The Future of Workspaces: Steelcase’s Agile, Inclusive Approach: Patrick Woo (HR Director, APAC at Steelcase)

Patrick Woo: You have to realize that a one space fits all is no longer an option. You need flexibility in your spaces. Think about your own experience. Very few people are just sitting focused all the time on their laptop or their screen.

Patrick Woo: There's always some interactions. You're getting up, you're moving around, you're talking to colleagues, having meetings. You move throughout the day into different settings and work modes. So you have to be very intentional when you are designing your workspace to allow for movement beyond focus work and collaborative work around privacy and around public space.

Patrick Woo: Obviously, not everyone has the luxury of starting from scratch, so you can build it right from the ground up and be conscious and be planful for each of these aspects. But a lot of times people are working with what they have. So you have your fixed space and perhaps you leased it or purchased it at a time where you had this large workforce and that workforce is now shrunk. Shrunk based on overall numbers and shrunk because people are working hybrid now.

Patrick Woo: Some people are not always there every day. Now you have these empty spaces. So you're just working with parts of your space rather than fully leveraging it. Dorothy Yiu: Welcome to the HR Impact Show, where we have honest conversations with global people, leaders about building great workplaces.

I'm your host, Dorothy Yiu, CEO, and co-founder of EngageRocket. EngageRocket is a HR technology and advisory company that leverages on data to enhance employee experience from hire to retire. Dorothy Yiu: Joining us today is Patrick Woo. He is the HR director for APAC at Steelcase.

Steelcase is known globally for workplace innovation, and we're excited to dive into experience in designing great workplaces and building value driven organizations. Patrick, welcome to the show. Very happy to have you here and I'm excited to dive into our conversation as well. So, for our audience who may not be familiar with you or your background, could you share with us more about your journey and what brought you into HR and your role today?

Patrick Woo: Thanks Dorothy. I really appreciate invitation to join you on this podcast. Patrick Woo: So my role right now is I'm the director of Human Resources for Steelcase Asia Pacific. I'm based here in Singapore.

I've been doing HR for 20 plus years now. HR wasn't what I was thinking about when I first jumped into university and thought what could I do for a career? Patrick Woo: HR is probably the furthest thing from my mind. I started off like many people in university, not quite knowing what I wanted to do.

Trialing a lot of different topics but eventually with my mom I'm a Chinese ethnicity, she was basically just make sure you study something, you can get a job. Patrick Woo: She said, look, study business 'cause you can always find a job in business. So I ended up studying accounting. Worked on finishing my finance degree to supplement my accounting degree.

It wasn't quite exactly what I wanted to do. Patrick Woo: I was born and raised in Canada, but as being Chinese, I always, always hear stories from my mom about living in Hong Kong or my dad from his days in China, and particularly for my grandparents as they talk about the old country or the motherland. So I knew I wanted to be somewhere in China, just having that experience. Patrick Woo: A connection connected me with an investment company out of Hong Kong that at the time was investing into this joint venture between a European company and a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Patrick Woo: For the state owned enterprise, they have never done anything before with any type of western or multinational company before. So there was a lot of cultural I guess quakes and turmoil within that. The investment company wanted to protect their investments. So they asked to add in some consultants just to help with that transition and trying to bridge Western and Chinese cultures together.

Patrick Woo: So I somehow was able to get in a position where they trust me enough and they sent me in there for a six month contract to be part of this process to help. At the time I wasn't sure, but in hindsight, fortunate enough to be placed working directly with the HR director. And with her, we were doing a lot of work in terms of trying to help the local team get used to the idea of having foreigners come in become their leaders. Patrick Woo: It was that interaction I had with both those leaders that were looking for some sort of advice and counsel and for these people on the factory floor that were really, again, looking for the same thing, but being more comfortable hearing from someone, with the Chinese background, if you will, and to be able to speak to them.

Patrick Woo: I found that very enjoyable. I love the fact that I was able to see a tangible difference very quickly in what I was doing and work back and forth between these two groups helping them find their own solutions. Patrick Woo: So that was my first foray into HR. We did a lot of different things in terms of was introduced to compensation benefits in introduced to learning development, introducing just the general day-to-day.

HR is very generalist and me just tagging along, but offering insights and on how things would be done elsewhere. Patrick Woo: My six months turned into a year in Su Zhou. And from that I moved to Shanghai working with an HR consultancy. That's been a couple years there and then into Hong Kong.

