A Vision of the Healthy Workplace
A conversation with James Murray, an expert in the big tech workplace, currently at Amazon as Director of Global Real Estate & Facilities, covering around 130 buildings spread across 32 countries within the EMBA region.
Our conversation touches on employee wellbeing, Amazon's preference for multi use fitness rooms over dedicated gyms, the role of ground and first floor amenities in creating central energy hubs within the workplace, Team totems to foster a sense of community, how to think of the workplace as a theater, and the increasing importance of green and healthy building certification systems in workplace real estate.
Jamie is a dynamic leader and a vocal advocate for the workplace of the future. He's doing his thing for one of the world's most valuable businesses.
Biophilic design at the Amazon Spheres
Matt Morley
Can you describe your professional background and your role today?
Jamie Murray
Yeah, sure, Matt. So I've been with Amazon for over six years. Now my role is the Director of Global Real Estate & Facilities, that effectively means a key focus on employee experience within the physical environment.
It also means that I'm responsible for the day to day management of our existing portfolio and helping plan for our future portfolio.
So I work closely with our business teams, of which there are many under the umbrella of Amazon to partner with them, understand their needs, their growth, how they use their space, what's working for them and what's not working.
Just in terms of some of the numbers, we've currently got about 130 buildings across 32 countries. And that's across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
A little bit about my background before joining, I started out my career close to 20 years ago working for charities in the UK. So specifically around helping them develop management plans focusing on technology and real estate to help enable that change.
Then I worked for a number of years for key service providers like CBRE and JLL. So I've got quite a broad breadth of experience in transaction management, portfolio management, a little bit about FM, and really, for the last 10 or so years around around workplace.
Biophilic design at the Amazon Spheres
Employee Health during the Covid era
The COVID period was effectively the world's biggest work from home pilot has happened, you know, for the reason of the virus that's out there. And I think what's interesting is measuring, you know, how that's working.
So, you know, part of my role is working with all of our business leaders to understand, you know, what's working well, for them, what's not working well, and the overarching feeling, and data is showing that it's working pretty well.
There are always exceptions, there are people that maybe have, you know, physical or personal constraints that it simply doesn't work. I think everyone's in the boat now of, of joining those video calls where you see, you know, kids running around, or dogs barking, whatever it may be. I think it adds a layer of humility, personal experience, takes down a little bit of that veneer of the corporate office environment.
I think we're working through how we safely and securely reintegrate people back into the office environment, that's absolutely our primary concern - the health and safety of employees.
What we're seeing is a lot of people are in no rush to come back in to the workplace, just because of the stress and a variety of factors, I think the benefit that's happened is a lot of people have kind of hit the pause button. And they're looking at how to best either schedule their day or their week, to best suit their needs. In terms of mental health that's very interesting.
I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are happier and healthier, people are maybe doing those runs that they never got a chance to do at lunchtime.
I'm seeing a lot of other companies looking at how they can quantify that and measure, either through Fitbits, or Apple Watches, those steps, heart rates or sleep patterns.
Healthy office design in the new era of work
Matt Morley
So then, within a role that effectively is about building one of the world's finest portfolios of commercial office spaces, you want to be the best of the best, how is that impacting them? Is it a case of you having to slim down? If you look sort of 24 months down the line?
Jamie Murray
The simple answer is, it's way too early to tell. We just don't know. So I think, you know, ask me again in in six to 12 months, and we'll have a better picture. But, you know, it's something we're looking at.
Designing the healthy workplace
Undoubtedly office design in particular needs to be people and function led, rather than just real estate led. And that applies not just for tech companies, but for all companies.
If you look at standard office design, you've got some great spaces, but they're few and far between. And then you've got a lot of mediocre average to actually really bad spaces. And that's in terms of layout, functionality, furniture, look and feel, lack of biophilia, whatever it may be.
Here at Amazon, there's probably 150 different businesses, all of whom tend to be quite siloed in their operational structure just by design. Any workspace that we design has to be relevant to those individual teams who grow and move and change. The design needs to be a very flexible working, living thing.
So I think putting employees at the heart of the workplace design is going to really allow companies to set up their space correctly in the future, it needs to be like a theater, where you've got the back of house, the stage setting and you need to design your spaces to have that agility because the world continues to change, our office design has to reflect that.
Biophilic design at Amazon offices
Smart buildings, ergonomic furniture and purpose led office environments
Matt Morley
Is that then purely a case of of moving ergonomic furniture around? Is it deeper than that? Does it affect the floorplates that you might be looking for? Or do you need something that goes deeper into the architectural or engineering level of the building?
Jamie Murray
It's a bit of both, right? I mean, you bring up smart buildings, you know, efficient floor plates, how they're, how they're structured from, you know, HVAC, see, you know, infrastructures as well. I think, you know, I'd never heard of the MERV air conditioning filter rating up until recently but not it is a very relevant topic.
I like the idea of flexible furniture solutions that allow for a little bit of tailoring to individual business needs, but not too much. I think you've got to think about the practicality of large scale organizations and their reporting structures as well. You know, what tends to happen with corporate real estate functions as they either report up through HR, or through the CFO type.
