experienced first-hand the devastating impact of workplace fatalities & serious injuries, attending more than most. Through these experiences, Dee started to question why people do what they do & why they make the decisions they make. Dee and I could have easily talked about this concept for hours, as fostering community is at the core of humanising our workplaces. We discuss the benefits of taking a human-centred approach in the workplace, some of the barriers and mindset shifts to be overcome along with simple ways that organisations can take the first step. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with the Deanne; | Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/27144132

What is your workplace telling your people is important? 06/12/2023

Redesigning Work Before Place with Dan Mottau 06/05/2023

Redesigning Work Before Place with Dan Mottau As organisations are navigating this new landscape of “hybrid” work, a conversation that is happening more and more, is one that centres around “how do we work?” and “how do we want to work?”, before we start talking about, “what does our office look like?”. Today’s guest, Dan Mottau, did just that. Dan was introduced to me by a mutual colleague when I was looking for thought leaders in the People & Culture space to join me for my book launch panel in Melb. From the first conversation I had with Dan, I was completely blown away with his approach to work and workplace. This was someone who spoke my language and absolutely understood the impact of how a workplace design NEEDS to respond to the operations of the business. So much so, that when the opportunity arose for Dan and the team at Redbubble to create a new workplace, rather than heading straight out to market and chatting with leasing agents, though took a moment to really think about “how do we want people at Redbubble to work?” That simple question set them off on a journey that completely transformed, not only the way they work, but then also the place that would best support that way of working. So, I’ve invited Dan to join me here for a conversation, to share what really is a progressive, insightful and in some ways quite a radical approach to the whole process, and one that I would welcome more organisations to consider when embarking on the opportunity of creating a new workplace. To first, really question the nature of work, the way their people work and then what they truly want from their workspace to facilitate and enable that work. What I find fascinating about this approach, is that it was a people led approach. As Dan shares with us, the project lead was their head of DBI. This was not a project that was handed down to the facilities team, via finance, it was entrusted to the People teams to deliver, hiring in the support they needed, when they needed it. This is an approach that I want to highlight, as taking this approach to creating your next workplace, leads your business to creating a very different outcome. An outcome that puts you people at the centre, and a focus on create a space that optimises the performance of your people, not just the performance of your building. Dan is a senior people, organisation development, learning and communications leader, who enjoys examining the underlying motivations and patterns of thinking that elicit amplifying and diminishing behaviours within and between teams. His approach is heavily influenced by behavioural psychology and anthropology, especially as their principles may be applied to team functioning and the cultivation and sustainment of psychological safety and high performance. With a passion for accelerating the growth of leaders, and for increasing their personal impact through the success of their people. As you’ll hear him say, he’s a people geek! So, let’s jump into today’s conversation! LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with the Dan; Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26982777

Use Your Space to Tell Your Story 05/29/2023

Two Common Creatives 05/22/2023

Two Common Creatives If I brought you together in a room of your peers, and asked one simple question, “Who here would call themselves a Creative?”, chances are you’re unlikely to raise your hand. As my guests today describe, we often mistake creativity for artistry, the ability to draw or paint. However, many of us are practicing creativity everyday, without realising it. Singing, cooking, problem solving, are all acts of creativity. Paul Fairweather and Chris Meredith, are the Two Common Creatives. Paul is a recovering architect, formerly the co-founder of the award-winning Architectural practice Fairweather Proberts, he is also an artist, inventor and property developer. Chris is a former Marketing Director, he is a speaker, writer, podcaster and business coach and when he’s not at work you’ll find him in, on or under the ocean, usually with a camera in hand. Together they have combined their passion and pursuit of creativity to engage businesses to embrace theirs, helping their people create, capture, and communicate great idea’s, to solve business problems. Their goal is to make creativity as common as a loaf of bread and as well understood as common language. As someone who would raise their hand when asked if they were creative, I’m fascinated by this conversation as Paul and Chris share how they encourage people to unlock and embrace their creativity. We explore; the role of creativity in our professional lives if you can teach creativity the common block or resistance to embracing creativity and what they have learned and observed about how our physical environment can impact on an individual’s creativity As businesses struggle to solve new problems in our fast-paced world, encouraging creativity in our organisations is a key metric of success, and Paul & Chris leave us with their thoughts on where we can all start. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with the Paul & Chris Paul - Chris - TCC - Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26851140

