{"id":692,"date":"2026-03-30T07:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T06:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/2026\/03\/30\/the-productivity-killer-hidden-in-plain-sight\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T07:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T06:04:12","slug":"the-productivity-killer-hidden-in-plain-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/press\/the-productivity-killer-hidden-in-plain-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Productivity Killer Hidden in Plain Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AUTHOR
<\/em><\/strong>Jennifer Bryan<\/a>
ABChange Consultancy
<\/strong>www.JenniferLBryan.com<\/a>
<\/strong><\/em><\/p>

Walk into almost any newly designed workspace and\u00a0you’ll\u00a0notice it\u00a0immediately;\u00a0the biophilic walls, the carefully curated acoustic panels, the ergonomic seating, the collaboration zones bathed in natural light. We have never been more sophisticated about how offices\u00a0look<\/i>, and yet, productivity in many organisations\u00a0remains\u00a0stubbornly elusive.\u00a0<\/p>

So\u00a0what’s\u00a0going wrong?\u00a0<\/p>

In my work\u00a0advising\u00a0organisations through complex change and in writing\u00a0The Emotional Side of Organisational Change: How to Survive and Thrive<\/i>,\u00a0I’ve\u00a0come to understand that the most underestimated force in any workplace\u00a0isn’t\u00a0invisible at all. The clues are everywhere.\u00a0They’re\u00a0sitting right in front of us; in the people we walk past every day. The problem\u00a0isn’t\u00a0that we\u00a0can’t\u00a0see them.\u00a0It’s\u00a0that\u00a0we’ve\u00a0stopped looking.\u00a0<\/p>

We design for the body,\u00a0for posture, acoustics, air quality,\u00a0light, but in our rush to measure utilisation rates and occupancy data, we’ve lost the habit of simply observing the human experience unfolding in front of us: the person who always takes the desk tucked in the corner, away from the team, the group that books the meeting room but then sits in silence, the team that seems energised on a Tuesday but hollow by Thursday. These\u00a0aren’t\u00a0random behaviours. They are signals,\u00a0emotional and psychological data points,\u00a0waiting to be read.\u00a0<\/p>

This is the argument at the heart of my book. Emotions\u00a0don’t\u00a0hide. They express themselves constantly, through behaviour, through body language, through the small daily choices people make about how and where they work. The question is whether anyone in the organisation has slowed down enough to notice.\u00a0<\/p>

And\u00a0that’s\u00a0the\u00a0real challenge. Modern workplace culture glorifies busyness. Leaders are rewarded for outputs, not observations. We sprint from meeting to meeting, dashboard to dashboard, never pausing long enough to use what are\u00a0arguably our\u00a0most powerful diagnostic tools: both eyes and both ears.\u00a0<\/p>

What would it look like to\u00a0actually stop:\u00a0to stand in your workspace not as a manager with a task list, but as a curious, present observer? To watch how people move through a space; to listen not just to\u00a0what’s\u00a0said in a meeting, but to what’s conspicuously left unsaid, to\u00a0notice who\u00a0isn’t\u00a0speaking up, who has stopped collaborating, who looks like\u00a0they’re\u00a0physically present but emotionally somewhere else entirely.\u00a0<\/p>

When organisations are in transition,\u00a0and\u00a0almost every\u00a0organisation is navigating some form of change right now, whether a hybrid model in flux, a restructure, or a culture that\u00a0hasn’t\u00a0caught up with the strategy,\u00a0the emotional temperature of the workplace shifts. People experiencing uncertainty\u00a0don’t\u00a0always announce it. They show it. They show it in\u00a0where they choose to sit, in how they engage with new spaces, in whether they linger or leave the moment the clock permits. If we learn to read these signals, we gain something no utilisation software can\u00a0provide:\u00a0genuine insight into how people are\u00a0actually doing.\u00a0<\/p>

In my book I talk about the importance of putting the\u00a0end person in mind<\/i>:\u00a0approaching change from\u00a0those furthest from the\u00a0decision making\u00a0room\u2019s\u00a0perspective\u00a0because they are the ones who are\u00a0living through it. That principle applies just as powerfully to workspace design. The most revealing question\u00a0isn’t\u00a0“is this space being used?”\u00a0It’s\u00a0“what is this space telling us about how people feel?”\u00a0<\/p>

The good news is that once you start looking,\u00a0really looking,\u00a0the picture becomes remarkably clear. You begin to see which environments are generating energy and which are draining it. You begin to hear where trust exists and where\u00a0it’s\u00a0eroded. You\u00a0pick up on\u00a0the informal dynamics that no survey ever captures\u00a0and from that richer understanding, you can design and lead with far greater precision and empathy.\u00a0<\/p>

This\u00a0isn’t\u00a0a soft skill.\u00a0It’s\u00a0a strategic one. The leaders and designers who will get the most from their workspaces in the years ahead\u00a0won’t\u00a0just be the ones with the best briefs and the biggest budgets.\u00a0They’ll\u00a0be the ones who took the time to slow down, look around, and truly pay attention to the human beings in the room.\u00a0<\/p>

The answers are already there. We just need to start seeing them.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\n\t\t

Jennifer Bryan<\/b> specialises in helping leaders harness the power of emotion in the workplace without making it overly complicated.  She is a TEDx key note speaker, 3x published author, coach and Chief Empowerment Officer of her own company for nearly 15 years, which she named after her kids.  For over 25 years, she has worked with major corporations such as CBRE, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, Microsoft, Gartner, Barclays, to name a few.  For more information, visit www.JenniferLBryan.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walk into almost any newly designed workspace and you’ll notice it immediately; the biophilic walls, the carefully curated acoustic panels, the ergonomic seating, the collaboration zones bathed in natural light. We have never been more sophisticated about how offices look, and yet, productivity in many organisations remains stubbornly elusive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14,22,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-press","category-speakers-qa","category-spotlight-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megamultisite.divcomstaging.co.uk\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}