The Future
of Office Work

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Brdo Congress Center, Slovenia

3rd Annual Conference & Exhibition

The Future
of Office Work

Workplace Design Conference is an experience-based, results-focused event bringing together professionals and business leaders who strive to create more efficient workspaces for their organizations.

A day full of questions and answers, challenges and solutions and best practice case studies from the local and international workplace strategy projects.

Alenka Kragelj Eržen

FOUNDER & CEO
Kragelj Architects, Slovenia

Workplace Survey Results

The latest  Slovenia Workplace Survey 2020 was presented at WDC20. It provided great insight into what hundreds of Slovenian and International companies think about the link between the quality of the workplace, productivity, and business performance.

3rd Annual Workplace Design Conference was a success!

WDC20 was a great success with over 100 attendees, 10 sponsors & exhibitors and a new media partner The Slovenia Times. See photos from the event.

Our Attendees

Workplace Design Conference is designed for Business Leaders, Workplace Strategists, HR Professionals, Facility Managers, Real Estate Professionals, Interior Architects, Designers and other key people who want to improve performance, collaboration and talent retention in their organizations by matching design and technology with strategic vision and sound management.

Live from Miami!

Bestselling author Randy Gage joined us via live streaming with his presentation The Future of Leadership.

Randy Gage was brought to WDC20 with the support of

WDC20 Speakers

Randy Gage

Author & Speaker
RandyGage.com, USA

Randy Gage is an American thought leader with a unique vision of how to succeed in the new economy. He is the author of 13 books that have been translated into 25 languages, including the New York Times bestsellers Risky Is the New Safe and Mad Genius. Randy has worked as a marketing strategist by private and public companies in Slovenia, Croatia, and other countries in the region.

Read our interview with Randy.

Kyle De Bruin

Development Director
Leesman, UK

With a background supporting major international consumer brands and retailers delivering their products to market, Kyle specialises in providing solutions to complex business challenges across the globe. Kyle now applies that experience to the workplace industry, delivering analysis and insights to the CRE, FM and HR communities at many of the world’s largest and most forward thinking organisations.

Leesman measures employee experience via the Leesman Index – a global business intelligence tool that captures employee feedback on how effectively the workplace supports them and their work, and provides organisations with critical insights into how their buildings are performing. Performance is then benchmarked against the world’s largest employee experience database of 800,000 individual responses – of which the statistical robustness, research richness and diversity is unrivalled.

Thomas Fundneider

Founder & CEO
theLivingCore, Austria

Thomas Fundneider is founder and CEO of knowledge and innovation architects theLivingCore (www.theLivingCore.com), specializing in the areas of strategy, innovation and transformation. Having his background in landscape architecture, his focus for many years has been on establishing an innovative and entrepreneurial culture and mindset in organizations. He co-developed leading-edge innovation methods and practical frameworks, such as “Enabling Spaces“ and “Emergent Innovation“. Thomas Fundneider is lecturing at several universities in Europe on the topics of entrepreneurship, innovation and Enabling Spaces. He is a member of the Board of the LaFutura trend network, as well as board member of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science.

Dr. Nigel Oseland

WP Strategist & Change Manager
Workplace Unlimited, UK

Nigel Oseland is a workplace strategist, environmental psychologist and change manager who understands the human experience, specifically what sort of behaviors can lead to greater engagement in the workplace, more ideas and higher productivity. Nigel Oseland is a sought-after international speaker, and author of several papers and books, including “Improving Office Productivity – A Practical Guide for Business and Facilities Managers”. Back in 2003 he set up the Workplace Trends series of conferences which grew into a must-attend event for workplace design and management professionals. In 2018 Workplace Trends expaded to Copenhagen and New York.

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During his consulting career Nigel has worked with the world’s leading finance, retail and technology companies including BP, Shell, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, GSK, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and Visa International. He runs his workplace consultancy Workplace Unlimited, based in London, UK, and collaborates with Kragelj on workplace strategy projects in continental Europe.

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Read our interview with Nigel.

Alenka Kragelj Eržen

Founder & Principal Architect
Kragelj Architects, Slovenia

Alenka Kragelj Erzen is an architect, workplace strategist, designer and project leader with 15 years of experience on projects for corporate clients. She is also a coach, change manager and workshop facilitator helping organizations and their people transition to new, more efficient ways of working. Alenka successfully managed extensive research, workplace design and office relocation projects for clients such as A1 and VIP Mobil (members of Telekom Austria Group), Outfit7, Grey Worldwide, Krka, Prva Group, Triglav Insurance Group, Medis, DARS, Unicredit, Sberbank and others.

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She passionately advocates for the idea of putting people in the center of workplace design. Alenka speaks at industry events, and has authored numerous articles on architecture, interior design and workplace design strategies.