Three Ways to Elevate your Workplace Experience - The Book Launch Wrap UP! 05/15/2023

The Next Workplace / Sydney Launch Conversations Part 2 05/08/2023

The Next Workplace / Sydney Launch Conversations Part 2 This is our FINAL episode in the 6-part series bringing you all the conversations from my book launch events in Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney, as we celebrated the release of The Next Workplace: Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential. Today is Part 2 of our Sydney event conversations so if you missed part 1 or any of the previous 5 conversations for that matter, be sure to pop back and tune into those as well! Each of these events were held with the purpose of starting a conversation on all things Work, People & Place. To take the opportunity and do something very intentional in progressing the conversation of enhancing and reimagining our workplaces for a new future. Joined by leaders navigating the new frontier of what work looks like and the role that place plays in elevating our experience of work. Our Sydney conversation explored the topics of what they have realised about the importance of the workplace, how they have seen the evolution of curating the employee experience in the workplace and what that looks like for them, how our workplaces can effectively support belonging and build connection in our people, what flexibility at work really looks like, and ultimately what does a good workplace look like?! To join me in this conversation I invited Brad Krauskopf, CEO of HUB Australia to join us, along with Sophie Hart, Co-Founder of the Serenity Collective, host of the Thriving Workplace Event, and Nicole Karagiannis, Chief People Office at Harrison.ai. Each of our guests bring a unique perspective to this conversation, with thoughtful insights that invited me to think more deeply about some of my own idea’s. I hope this episode also inspires your thinking on what you can do to elevate the conversation in your workplace. This is Part 2, from our Sydney conversations and our final episode in the 6 part series, so if you have missed any of the conversations from Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney, be sure to head back and tune into those! But to wrap up the book tour, lets get into today’s episode! LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26770785

The Next Workplace / Sydney Launch Conversations Part 1 05/01/2023

The Next Workplace / Sydney Launch Conversations Part 1 The last few weeks have been quite the adventure as I've been celebrating the release of my book The Next Workplace: Designing Dynamic Environments that Inspire Human Potential. Hosting events in Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney, each of these events were held with the purpose of starting a conversation on all things Work, People & Place. Joined by leaders navigating the new frontier of what work looks like and the role that place plays in elevating our experience of work. Each of these conversations are being shared right here on the podcast over 6 episodes. Today is the fifth episode in that series, and the first part in our two-part series from our Sydney event conversations. Hosted by HUB Australia in their Wynyard office it was a beautiful evening with many familiar faces and few new ones as well. Our Sydney conversation explored topics of; ✨ what they have realised about the importance of the workplace, ✨ how they have seen the evolution of curating the employee experience in the workplace and what that looks like for them, ✨ how our workplaces can effectively support belonging and build connection in our people, ✨ what flexibility at work really looks like and ✨ ultimately what does a good workplace look like?!? To join me in this conversation I invited our venue host, Brad Kraskopf, CEO of HUB Australia to join us, along with Sophie Hart, Co-Founder of the Serenity Collective, host of the Thriving Workplace Event and Nicole Karagiannis, Chief People Officer at Harrison.ai. Each of our guests bring a unique perspective to this conversation, with thoughtful insights that invited me to think more deeply about some of my own idea's. I hope this episode inspires your thinking to start a conversation in your workplace to elevate our experience of work. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26698809