I remember when I went to Asia, it was thinking about, I will live in Asia and work in Asia for five years. Just soak up the experience and then back to Canada. Within one month of being exactly five years that I went back to Canada. I went to Toronto for a few years and I found it a bit dull actually.

Patrick Woo: I missed the dynamics of Asia and just how much things were changing so quickly. It was challenging in Asia, but at the same time so much fun. Just to be out here and, to be kinda thrown into these chaotic situations. I enjoyed that and I think that really started my HR journey.

Since then, I'm just trying to keep building on it to where I am now. Dorothy Yiu: In your experience in China, there must have been some sort of culture shock or some differences when you first went to Su Zhou. And then also your role was to communicate with people on the ground at the factory location. What was that experience like and what are some of the cultural nuances or difference you've noticed with communicating or managing people in China?

Patrick Woo: It was interesting for me, so there was culture shock coming from both directions. Patrick Woo: For myself, it was really my first experience in mainland China. I remember even at the time when we were on the plane as we're coming into Shanghai, and it was a very different Shanghai. Looking at that, I'm like, wow, this is where I'm gonna be for at least the next half a year of my life, if not longer.

Patrick Woo: There is structure regardless of whether you are in North America or in China. Patrick Woo: There's a structure to the workday. There's a hierarchy that you have within companies. There's the boss, there's the boss's boss, and people see that.

So I thought that was much easier to ~ ~get accustomed to rather than outside of the workday where I have to be out on the street shopping for groceries or figuring where to get a haircut. Patrick Woo: Now these things I found much more challenging. I think a lot of times maybe in HR, particularly for HR professionals that have to deal with a lot of expatriates, we forget that, that the easiest thing is the work, because that's what they're most comfortable with. That's what they've had success, and that's probably why they've been assigned, into that position, into that foreign country.

Patrick Woo: What the hard part is think about all the stuff that sometimes we forget, which is the language, the culture all the different foods the different rhythms and lifestyle that take a lot longer to adjust to, or, and sometimes you never adjust to them. Patrick Woo: You just have to resign yourself and manage around that. I was coming in, we had a factory of 900 people. I was, I think, one of six or seven foreigners in the company.

Patrick Woo: And regardless of the fact that I was well below in terms of hierarchy and job title to the rest of the foreigners that were there, but mere the fact that I was a foreigner, I was treated differently. I didn't earn the respect, which I thought it's a mindset. Patrick Woo: You have to earn this. But I realized very quickly I was given it just for the mere fact that who I was, and this ambiguous title I held as a consultant and the people that I seemed to be associating with, head of finance, with the president or the general manager and such, because I was associated with them people would be more apt and more sensitive to what I was saying.

Patrick Woo: But that adjustment was, for me, it was really about getting to know people more as individuals. I really didn't want that type of distance, I wanted some level of approachability 'cause I was still young and these people were my colleagues and I had a whole new country and city to get myself accustomed to. Patrick Woo: So I wanted to build relationships. So I had to intentionally focus on that and try and build that.

But there are facades, I think most people have facades, particularly when communication isn't as fluent and hierarchies are a bit different. So you have to be conscientious and understand that, and conscious of~ ~those very true divisions that you have in terms of where you are perceived to be placed versus where others are and navigate through that. Patrick Woo: Probably why the experience I was drawn to HR was the fact that forced me to engage more with people. After 20 some years it's probably changed a little bit where I'm a little, different now, but at that time just engaging with people, learning about them, learning them as individuals, that was helping me as well learning about the culture.

Dorothy Yiu: Steelcase has an incredible achievement being named one of the world's most admired companies for 16 consecutive years. That's amazing. So what do you think is the secret sauce or that consistent factor behind this recognition? Patrick Woo: Yeah.

For 16 straight years, look, the world changes. After those last five years since COVID, the world changes like just on a dime. It's so rapid. It's so dynamic.

But what's kept Steelcase is we've been steadfast to our purpose and to living and breathing our core values, we've held onto those. Patrick Woo: Business strategies will change. Markets demands will change people and leaders in fact will change. Our products will change.

All that is constant change. But underneath it all, our foundation has been the same. We have the same core values we've always had. Act with integrity, treat people with dignity and respect.

