As organisations navigate the shift back to more time in the office, balancing corporate goals with employee wellbeing remains a critical priority.
Unsurprisingly, return-to-office mandates – according to a recent Forbes article – are leading to high levels of dissatisfaction and turnover.
“When companies dictate rather than collaborate, trust is eroded…Instead of forcing employees back to the office, listen to what they want and need. Then collaborate with them to find the best solution.”
Many of our projects are addressing this key question: how do we motivate employees to return to the office willingly?
Investing in upgraded amenities and better technology, as well as fostering social connection and company culture go a long way, but directly engaging employees in designing their workplace creates a much deeper and more meaningful connection.
Sherry Arnstein’s “Ladder of Citizen Participation,” though originally conceived for societal and political contexts, provides an interesting and provocative framework for understanding the levels of employee involvement in workplace design, especially if we think of the office as a village and employees as its citizens (an analogy often used by designers).
Understanding and applying Arnstein’s Ladder
Arnstein’s ladder outlines eight levels of participation, grouped into three categories: non-participation, tokenism, and citizen power—ranging from superficial involvement to full empowerment.
While many workplace transformation projects, especially those that integrate change management, have an underlying value of “doing with” rather than “doing to” many end up reflecting the lower rungs, where employees have no decision-making power.
Below, we begin to align each rung to workplace design:
At the base are Manipulation and Therapy, where employee input is either misleadingly presented or used to “fix” assumed deficiencies. For example, a company may redesign an office claiming it’s for productivity, while ignoring actual feedback—or install monitoring tools based on misguided assumptions about laziness.
Next is Tokenism, including Informing, Consultation, and Placation. Informing involves one-way communication—like announcing a new layout without input. Consultation invites feedback (e.g. surveys or focus groups), while management retains full control. Placation gives employees a nominal voice, such as a role on a design committee, though their influence is minimal.
We start to see true collaboration as we reach Partnership, Delegated Power, and Citizen Control. Partnership reflects genuine collaboration—employees participate in design workshops or decision-making processes. With Delegated Power, teams may have authority over key elements, like furniture selection or layout approval. At the highest level, Citizen Control, employees fully govern the design process—common in co-operatives or small teams—deciding on functionality, aesthetics, and spatial use collectively.
Co-design and beyond
Companies might hesitate to engage employees in the design process, concerned about time, resources, expectations, and feasibility. In conversation with ELVTR magazine, WORKTECH Academy Director Professor Jeremy Myerson, who specialises in inclusive design and the future of work, made a case for designing workplace experiences with empathy and curiosity.
“There’s growing interest in co-designing, participatory design. In consumer electronics, community architecture, and neighbourhood planning – they have been doing it for years.”
We’re seeing increasing recognition of the value among employers – involving employees beyond surface-level consultations with more meaningful forms of participation.
Applying Arnstein’s ladder of participation to workplace design highlights the spectrum of engagement strategies available to organisations. While informing and consulting employees can provide some benefits, true empowerment emerges at higher rungs like partnership and delegated power. Co-design stands out as a particularly effective approach, enabling meaningful collaboration between employees and decision-makers. By fostering participation at these higher levels, organisations can create workplaces that are not only functional and innovative but also reflective of the collective creativity and needs of their people.
This deeper level of participation not only leads to more functional and innovative workplaces, but also fosters a sense of ownership and belonging. When employees help shape the places they work in, they’re more likely to feel connected to those environments—making the office somewhere they want to be, not just a place they have to be. This investment in participatory design strengthens morale, boosts productivity, and enhances organisational cohesion, ultimately creating a more inclusive, dynamic, and engaging workplace culture.