HR tends to be more about employees and employee experience, while the CFO is clearly around numbers and metrics.
So I think for big companies, they need to work with the constraints that they have, and within their reporting structures, we're talking about millions and millions of square feet, you have to be able to do these things at scale, and with flexibility.
Fostering interaction in a healthy office
Matt Morley
And how do you think then, in terms of fostering deliberately interactions, frustrating increases in interaction or offering opportunities for staff on a large scale to, to have some sense of shared identity and community in the within the workspace? If they're all doing the different things like, what strategies do you use? To to, if you like, cred that those opportunities?
Jamie Murray
Yeah, so it's a great question, we look at it really from the employee journey. So that really starts with everything from transportation, be it on a bike or on a bus, car sharing.
So we start with the employee journey, and then it's really what does that flow look like through a building? And what is that experience, when you come in through the front door, up through the elevators, you want a effectively what we refer to as a 'center of energy', somewhere that just feels great, smells great, looks great and so on.
From there, you kind of branch out into more of your working environments, collaboration spaces, focus areas on the upper floors of a building.
Community spaces on ground floor office buildings
It tends to be ground and first floor where you've got a visual impact of that center of energy that really points towards collaboration. It's that community space that we can often use for, you know, local artists to showcase their work or even internal business teams to showcase new product.
Then on the upper floors, we work with 'team neighborhoods' effectively. So teams will be given a neighborhood that they're expected to kind of customize, people can put up anything from dog pictures to baby pictures of themselves, their products and services.
So we've got town hall type spaces in the center of energy. And then we've got team neighborhoods on the individual working floors, and that combination works really well to increase productivity from a perspective of healthy habits and foster company culture.
How to encourage creativity and enhance productivity in a work environment
Matt Morley
So those individual team totems, and for example, that would be if you like, filling the gap where a private allocated desk would previously have been, right, there are no allocated desks.
Jamie Murray
Well, there's a mixture, it's not a one size fits all. But in general, we have a balance of agile spaces, where they're unassigned. And then we have fixed, which are assigned.
The population of employees at all big tech companies is a balance of knowledge workers, people that have a mixed day with meetings and calls, then those that are much more fixed perhaps 80% of the time at their desk, or who have technology constraints or personal constraints, visual impairments, or any other type of a physical health disability.
Amenities for a healthy office
Matt Morley
You touched on the idea of certain amenities being essentials, for example, bike facilities or changing rooms.. what do you think of as the 'nice to haves' today that might yet become basics of the future office space?
Mental and physical wellbeing amenities in an office space
Jamie Murray
Yeah we've got our design principles and guidelines that we use for all of our new spaces. And, you know, that was a big piece of work we did in 2016-17 and it's a live document, so it's continually changing based on our internal customers needs.
We have mothers rooms, where mothers can come in to express breast milk, or change their baby. We've got bike facilities, showers, we've got multi-faith rooms where people can go meditate or pray.
Office gyms for physical and mental health
Gyms are an interesting one, because some people love gyms, and some people don't but any space needs to be to the benefit of everyone. we look for flexibility, creating fitness spaces that can be curated or changed for slightly different purposes. So they tend to more like multi-purpose mind-body rooms.
These multi-purpose rooms can accommodate a meditation class, pottery class, boxing, martial arts class, high intensity training or a CrossFit type workout with removable items just as it can be used for a photography lesson.
Biophilic design to promote healthy office design
Matt Morley
You mentioned the word biophilia a little earlier on as well. And it seems like nobody's doubling down on that more so than the big tech firms like Amazon.
How do you see the role of nature and Biophilia within the workplace? Is it about employee wellness?
Jamie Murray
It's about employee experience and part of that is wellness. So, I know that you've seen the spheres in Amazon Seattle, a hugely impressive building, I was lucky enough to be involved in some of the early stages of that project.
Now, wellness is absolutely part of that, you also need to be practical about how that Biophilia is used, how it's procured and maintained, by facility management teams.
Natural light implications of live biophilia in an office building
But it's really well received, even if you've got maybe some synthetic or artificial plants in certain areas that are maybe hard to maintain with live plants. So I'm thinking large atriums, where you maybe have, you know, behind reception desks that typically you can't go clean or water that often. But that's okay, because people still get a benefit from it visually.
Plants as air purifiers in an office space
There may be no, you know, there may be no other benefits from an air quality perspective from those of course but visually, that's a big element around wellness - people feel that their workplace is designed well, is thoughtful, considerate, the interior designers have integrated natural elements. So we're looking for a balance of natural surroundings real, and artificial plants, I would say.
Matt Morley
How do you see the role of certifications like LEED green building and WELL healthy building, within your requirements when looking for a workplace?
Green building and healthy building certifiations
Jamie Murray
There is a lot of responsibility now on landlords to do better jobs. So I think the real estate model, the corporate real estate market, has been way too landlord focused for the last 20, if not 30 years, where they've had it really good.
They just knew that people would come and lease their space, and they did very little to focus on the benefits of their occupiers or the individual employee benefits. And I think that's changing.
Nowadays real estate needs to be a destination effectively, and it needs to be working for the users of that space. So I think certifications mean that landlords have to up their game in order to stay competitive.