Patrick Woo: We hold each other accountable. We believe that working together is better than working apart. We see better futures for people and for the planet. So these five core values underpin and provide us direction in all the business strategies that we do, the policies that we create, and where our focuses are as a company.

Patrick Woo: And I think that has created a strong sense of purpose. Right now our tagline is~ ~we create spaces to help people do their best work. We've had some form of that for years now about helping people unlock their potential. Patrick Woo: So whether it's been in a traditional office since, as we've had years ago, or moved to a more of an open workspace, which was trendy at one point to COVID, where all of a sudden it was thinking about how you can work remotely or if you are in the office, how it can remote work safely away from COVID and then back to hybrid work when people started returning to the office after COVID.

Patrick Woo: I think has given us the consistency that we've needed to be able to, as you said, 16 years as one of the world's most admired companies. Dorothy Yiu: Technically speaking, what are some of the ways that Steelcase has managed, to get value alignment across all your employees and in different locations as well? Patrick Woo: Every company will have some form of corporate values and sometimes there are just spoken and forgotten about. But I think Steelcase is a company that has really put energy and committed to bring them alive.

So there are parts the values are in our discussions. They're used by our CEO and our senior leaders all the way down. Patrick Woo: We have a new president Peter Lewchanin. He came to Asia Pacific only two years ago.

But he's had two things that have been really important for him and one of them has always been foundationally for him, it's about the core values and our employees in Asia Pacific living and breathing those core values. Patrick Woo: So in at least the first year, in every town hall, in every round table and every talk that he did in every article he wrote on our intranet or outside, he would always include the core values as a piece of that, which was a very intentional way that we were doing to try and reinforce these over and over again.

Patrick Woo: And I think that embeds it in the culture and making it more than just a poster on the wall. But it's really something people think about. And I see it in the language that I speak with other employees, that they are bringing it up and they're raising it, and they're holding each other accountable by calling people out when they see, Hey, you're not treating me with enough respect, or are you really acting for integrity when you do that? Patrick Woo: So it becomes something that is institutionalized into the organization and becomes a part of who we are.

And that's part of the culture that we've created. And I think that's part of why. People are attracted to Steelcase and stay at Steelcase. Dorothy Yiu: I love so much of what you've just said.

Overcommunicating is much better than under communicating. In Steelcase, you're literally making your value a common language for every employee to use, it's the same language that everyone speak of. Dorothy Yiu: Steelcase is also known globally for workplace innovation as you touched on a little bit just now. I would love to know what are some of the biggest trends that companies are seeing or moving towards especially in this post COVID era, when they're reshaping or re-imagining the workspace?

Patrick Woo: Steelcase, you're right. We're known for innovation and we're known for our insights, and we have a whole function in the company. It's called Workspace Futures. They are just looking and doing research and looking at where those trends are and what is happening in the market, and we're letting that guide a lot of our decisions and where we go rather than reacting to it, we're trying to get in front of it.

Patrick Woo: Our most recent research is showing that there are four macro trends that are happening in the workplace right now that are affecting how people work, how they use their offices, and how they build relationships with other people. And those four are number one, it's living on screen. Patrick Woo: Number two is the AI supercycle. Number three is a sustainability mindset.

And number four is this wellbeing urgency. So those are the four big shifts. Now going back to the first one, living on screen. Our research shows that over 56% of all meetings right now are in some hybrid forum, meaning it's in person, in part.

Or online. So you're literally spending over half your time on some sort of video screen, and that has further consequences downstream as well. That means for a lot of people you don't necessarily need to move around anymore. Patrick Woo: I can go from one meeting on my laptop, sign off and jump into the next one straight away.

There's no need for me to physically get up and move into another meeting room or go to another workspace because I can do it all right there. A consequence of that is there's less engagement, there's less interpersonal relationship building because I don't need to now go in a room with you. Patrick Woo: I don't need to move around as much where I may bump into someone organically and have that social interaction. Implications are, do you have the right workspace or the right work environment to allow for the fact that you are spending so much time on a screen.

Patrick Woo: If you're sitting in an open environment where everyone's in front of their laptops, standing shoulder to shoulder, all on these different conference calls, that can be quite distracting and it might not give you the privacy that you need. So I think one of the things that Steelcase we're looking at is how to manage a new normal within workplaces where people are spending so much of their time on screens. Patrick Woo: How do we manage it now where they can have that ability within their workspace to have the privacy that they need for these types of calls, but also have the public spaces where they can still socialize and collaborate with their colleagues as needed as well.

