About Place

Workplace strategy experts Domino Risch and Kirsten Brown share how companies in Australia are layering workplace hospitality, new technologies, and a “give-it-a-go" attitude to guide workplace innovation and catapult the market into one of the most progressive in the world. And as flexible space outpaces commercial real estate as the new office go-to, they discuss what it takes to integrate authe...

Designing the perfect operational model gets easier when organizations prioritize their stakeholders in the process. In this episode, Assal Yavari, VP of Global Real Estate and Safety at Workday, shares how rigorous feedback systems help prioritize employees—and drive successful return-to-office rates. We also learn how the team uses “centers of excellence” to nurture talent.

What does workplace planning look like at a global company in the business of play? Timothy Ahrensbach is LEGO Group’s Global Director of Workplace Innovation. Listen in as he shares intuitive models for planning workplaces that are inclusive, productive, and of course, a bit playful. Plus, learn about the developments powering the LEGO Office 2.3 concept.

In this season of MillerKnoll’s podcast, we’re deepening our focus on the impact of the workplace on organizational outcomes—and our lives. What new ideas or practices are making the places where we work and live better around the world? How can we all apply them? We get into it in this season of About Place. Start listening.   millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action/about-place-podcast  

Two experts from MillerKnoll’s Global Research and Insights team recap last episode’s conversation on the Harkin Institute’s inclusive design, before revealing new insights from our Global Workplace Assessment and examining the current state of work location policies. Next season, we’re reshaping the podcast to examine the future of work, plus our clients’ most pressing near-term needs for support...

The road to inclusivity stops for many buildings at ADA compliance, but two architects for The Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement at Drake University are charting a different path. Listen in as they discuss replicable design principles of the institute, which combines sustainability, accessibility, and inclusivity for people with an array of disabilities.  

Thirty years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), there’s one research institute still pushing for more inclusive spaces for all. The Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement at Drake University was created to deliver lasting support for social justice issues such as disability advocacy. Listen in as its founders, Ruth Harkin and former U.S. senator To...

What does it take to create workspaces people actually want to be in? Using smart technology as a sandbox, our guests explore how workplaces can forecast employee needs, measure results, and use data to ideate new people-centric solutions for using space. Listen in as Alea Fairchild, Ph. D., Director of the technology policy think-tank The Constantia Institute, and Jeremy Pollack, CEO and co-found...

Office density before the pandemic didn’t provide an ideal workplace experience for anyone. That’s just one of the takeaways from our chat with two experts from the Global Research and Insights team at MillerKnoll. Listen in as Katie Finlayson, our Workplace Strategy Manager, and Bertie Van Wyk, our Insight Programme Manager, touch on employee connection and belonging and unpack the power of purpo...

For this episode, we welcome two guests from the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS). Carsten Beck is Director of Research and Lovisa Volmarsson is an Advisor and Futurist. Our conversation started with a question about the implications of remote work on urban centers, but wandered into issues of livability, sustainability, economics, and public policy. The discussion generated plenty o...

Like most weeks this season, we welcome two guests to this episode. However, since both have a knack for looking at issues from multiple angles, it feels like we’re packing in more insights per minute this time. Pallavi Shrivastava is Head of Workplace Consulting, West Asia for global real estate services firm JLL. Mike Petrusky is Director of Podcasts for global worktech company Eptura. He also h...

Our guests for this episode come bearing research from their respective organizations to spark business leaders to think differently about the physical environment. Despina Katsikakis is an Executive Partner and Global Head of Total Workplace for global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. Kevin Delaney is CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and co-founder of Charter, a future-of-work media and re...

When the insights come at you as fast as they do in this podcast, sometimes you need a chance to reflect and consider how they apply to your world. So, this season, we’ve invited members of our Global Research and Insights team to join Ryan to discuss the themes that surface every couple of episodes. This week, we welcome Michelle Ossmann, PhD., Director of Healthcare Knowledge and Innovation, and...

This week’s guests explore workplace wellbeing in both theory and practice. Gethin Nadin is a psychologist and Chief Innovation Officer at Benefex, a UK-based employee experience software company. He also consults with organizations like BT Consumer, where Andrea Kilgour serves as People Director. Together, they challenge listeners to think more strategically about employee wellbeing, from the rol...

To kick off Season 3, host Ryan Anderson welcomes Matthew Boyle, Senior Work Shift Reporter at Bloomberg News, and Annie Dean, VP of Team Anywhere at software development firm Atlassian. The dynamic among the three of them is fast-paced and the insights come one after the other. Listen as Matthew shares takeaways from his reporting on what he calls “the messy present of work,” while Annie adds pra...

Welcome to Season 3! To kick off this season, your host—and our VP of Global Research and Insights—Ryan Anderson offers his thoughts on the state of the workplace today. Get his take on the variables affecting the future of work around the world, how the workplace can better support flexibility (hint: it’s not just through hybrid policies), and why organizations need to do more to address employee...

We’ve come to the end of another season, but there’s still time to look back in our season wrap-up. Host Ryan Anderson puts a bow on Season 2 by sharing new data that challenges listeners to shift their focus from returning to the office, and toward a reimagining of the office for this new era of work. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action .  

As our Digital Marketing Strategy Lead at MillerKnoll, Chris Coleman has been helping Ryan Anderson answer questions from customers wondering whether they should start hosting meetings or other work functions in the metaverse. These questions get asked so often that Ryan invited Chris to join him on the podcast to share a digestible explainer of all things metaverse—or, as Chris prefers to refer t...

This week, we welcome Corinne Murray, founder of Agate Studio. As a leading workplace strategist, Corinne helps organizations think differently about how they approach the creation, management, and evolution of their places of work. In an enlightening conversation, Ryan and Corinne explore the nuanced world of the future of work, touching on several approaches employers can use to evaluate both th...

Disruption has been the theme of Ronen Journo’s 28-year career, so his perspective on this period of rampant experimentation in corporate real estate is particularly prescient. Ronen is Senior Managing Director and European Head of Management Services & Operations at Hines, a privately owned real estate investment, development, and management firm. In this episode, he and Ryan discuss how the pand...

Inclusive design is a topic not nearly enough people are talking about. This week’s guests are working to fix that. Jolene De Jong is an Applied Insights + Design Specialist at MillerKnoll and Joseph White is the company’s Director of Design Strategy. They recently collaborated on a white paper for the peer-reviewed CRE Journal. In it—and in this episode—they unpack the need for architects and des...

Host Ryan Anderson could not wait to share this episode with you. Our guest, Cali Williams Yost, has spent her career helping organizations reimagine not just where, but also how and when their people work to improve performance and well-being. With a mix of infectious enthusiasm and the truth-bomb directness of someone who has been advocating for these shifts for 27 years, Cali makes a strong bus...

On this week’s episode, we chat with Craig Robinson, Chief Growth Officer at flexible workplace provider, Industrious. With more than 20 years of experience in the commercial real estate business, Craig helps organizations to be more innovative in their approach to real estate by expanding their concept of "workplace" and providing greater employee choice while managing costs and risk. Join host R...

Our guest this week is on a mission to convince organizations everywhere to take the double disruption of COVID plus inflation as an opportunity to change for the better. Debbie Lovich is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. She brings her sharp wit and analytical mind to this conversation about the need for leaders to model flexibility, how our reasons for being in t...

Season 2 rolls on with a visit from Samantha Fisher, Head of Dynamic Work at Okta, an identity and access management company that’s actually expanding its number of offices even though it does not require its 5,000-plus employees to come into the office. In an insightful conversation with host Ryan Anderson, Sam breaks down the implications of enforcing a standard eight-hour workday and shares how...