The Next Workplace / Melbourne Launch Conversations Part 2 04/24/2023

The Next Workplace / Melbourne Launch Conversations Part 1 04/17/2023

The Next Workplace / Melbourne Launch Conversations Part 1 The Melbourne launch event celebrating the release of my book The Next Workplace was a treat! This time I was indulged in reminiscing over another of my favourite projects, and a featured Case Study in the book, Davidson, a national workplace performance firm. What’s special about this client is that we have worked together on two projects now, Brisbane and Melbourne, and… this was the first time that Jacqui Whiteman, Davidsons COO, and I had met face to face! Delivering Brisbane in the midst of the pandemic saw us experimenting with all the tech tools to continue to deliver our first-class service to our clients. With Melbourne following shortly after, and with their extended lockdowns, the entire Melbourne project has been delivered virtually. This was a lovely opportunity for us to connect #IRL over a wine and reminisce, heading back to the very beginning, recalling the initial challenges that Davidson were facing in their space and the impact it was having on their people, their teams and overall business performance. Exploring the inspiration in their corporate values and social pillars, and the solution in the finished design, we then discuss the impact that the space has had and continues to have on their people, their recruitment, the cross-disciplinary collaboration and to their bottom line. This is Part 1 in a 2-part conversation. Part 2 will follow in next weeks episode as Jacqui and I are joined by Kylie Baullo, Petrina Stewart and Dan Mottau for a panel conversation on all things work, people and place. Melbourne is our second stop in the festivity’s celebration the launch of the book. Having kicked off in Brisbane, we finished in Sydney. All of these conversations are being shared right here on the podcast, so if you’ve missed the first two episodes from Brisbane, head back and tune into those. All up there will be 6 episodes sharing all of the conversations from the evenings, with so many takeaways on how we can all elevate our experience of work. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26539836

The Next Workplace / Brisbane Launch Conversations Part 2 04/10/2023

The Next Workplace / Brisbane Launch Conversations Part 1 04/03/2023

Designing Social Connection & Intentional Employee Incentive Programs 03/27/2023

Designing Social Connection & Intentional Employee Incentive Programs Creating employee incentive programs and wellbeing initiatives have been known to take a “scattergun approach” offering the infamous fruit box or step count challenge or even prove to be nothing more than lip service beyond a company announcement. However, to embed programs that make real transformative change to an organisation, the business first needs to understand their people and what would make the greatest impact on them and in return the organisation. And that’s exactly how today’s guest has approached the implementation of such successful initiatives in their organisation. Nicole Karagiannis is the Chief People Officer at Harrison.ai. With over 15 year’s experience in the Human Resources sector. Forging her career at Westpac prior to working in the fintech, health and disability sector, Nicole combines her experience and deep passion of care with the future focus of technology, to lead the Talent, Business Partners, Learning and Development, and IT professionals who enable harrison.ai to grow meaningfully, whilst fostering a culture of innovation and inclusion. Harrison.ai is a health-tech scale-up dedicated to impacting millions of lives a day through comprehensive AI solutions as medical devices. The company operates two joint ventures: annalise.ai and franklin.ai. In her current role at harrison.ai, Nicole led the design of the organisation’s innovative “Becoming a parent” program which provides support for employees and their partners through early pregnancy loss and miscarriage. In today’s conversation we explore Harrison.ai’s 6 pillar wellbeing program and how the pillar of Social Connection has impacted the design of their remote first workplace plus how Nicole came to develop the Becoming a Parent Program, the catalyst for the program, and how she developed a business case for the program that even got the CFO on board. If you are business leader looking to push the boundaries of employee experience and to innovate new ways to become an employer of choice, or an employee considering the next phase of your life in starting a family, this episode will inspire you to think bigger about how your workplace can make a meaningful and intentional difference in the lives of your people. LINKS Get your copy of Mel’s new Book Connect with Nicole Connect with Mel | |  | | | /episode/index/show/melissamarsden/id/26302575

Work Life by Design

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