We're trying to figure out what that right balance is to create that most effective workspace where people can be working better. Patrick Woo: I think the AI supercycle is the next one. 75% of people right now are using AI in some capacity, whether you know it or not. So many programs now have AI built into them that you're using, and maybe you don't know it, but so many people are gravitating to some form of AI to help them write or to help them to create.

Patrick Woo: So with such a heavy dependency on AI, what does that mean to the workplace? The leaders that we have surveyed, over two thirds of them are saying that, yes, AI is important, but they don't really know what to do with it. They don't have a clear vision or strategy on how to incorporate it into their business. Patrick Woo: So that's a struggle.

And they look for ~ ~different people to advise. And sometimes that's HR because it is people related, like what can we do? And within HR, the same leaders are saying, I think again, this is over 60% are saying they will no longer consider hiring new people into the company that don't have some form of AI skill. Patrick Woo: Now imagine that as a qualification, I probably wouldn't have my job right now, I don't have that level of understanding.

But the implication for us as HR professional means A, how do we upskill our current talent so they're not left behind? As AI starts to flood what we do. There's a resistance. Patrick Woo: Some people have a natural resistance to in saying, oh, that's not natural.

I don't want to do that. That's true in some senses. But it is a reality. Rather than trying to figure a way to fend off and keep AI away from you, it's really looking at how do you embrace it?

Patrick Woo: Or how do you work with it and continue to coexist with it or leverage it if you will. For Steelcase, we're looking at it from a workplace perspective. So how does that impact work and the type of workspace that people need to deal with AI. Patrick Woo: I think a lot of it comes back to what I was alluding to earlier with living on screen.

The amount of privacy a person needs to be able to do their work nowadays versus the amount of public space or open space, they need to be able to continue to build relationships grow and develop human connections that are really the fabric of what a company culture is. Patrick Woo: The third one is sustainability. No longer is it just a nice to have, but it's becoming much more an imperative. That you must have some answer to the question, what is your company doing about sustainability?

Not only your customers are asking for it, but now your talent and your employees are asking the same question. Patrick Woo: What is your sustainability? What's your strategy? How are you helping to sustain the environment?

This is continuing to grow and grow. It's more prevalent in Europe and in Asia than in the Americas, but you see it rising as well. I remember reading something recently where it's saying, in the UK and in Germany, the number one job is sustainability manager. Patrick Woo: In the Americas, the top three of the top 10 jobs in the market right now are all sustainability related.

This is not just a fad or a, short-term trend. It's becoming embedded into how companies need to work and plan and work moving forward as well. Patrick Woo: Sustainability mindset. For Steelcase, it's about how do we adapt to it and make sure that we are supporting that whether it is adding sustainability into our products we have products that are a hundred percent all from recyclable materials.

To the spaces that we create, which are not always fixed, but can be reusable, can be moved around. Patrick Woo: It has the flexibility to be moved from one spot to the other. This allows for that mindset of reuse and sustainability. And finally wellbeing.

I think we all have felt that over the last years of COVID there was a huge concern about your physical health, but it's expanded more than just physical health. Patrick Woo: It's now about your mental health as well, and people are really looking towards that our research is showing there are high numbers and increasing numbers of people saying they're no longer thriving at work, but they're struggling. They're struggling with the pace of work, the workload and the amount of change and the fatigue that instills when you're constantly changing.

Patrick Woo: So people are struggling with that particularly this new generation with Generation Z. They will be the majority of the workforce by 2030, and their anxiety levels are rapidly rising and rising, and they're no longer asking, is this a benefit or a provision that you as an organization are providing for us. Patrick Woo: It's now become an expectation that they are looking at companies and saying, you must be providing for my mental health as well as my physical health if I should be working for you.

It's showing up in polls as the second most important thing to people. Number one is family, and number two is this whole sense of wellbeing. Patrick Woo: How you address this and manage it, will become a critical topic for companies and for HR in particular as we're supporting people as we move forward. Dorothy Yiu: So four trends, and I really resonated with all four of them, and if I can just touch on the first one on screen time.

