See Research has a new home! And I am as excited as any Millennial Londoner about getting the keys to a new place – even if it is owned by my company. The Google AI overview gloriously describes our new address as “a short, dead-end alley with a charming name and some hints of history.” But we’re less interested in ‘hints of history’, we’re looking to the future. And I’m excited to collaborate in building a space that assists us in continuing to grow & thrive as researchers!
The benefits of spending face to face time with colleagues aren’t gained simply by spending time together in one place. The space itself needs to foster & spark genuine engagement, interaction & creativity to make it worth coming in for, especially for those who face challenges commuting, e.g., working parents or people with low mobility. The space needs to pull us towards it.
Time to start a Pinterest board to design the perfect office for collaboration & creativity! Joyful house plants to maximise our brain oxygen levels, sofas for relaxing and informal brainstorming, office showers to inspire a lunchtime running club. Many of my ‘aha moments’ happen in office showers, (perfectly clean aha moments, before you grimace).
But actually, my excitement is about more than the walls and décor – it’s what this new home means for us as a business. Our dedication to deliver meaningful and engaging insights to the brands we work with has ensured See’s success. That success has meant we can take this next step to having a new address, a building of our own. And having hub days when the whole company get together in one space has been a key part in our past successes and will no doubt be critical to our future successes.
Being in an office altogether with my colleagues means:
- Spontaneous water cooler chats (read “Brita filter tap”) resulting in idea sparks to strengthen the depth of my consultancy input in projects without a single Post-it note being harmed.
- Leaving the building for a lunchtime stroll together fostering authentic relationships where I know my colleagues on a deeper level. I start to trust them. I want to come to work and collaborate with them because I feel comfortable sharing even half-baked, totally wrong-footed ideas.
- Everyone inputting into projects, so we really interrogate our assumptions and test our insights from everyone’s different lens.
- A stronger sense of team identity where we are more empathetically connected, more ‘mood attuned’ if you like. The world is far from perfect, and as well as celebrating the highs, we support each other through the lows – also, birthday breakfast bagels!
And science backs up our experience. Research from Battiston et al. has found creativity is higher when face-to-face communication can happen, and Watanabe et al. shows informal face-to-face interactions with colleagues improves mood-state and therefore brain activity – so it makes sense to link See Research’s success to our IRL interactions and efforts to build human connection.
It is also one of the reasons we believe that often, face-to-face research is the best. And yes, the Lens (our in-house research facility that is available to rent) will be back with a bang in 2025 for us to gather with clients and participants in a shared space for bigger insights and deeper perception.
We aren’t all lucky enough to have access to an office space and we aren’t all able to enjoy our colleagues’ company, and I am grateful to say both are true for me. A nice office and great work mates make me a better researcher by maximally engaging me in my work and bringing out my best side. And it’s fun. I’ll leave you with the output from our latest social. I have no idea why Cait thought to bring tiny hands out for the evening, but I know I will never see one again and not think of these colleagues that are very quickly turning into friends. And, being both short and dead-ended, the tiny hands have much in common with our new address.
Please come and visit us at Hat & Mitre Court, EC1 soon – we’d love to see you