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WDC20 Agenda

9.00

Reception Opens / Morning Coffee

9.25

Welcome and Introduction to Day

Boštjan Eržen

9.30

The Wellbeing Benchmark: How Your Workplace Supports Your Employees

Kyle de Bruin (video call)

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In 2019, Leesman teamed up with Delos (founders of the WELL Building Institute) to create a specific set of questions to better understand how the workplace supports wellbeing and productivity of people working there. Having now collected over 100,000 responses on the topic, Leesman are in a unique position to interprete the findings. Kyle will show you how your workspaces support your employees and what you can do to improve this.

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10.20

Workplace Case Studies 2020

Alenka Kragelj Eržen

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Best practice case studies of 2020 by Kragelj. Alenka will present strategies, execution, results and lessons learned for selected workplace projects; young, progresive companies such as Geneplanet, Adrial and Nexter and established corporations such as Zavarovalnica Triglav, A1 and BSH.

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11:10

Coffee Break

11.30

Slovenia Workplace Survey 2020

Nigel Oseland & Alja Ceglar

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Dr. Oseland, with the help of Alja Ceglar, will present the results of a national survey on the efficiency of workspaces and the impact of Covid measures on employee satisfaction, productivity and business performance on a sample of a few hundred Slovenian companies.  The survey is open until September 16, 2020, you’re invited to complete the (English) questionnaire.  Here is the Slovenian questionnaire.  More details are at Kragelj.com/survey.

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12.20

Lunch Break

13.05

The Genesis of Merck Innovation Center

Thomas Fundneider

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Already a highly innovative business and one of the leading technology companies in the world, Merck has gone one step further and built an innovation center that boasts landmark architecture and a completely new operating system. Thomas Fundneider, a CEO of the company that has co-created the project, will tell the WDC audience how it all started, what were the goals, the challenges and creative solutions, and how the new building supports Merck, their employees and its business vision.

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14.00

The Future of Leadership

Randy Gage (video call)

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We are currently in the most cataclysmic and disruptive decade in human history. And the speed of change is increasing. Workplaces will need to change, organizational culture will need to change, and most importantly, leaders will need to change. The solutions to many of the challenges you’ll be facing haven’t even been developed yet.

Join thought leader Randy Gage for a provocative and candid exploration on the challenges you will face ahead as you lead your teams and your organization. You will discover what the future of leadership is going to look like, how to best “see around the corner” to anticipate it, and how to prepare yourself to lead in this new reality. Pre-conference read: Bostjan Erzen interviews Randy Gage for Slovenia Times.

Randy Gage was brought to WDC20 with the support of

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15.00

Closing remarks

Sponsors & Exhibitors

STRATEGIC & FOUNDING PARTNER

PRODUCTION PARTNERS

FOUNDING PARTNERS

PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNER

Venue & Location

Brdo Congress Center
Slovenia


Feedback WDC attendees

You could tell that people were eager to learn

“ Simply put, this was a GREAT conference! You could easily tell that people were eager to learn; a few hands were always up, taking photos of slides. Myself included. 🙂 There is nothing sweeter than “stealing” a little piece of inspiration. As far as I know, this was one of the first regional Workplace Design conferences, which is surprising when you think of the amount of time we spend in offices. Keep up the great work, and see you next year! “
Luka Milković
Business Manager Hungary & AdriaticsSteelcase

Excellent topics and speakers

“ I was very pleased with the conference topics and how the speakers presented them in a simple and practical way. I was also positively surprised that so many agile, high-performance workplaces have already been designed in Slovenia. Congratulations! Gantner works on similar projects internationally and I learned many new concepts that I will be able to apply in my work. “
Gorazd Golob
Business Development Manager, GANTNER Electronic GmbH

A perfect blend of practice and theory

“ The Workplace Design Conference was a perfect blend of practical examples and theoretical insights into workplace strategies and design. Through presentations, networking, and a lively panel discussion we learned about the importance of creating a work environment that fosters employee engagement and innovation. Which is really essential for any company’s success. “
dr. Katarina Katja Mihelič
Researcher, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Economics

I got a lot of great ideas

“ The link between psychology and physical spaces as explained to us by dr. Oseland was unknown to me, yet is completely logical. His presentations gave me a number of ideas on how to make our people at A1 feel better and more productive. A simple fact is that satisfaction with the work environment leads to more creativity and innovation. “
Ana Špec Brezovar
HR Expert, A1 Slovenija

We will definitely attend the WDC 2019

“ At the Workplace Design conference, which I attended with my colleagues, we got lots of new ideas on how to improve our workspaces and make them user-friendlier. We are an international organization that conducts educational events in the field of public finance so it’s very important for us to provide a productive work and learning environment for our people and clients. We will definitely attend the conference next year. “
Cvetka Mozoli
Office Manager, Center of Excellence in Finance

Useful, thought-provoking presentations

“ Thank you very much for everything. The presentations were very useful and thought-provoking, and the organization of the conference was excellent. “
Peter Razpotnik
Finance Director, Loterija Slovenije d.d.

Thursday, October 1, 2020
Brdo Congress Center, Slovenia

COPYRIGHT 2022 KRAGELJ ARCHITECTS LTD., WORKPLACE DESIGN CONFERENCE 2020