So how do you balance, either within Steelcase or in the work that you do with your clients, that privacy need that you talked about, as well as the facilitation of the connection that employees need, which also solves trend four, on the mental health part? Patrick Woo: Yeah. I think the first thing is you have to realize that a one space fits all is no longer an option. You need flexibility in your spaces think about your own experience.

Very few people are just sitting focused all the time on their laptop or their screen. Patrick Woo: There's always some interactions. You're getting up, you're moving around, you're talking to colleagues, having meetings. Some are large meetings, some are one-on-one meetings.

You move throughout the day into different settings and work modes. So you have to be very intentional when you are designing your workspace to allow for movement beyond focus work and collaborative work around privacy and around public space. And there are different ways to do that. Patrick Woo: Obviously, not everyone has the luxury of starting from scratch, so you can build it right from the ground up and be conscious and planful for each of these aspects.

But a lot of times people are working with what they have. So you have your fixed space and perhaps you leased it or purchased it at a time where you had this large workforce and that workforce is now shrunk. Shrunk based on overall numbers and shrunk because people are working hybrid now. Patrick Woo: Some people are not always there every day.

Now you have these empty spaces. I think it's a shame if you just keep those spaces just empty. So you're just working with parts of your space rather than fully leveraging it. That means moving things around and creating these different environments or what we'd like to say communities.

Patrick Woo: One thing we're doing right now is we're leaning on what we call community based design. This is a design approach inspired by urban planning. As you build up cities, you're building for different neighborhoods and communities that allow for different types of activities. For example, think about small city.

Patrick Woo: You have your business district where the business happens and focus. You have your university district where people learn. You have urban parks where people socialize, and you have your city center where people come together to be a part of it. And you have your little neighborhoods where clusters of different people sit.

Patrick Woo: We're rebuilding and reimagining the workspace for people is through community based design. For example, we just launched our new Singapore work life, which is our office here in Singapore. And as you go into it, we have a space which is dedicated for the leadership community. So our leadership team sits in a semi-private space where they can collaborate and speak freely.

Patrick Woo: Within that space, if you narrow it down, there are spaces where they can have group meetings, spaces where leaders can do focus work and spaces where they can just socialize. Moving throughout the office, we have our other spaces where we've taken away all the digital aspects. Patrick Woo: It's forcing more socialization, it's some couches, some sofas. It's just a space where people can sit back, have a cup of coffee, but I'm have to interact with you as a person rather than, as you said, it's so easy now just to text someone.

I have a colleague Patrick Woo: she's probably 50 meters from me down the office, but it's so much easier than me getting off my butt and walking over there just to type that. But we're losing that human connection, and we're losing that engagement of each other. As you think about most meetings that you go and come out of, you're not robotic, where you sit in a meeting, go through rigidly, every agenda point, and then you get up and walk to your next meeting. Patrick Woo: There's usually a point where you finish the meeting.

You and I are just socializing. We're just chatting. We're developing a relationship. We're having that additional conversation.

Or there's these side conversations that spring up where people are now innovating. Because usually in a hybrid meeting, one person can only speak at a time, right? Patrick Woo: Because they're usually someone on the screen, they're speaking, everyone's being quiet. But it's after that meeting dissipates and you actually have people clustering together and having these other side conversations where real true creativity and innovation happens because now you're together, you're feeling each's energy, so you wanna be able to create spaces that allow for that, to allow for that movement.

Patrick Woo: So we talk a lot about creating choice and control for people to give people that opportunity to move about and select what type of space and environment they need for that particular moment. And from that you'll find that people will start to, even if they're spending still a lot of time on the screen, but they're also moving into these flows where they can move from one to the other as well and still maintain that engagement and maintain that sense of belonging and community that people are really seeking and trying to find as they come back to work.

Dorothy Yiu: Let's talk about budgets. How can organization embark on this with varying levels of, budget and resources available. Is there a starting point? Any advice for companies who may wanna repurpose spaces but may not have a very big budget?

Dorothy Yiu: If you have a great space, like you said, opportunity to build from ground up, that's easy, right? 'cause you can design with intention, but what if you don't have that luxury? Patrick Woo: That's okay. So as you said, not everyone has that unlimited budget.

In fact, very few of us do to redesign everything from scratch. Patrick Woo: But you can take existing spaces and just create. Go back to what we said earlier, there's a huge trend around sustainability. So it's about reuse, it's about being flexible.

