4th November 2026• Cara Oliver• 7 min read
Fewer British workers are willing to go the extra mile. New Resolution Foundation analysis of the British Social Attitudes survey found the share willing to work harder than required to help their employer succeed fell from 69% in 2015 to 55% in 2025. Job satisfaction is at its lowest level since the survey began, prompting headlines that "quiet quitting" is real.
The research points to pay, flexibility and how interesting people find their work. Those matter. But two things that shape how much people give rarely show up in a survey:
For many neurodivergent people, that energy goes on filtering out noise, managing glare and finding somewhere to recover. From the outside, it can look like disengagement. Often, it's someone quietly coping. And as we explored in our last edition, most may never tell you and improvements benefit everyone.
The good news is all this can be designed for. A building can work for every kind of mind and help a real community grow around it, and that combination is what keeps people giving their best and businesses seeing the rewards in productivity, team retention and talent recruitment.
In October, the government's Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity published its final report. The panel was chaired by Professor Amanda Kirby and set up by the Department for Work and Pensions after the Buckland Review. Its central recommendation is support that is "needs-led, not dependent on a diagnosis".
The report also looks beyond policy to the buildings people work in. It asks employers to consider the built environment, "taking guidance from set building standards such as PAS6463". In her foreword, Professor Kirby writes that universal design helps make workplaces "accessible, inclusive, and equitable for everyone from the outset rather than relying on retrofitted adjustments."
The government says there are no plans to make sensory-friendly design a legal requirement. It is, though, running a 16-week review of how universal design principles could apply to workplaces, including their physical environments.
Put that alongside the large underestimation of neurodiverse employees* and the message is clear. If support depends on people asking for it, it will only ever reach a fraction of the people who need it. And the wider benefits for everyone including the business will not be felt.
When someone asks for noise-cancelling headphones at work, they're handing you a design brief. The harder question is how many people never ask.
Many of the adjustments neurodivergent people ask for are about the environment. Somewhere quieter. Less glare. A desk away from the door. Fewer surprises.
Each one tends to be handled as an individual exception. The person has to notice the problem, find the words for it, often share something personal, and then wait. That process works for the few who ask, and misses everyone else.
Individual adjustments will always matter, because some people need something specific. But we'd rather the building did most of the work. And for that, we look to nature for inspiration.
Think about a walk through woodland. There are open clearings and sheltered spots under the canopy. Some paths are busy and some are quiet. The light changes as the day moves on, and there's always somewhere to pause with a view out. You choose where to be, without asking anyone.
That's the range a building needs. It's the thinking behind our work including Café in the Park, a 13th-floor café and breakout space for an office in Japan, designed to help people recuperate and reduce stress during the working day.
Clarity comes from how natural landscapes guide us. In the café, timber tree forms and planting mark out zones and routes, so the space is easy to read at a glance.
Choice comes from the pairing of prospect and refuge. Open tables sit in the clearing, while high-backed chairs tucked among the trees offer somewhere to retreat that still looks out across the city. Not everyone wants to be in the middle of the buzz. Some people connect best side by side, at the edges, or in a smaller group.
Control comes from nature's own variation and the ability to adapt the space to personal needs. Warm timber, soft pools of light and layered greenery, alongside daylight that shifts through the day. Blankets to offer comfort and warmth, easily adjustable blinds and lighting amongst a number of comfort choices.
The tools of biophilic design are familiar ones: natural daylight, views of nature, planting, natural materials, restorative spaces and access to the outdoors. What matters is how they're combined, so a space offers a range of settings rather than one.
Ask people why they stay in a job they don't love, and the answer is often the people. The colleague who makes Monday bearable. The team that has your back. The sense of being part of something bigger. That sense of belonging increases how long we stay and how committed we feel.
Pay and flexibility sit with the employer. Whether people want to spend time together is where the building comes in. You can be in the building and still feel alone in the business. Culture doesn't happen to the same extent in a group chat. It happens in a room, in the moments between meetings, over a coffee, on the walk to the kitchen.
Those moments can be designed for. Café in the Park was conceived as exactly that kind of place: a shared café and breakout space where people can step away from their desks, recover, and spend time with each other.
Where to start: look at the building. Walk the floor mid-afternoon and notice where the headphones go on, which seats stay empty, where people disappear to when they need a break and how those break spaces are performing. Those are the requests nobody has made. If you need more inspiration do get in touch with us at Oliver Heath Design for project support, because we design spaces where people thrive.
* More reading: In our last edition, we looked at a gap that stops most people in their tracks. In the Tech Talent Charter's Diversity in Tech research, UK tech employers estimated that just 3% of their workforce was neurodivergent. When the charter asked tech workers directly, more than half identified as neurodivergent. So most of the people a building is failing will never put in a request. They'll just find the day harder than it needs to be. Link
