What Millennials Want at Work (According to Last Week’s Panel)

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Chair of the Month

Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie is a Workplace Consultant at Herman Miller and the former Editor of Work Design Magazine. She’s currently based in Pittsburgh.

Photos and key takeaways from our Work Design TALK last week in D.C.

The crowd indicates whether or not they belong to the millennial generation. Photo by Jason Cheung.
Attendees indicate whether or not they belong to the millennial generation. Photo by Jason Cheung.

What do millennials want? We sought to get to the bottom of it last week during our sold out TALK, “Real Talk About Millennials in the Workplace”, co-hosted at SmithGroup JJR‘s D.C. office with the Design Leadership Council. Below, check out photos from the event and a list of the millennial-approved workplace ideas from our panel.

Cheryl Brown of SmithGroup JJR welcomes the crowd. Photo by Jason Cheung.
Cheryl Brown of SmithGroup JJR welcomes the crowd. Photo by Jason Cheung.

A few common themes emerged when we asked the panel about features of the ideal workplace:

1. They want workplaces that enhance health and wellness (this might include exercise classes, personal trainers, and healthy eating or cooking classes, offered on site).

2. They’d like to be able to bring their dogs to work.

3. Activity-based solutions get two thumbs up: they think spaces should provide a variety of open and closed options to be shared based on the task at hand.

4. Flexibility is paramount: they value workspace that offers a lot of choices, including about where, when, and how they work since, increasingly, there is no line between personal time and work time.

Carl Pierre of WeWork with the mic. Photo by Jason Cheung.
Carl Pierre of WeWork with the mic. Photo by Jason Cheung.

5. Brand and culture is super important: they want customized design solutions to align with their organization’s “personality”.

6. No more cubes covered in gray carpet (ick): they want playful, colorful, welcoming, and warm workspaces.

The panel, from left to right: Anne Regan, Carl Pierre, Marie Mosman, Laura Hiribarren, Michael Burke, and Caroline Bour. Photo by Jason Cheung.

7. Finally, community was a major theme. The panel expressed a desire for:

  • More common spaces within offices to help create a sense of community at work
  • More opportunities to volunteer to improve their communities outside of work
  • Open, collaborative food prep and eating areas that build community in the office
Thanks again to everybody who came out! Photo by Jason Cheung.
Thanks again to everybody who came out! Photo by Jason Cheung.

A special thank you to our event sponsors for making the TALK possible:

Haworth
MOII
Knoll
Allsteel
OEII
FurnitureSpeak
Kimball Office
GPI
Condeco Software
SmithGroup JJR
Design Leadership Council
FOX Architects
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  1. […] What Millennials Want at Work What do millennials want? We sought to get to the bottom of it last week during our sold out TALK, “Real Talk About Millennials in the Workplace”, co-hosted at SmithGroup JJR‘s D.C. office with the Design Leadership Council. Below, check out photos from the event and a list of the millennial-approved workplace ideas from our panel… WorkDesign Magazine var disqus_url = 'http://www.coydavidson.com/news/this-weeks-recommended-reading-142/'; var disqus_identifier = '31959 http://www.coydavidson.com/?p=31959'; var disqus_container_id = 'disqus_thread'; var disqus_shortname = 'thetenantadvisor'; var disqus_title = "This Week’s Recommended Reading"; var disqus_config_custom = window.disqus_config; var disqus_config = function () { /* All currently supported events: onReady: fires when everything is ready, onNewComment: fires when a new comment is posted, onIdentify: fires when user is authenticated */ this.language = ''; this.callbacks.onReady.push(function () { // sync comments in the background so we don't block the page var script = document.createElement('script'); script.async = true; script.src = '?cf_action=sync_comments&post_id=31959'; var firstScript = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; firstScript.parentNode.insertBefore(script, firstScript); }); if (disqus_config_custom) { disqus_config_custom.call(this); } }; (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); […]

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