So it's using, for example, screens, desk screens, or different types of partitions that can allow you to create these temporary spaces. Patrick Woo: We have different collections that allow movements so they can be moved in and out to create temporary meeting spaces or temporary privacy spaces where people can engage in whatever they need to work at their best. Patrick Woo: So it doesn't have to be these huge investments. For example, a lot of times meeting rooms.

Now if you're trying to create privacy just something that comes to my mind is most meetings have glass walls, right? And you think if I want to create privacy, I'll have to tear down that glass and put up a wall. Patrick Woo: No, let's put up a curtain. A rolling curtain can do the same job or some sort a film on the screen or on the glass can create that intimacy and that privacy that people need.

Some more cost effective solutions to be able to create those spaces. But the key is to have those spaces. Patrick Woo: I think the biggest thing that we're seeing and the biggest ask we're having from our customers is how do we create more privacy. Because I think it's becoming much more of that, that people are now working better and still on the screen, which means there are a lot more meetings happening throughout the day than there were in the past.

Patrick Woo: But there are not more meeting rooms available than they were in the past. So now you've gotta be able to create and allow people to just move and flow between those. And these can be just small spaces. You don't need big spaces anymore.

You just need flexible spaces. Dorothy Yiu: I do wanna switch gear from workspace innovation to talk about diversity. Dorothy Yiu: So Steelcase beyond being the world's most admired company, you've also been ranked on the Forbes list of America's best employers for women. I come to learn that Steelcase is also very committed to inclusive hiring, so a lot of diversity practices.

So tell us more about this area. Patrick Woo: Sure. I'll talk about Steelcase Asia Pacific. As you rightly said, Steelcase is well respected in terms of what we do for gender and our focus in our gender policies.

Here in Asia Pacific, we have a program called Women of Steel, and this originated in India at our plant in Pune, in India. Patrick Woo: At the time, we had about 10% women and 90% men at the plant. Now that wasn't too far off the national average in India, which is about 12% at the time. So 12%.

Well, that was very unbalanced. So we took it upon ourselves and said how can we raise our level of gender balance and our whole focus of fostering, a culture of inclusion? Patrick Woo: How can we more inclusive particularly towards women and create a better sense of belonging for the women that were already in the factory but also within the community as well. So what we did was we purposefully tried to attract more women into the community.

And this was such a huge challenge, particularly in a culture in India where manufacturing is quite frowned upon for women. Patrick Woo: I think there were a lot of misconceptions. What it'd be like for women to work alongside men or in what perceived to be a very dirty and sometimes unsafe environment and the type of patriarchy that could be perceived to be in an environment like that. Patrick Woo: So to attract women, it wasn't just about going out to post some job ads on LinkedIn and they would come in.

It necessitated more than that. So what our HR team did around Pune, they went out in the community. Not only did they talk to the women in the community to talk about the experience that they could have with Steelcase working in our factory, they talked to their husbands, they talked to their families, their parents, who also held these deep rooted beliefs or paradigms about what that experience would be. Patrick Woo: They talked to community elders as well, which are very influential to talk about how that experience really is.

And we invited them to come tour the plant and take a look for themselves to learn about Steelcase, learn about where our priorities are and where our policy stand to help women feel more included inclusive and to build that sense of being treated fairly and treated in a way where they can feel like they belong. Patrick Woo: It was also about talking to our own internal leaders as well. 'cause they needed also the buy-in to understand that, hey, it's a good thing as we bring more women into the factory as well, again, to push back on those widely held and very deep rooted beliefs on what that environment would look like.

Patrick Woo: Where we are now is over 50% of our team are now women. We have Steelcase first all women line from one of our products. Our series one task chair is now all produced by a full manufacturing line of women. So these are huge successes for us, but it's a success not only for Steelcase in terms of we went out and became more inclusive to create more gender balance.

Patrick Woo: But what it's done for the confidence of the women in the community, these are women now that have a stronger sense of self-confidence. They have ability to earn for themselves, which was not the case for all of them. They have families now that are much more receptive and families now are looking towards Steelcase or similar experiences to enjoy be more independent. Patrick Woo: So it's about giving women that type of opportunity.

