How can we maximize the ROI of stakeholder engagement?

Our team is continually exploring the tools and strategies that can improve stakeholder relationships, uncover hidden opportunities, and facilitate creative problem-solving. Stakeholder engagement is sometimes viewed as time-consuming and difficult to execute, but a meta-analysis of hundreds of corporate responsibility studies finds firms that prioritize stakeholder engagement can increase their market valuation up to 80% compared to those with weak relationships. In addition to myriad project-related benefits, stakeholder engagement facilitates mutual respect and trust—the fuel that powers project success, community happiness, and higher profits.

What could we get from working in-person?

In a world where many employees have the tools they need to work from home, why should they return to offices where pre-pandemic problems remain unresolved? Before the pandemic, 76% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with their office plan. Employees coped with noisy, open-plan layouts, poor lighting, and lack of personalization in their workspaces. Now, roughly 50% of leaders say their company already requires, or will require, employees to return to in-person work full-time in 2023. Our Perkins Eastman Design Strategy team is exploring effective ways to address long-standing workplace challenges and transform the office to entice, rather than force, people back.

How can the workplace help employees flourish?

A typical full-time worker will have spent roughly 90,000 hours working by the time they retire. How—and where—we spend that extraordinary investment greatly affects our happiness and quality of life.

Flourishing—the opposite of languishing—is defined as a state of goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience. While many companies strive to create workplace environments that support employee well-being, fewer than 50% of employees say they are flourishing at work.

Our latest research explores simple science-based strategies that can be applied to workplace design—or anywhere—to help set the stage for human flourishing.