So as I said before, one of our core values is better futures for people and the planet encompasses community. So we're looking to better the community. So we see this as a success not only in terms of business outcomes, where we are a much stronger brand in that community, obviously we're attracting people, but it's also helped us win business. I remember one customer in particular.

This is a multinational organization that we were bidding for our project with. They came in, they heard the experience, they talked to some of these women on the floor about their experience. Patrick Woo: Not only did we win that business, because our values so well aligned with theirs. They said, look, you're a company we wanna work with.

They went back and asked us, how can we replicate a similar type of initiative in our company? Can you help us? So there's that. Patrick Woo: But just looking at the women and the stories that they were able to share.

We have women that have talked about how they were in abusive relationships but had no way out because they could not find a way to earn enough for themselves. But Steelcase had this opportunity. Patrick Woo: They're ones that were saying their family looked down upon them because of where they worked. Now they're proud of them and they actually go out and tell their family and friends, oh, my daughter works here.

These are just little droplets in terms of the community around there that we're making these small changes, but changes nonetheless that align with our values, align with our customer values, align with the community values. Patrick Woo: And it goes back to, a question you asked, a few minutes ago about how have we won 16 years a row in a row world at most admired company? How do we sustain that? We sustain it because we're still living and we're still making decisions, and we're still guided by those core values.

Whether or not it created massive business outcomes for it is immaterial to the fact that we're staying holding true to making our communities a bit better. Dorothy Yiu: Patrick, I must say that is one of the most impressive stories about a company's commitment to diversity I've ever heard. and I speak to a lot of HR leaders, right? Dorothy Yiu: How purposeful and intentional that Steelcase really built into the DNA of everything that you do.

It's amazing. As you were talking, I was just thinking , how do you measure success outcome, there's so many points of success you can point to here, be it, living out the values, the employee branding, the societal impact, but then you also gave the example of the business impact, being able to attract even more business. That's truly amazing and somewhat related is what, in your opinion then would be the ideal workplace of the future? We've talked about diversity, we've talked about innovation.

What do you think that will look like? Patrick Woo: I think in the past you could have pictured one and with some level of confidence believe that this is what it will be for the next 50 years so you can invest into it, make it just perfect and ideal. Every little nuance and every detail you plan for, and then you just let it run for a long time. Patrick Woo: That's no longer the case.

We know right now the world is changing at a pace so rapid and so unpredictable. It's never happened before and I think it's naive for us to think that it will all calm down at some point. Now, maybe it will calm to an extent, but we know the change will be constant. It will keep coming.

Patrick Woo: So an ideal workplace, I think is one that has built in the flexibility to allow it to be agile and to allow it to be able to change as the peoples and the employees, their need changes in the future. Right now we are talking a lot about living on screens, about AI, about wellbeing, and to help address those needs, it's building a lot of choice and control. Enough private spaces to enough social spaces, to collaborative spaces to public spaces, whatever you want to call that, but just different modes of work.

You're addressing that and allowing for that flexibility. I think the ideal workplace in the future encompasses all of that and allows it to go back and forth. Patrick Woo: Years ago I responded to someone by saying, the only way to manage uncertainty is to build in agility. And in terms of workspaces is one way to do it, and you can do it with your people as well in terms of how you bring in talent what they are able to do and how they can stretch and then also fold back into their specialties.

Patrick Woo: It's all about creating agility as we continue to live in this very volatile world. Dorothy Yiu: So on agility, I agree, right? I do feel that agility is something that most company look for in talents today. In Steelcase, how do you ensure that you're bringing in people right from the get go with this agility or if they're already in, how do you hold them accountable to, being agile?

Patrick Woo: I think accountability, like it's for anything, whether it's agility or anything else. You have to embed it and build it into your performance and your business targets. So if you want to measure people and assess people, A, they need that clarity to know that's an expectation. So you build it into that as an expectation.

Patrick Woo: You communicate it very clearly and often, and then you follow up. You just measure it and you can track and see whether people are doing the things that they're asked of. Now, agility can be a bit more nebulous because how do you measure that, right? Patrick Woo: What's being agile?

So it's about how quickly you can make decisions, how clear those decisions are, and how clear on what you're supposed to do when that happens. When you're talking about a company or an individual that's agile, saying that person is very responsive. Patrick Woo: They can change quickly, they can focus on something new very quickly. This only happens if you have very clear decision rights, do you know who owns what decision?

Therefore you can get a response or an empowerment very quickly to act on that. So that's something you can measure, how quickly that's happening. It can be quantifiable, it can be based on just some more subjective feedback on that. Patrick Woo: From Steelcase's perspective, we are introducing more assessments more evidence-based selection into our hiring practices.

We are making sure that it's not just about skills and experience, those basic traditional qualifications. We're looking for individuals that have the ability to have critical thinking to navigate through more chaotic situations, particularly in a world where everything is changing at this pace. Dorothy Yiu: So now I'll move on to a bit of a fun part of this podcast and I'm gonna ask you a couple of rapid fire questions. Patrick Woo: Sure.

Dorothy Yiu: Now, the first one, I personally am very interested to find out what your answer is because just like you, I was also a accounting graduate but then pursue HR. Dorothy Yiu: So what advice would you give for young people who are graduating now who may not have HR as their first choice and maybe still unsure about what career path they want to pursue? Patrick Woo: I think the first thing is this whole concept of continuous or lifelong learning. Never let go of that, hold tightly onto that because you never know when you wanna make a change in your career.

Patrick Woo: And you never know what will excite or create passion within you. So I think people that are feeling like the resign to a particular career path and will never get out, their engagement will drop and their enthusiasm drops and you look for other things that will excite you outside of your work. Patrick Woo: But if you're continually learning at work, you'll see opportunities come up. You'll see pathways that allow you to venture one way or the other.

And then I say to young people, it's never too late to change. I think I changed my majors three times in the first year. And then I still didn't figure out what I wanted to do professionally until years after that, after, another degree and another graduate work before I finally figured it out. Patrick Woo: And even now, there are days where I'm like, is there something beyond HR for me?

I don't know. And it doesn't matter at this point. I'm enjoying the moment that I am right now. I'm learning more about myself and how I can work better.

And if there's other opportunities, I'd like to be able to feel that I can embrace them. Dorothy Yiu: Okay. Continuous learning. Then my next question is, if you could instantly master skill, what would it be?

Patrick Woo: One of my personal passions is pottery. I love working with clay and. Pottery so I'm not that good. My wife humors me and she sometimes puts out some of the pots and the bowls that I've made.

Patrick Woo: If I could master a skill, I'd say I'd love to become a master potter. Dorothy Yiu: Oh, wow. I've tried that before. I'm terrible at it.

What's one thing you wish employees understood better about HR? Patrick Woo: I'd say how multifaceted HR is. A lot of people see HR is, oh, you hire and fire people, or you help me, you do payroll for me. Patrick Woo: Yeah, those are part of the functions of HR, but it's so much more than that.

There are so many different aspects to HR in terms of learning, wellbeing just the impact that HR can make. Right now, you see HR taking a more strategic voice in organizations, that HR can be an equal partner at that table with business leaders as we drive the business forward, because HR we're actually leading and guiding probably the biggest asset that companies have, which are people. Patrick Woo: HR can be a strong partner in that rather than just a reactive supporter of it.

Dorothy Yiu: Absolutely agree. And my final question, if you could have coffee with anyone, who would it be? Patrick Woo: My initial response is a bit boring, but it's my wife. I would love to just have a cup of coffee with her, with our kids off to the side so we can just have some her and me time.

Patrick Woo: But if I have to think of someone else. I just watched the movie recently. It's A Complete Unknown. It's a story and life of Bob Dylan.

I would love to meet Bob Dylan. I think he's a fascinating musician and poet. I've loved his music since I was a young kid and I find there's so much depth to a lot of his songs and how he writes. Patrick Woo: And I'd love to just be able to sit with him and just probe his mind on how he's come up with some of these songs and the meanings which are still so open to interpretation.

Dorothy Yiu: Patrick, it's been a absolute pleasure having this conversation with you and listening to how purposeful, value driven, and almost in some ways already embody the ideal workplace of the future. Dorothy Yiu: So thank you very much for your time and for spending the last 40 minutes with me. Patrick Woo: Thanks Dorothy. Thanks again for the invitation.

I enjoy myself. Dorothy Yiu: To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to our HR Impact Show. If you have enjoyed the conversation, please like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcasts. You can also subscribe to our community at engagerocket.

co/hrimpact. I'll see you in the next episode.