Supporting Community: How Companies Can Help Sustain ‘Third Places’

BY Erin Behrens | August 13, 2024

When you’re not at work or at home, where can you be found? For some, it might be a local coffee shop, while others might prefer a nearby library or a public park. Regardless of your answer, the place that you seek out for casual conversation or meaningful community connection is considered your “third place.”

With remote and hybrid work structures persisting post-pandemic, and feelings of loneliness becoming increasingly prevalent, the value of community has never been greater. And yet, third places seem to be disappearing. “Despite the fact that most of the country lives near a bar, movie theater, restaurant, or park, the Survey Center on American Life found that 56% of Americans in 2021 said they had a third place they frequent, down from 67% in 2019,” reported Vox.

What does this loss signify for individuals, and why is it occurring now, just as community-building is becoming a priority for many leaders and organizations? The challenges are clear, but so are the opportunities for solutions. Fortunately, companies can and do play a significant role in promoting third places.

Defining Your Third Place

Third places, defined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book Celebrating The Third Place, are “public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact.” In contrast to your home, which is your first place, and your work, which is your second place, third places are informal and accessible public spots to hangout and meet acquaintances, mull through some ideas, or catch up with friends.

Kyte's book Finding Your Third Place was published in June

In times of loneliness, third places offer refuge and restoration. “People who have a regular third place greatly expand their circle of friends; they laugh more often; they are more engaged in their community; they are happier; they live longer,” according to Richard Kyte, a professor of leadership and ethics at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis. At a time when one in three Americans feels lonely every week, having a third place could significantly mitigate negative coping behaviors like distraction-seeking and abusing alcohol, while increasing overall well-being.

In his book Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way), Kyte expresses the impact of these locations for not only the individual, but also communities at large. “[They] serve as gateways so people new to the area can get to know their neighbors; they function as incubators for new ideas; they serve as safety nets for people in crisis; they build social trust; they decrease political polarization,” Kyte writes. So why are these beneficial spaces becoming harder to find?

A Seemingly Sudden Disappearance of Third Places

In part, the loss of third places can be attributed to the social-distancing days of Covid and lasting changes to physical spaces. During the pandemic, our ability to be in third places was disrupted, and it hasn’t fully recovered. Businesses closed, neighborhoods changed, furniture was removed. But even before the pandemic, third places were already losing their significance in the face of trends like cocooning. People started to value individualized forms of leisure more, and ultimately became comfortable just staying at home in their free time. This wasn’t always the way.

Starbucks’ founder and former CEO, Howard Schultz, built a brand that encouraged people to connect in their shops. At one point, it wasn’t uncommon to see people chatting over a cup of coffee or with their laptops propped to complete work.

As the stores blanketed the U.S. and beyond, they became a third place to many. “But over the past decade, comfy chairs have largely disappeared, replaced by hard wooden ones, the better to push people back out to their homes and offices. The company has also turned finding electrical outlets to plug in computers or phones into somewhat of a treasure hunt,” reports the Harvard Business Review. To help restore the vibe that made it popular, the company named a new CEO this week, with founder Schultz declaring: “Senior leaders—including board members—need to spend more time with those who wear the green apron.”

Another reason for the loss of third places is tied to the rise in internet use and increase in subcultures of people connecting virtually. “It’s a strange paradox, Gen-Z are hyperconnected in the virtual world but socially disconnected,” wrote Kian Bakhtiari in Forbes. Social media platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok foster spaces for self-expression, connecting people with similar interests. These online communities, however, risk replacing the in-person gatherings and socializing that could be held in public spaces.

“The internet, mobile phones and video games have opened a multiverse of new connections and opportunities. Yet digital interactions have failed to replace the need to connect on an emotional level in the physical world,” according to Bakhtiari. And for many, it’s nearly impossible to disconnect from these virtual spaces, given they facilitate effortless and potentially global connections.

Technology, in a broader sense, has also impacted the way we engage in physical spaces. The nature of how we interact within these environments has evolved, and not necessarily for the better. “If you think about the way our physical spaces affect our relations to one another, you will begin to understand … why our leisure activities over the past century have changed from mostly active (playing games together) to mostly passive (being entertained),” writes Kyte. The rise of technology, such as screens and sound systems, has shifted spaces that once encouraged interaction into ones focused on transactions or devoid of engagement altogether.

The Business Impact: Actions For Leaders

While third places exist outside the workplace, how and where we work affects our access to and enjoyment of them. The loss of these spaces can lead to more stressed and isolated workers, and leaders know that a healthy worker is a productive one. But there are a variety of ways that business leaders can promote third places. Among them:

Provide Customers With a Third Place

Some businesses have the opportunity to provide their customers with a third place. Companies can reimagine (or, in Starbucks’ case, revert to past practices) and create these spaces as hubs for connection. Companies can enhance the sense of community in their stores and workplaces by creating experiences that foster meaningful interactions for those who seek them. “This means separating mobile and drive-through orders from the on-premise ones to minimize interactions between the different crowds. It also means reinvesting in comfort and amenities for people who want to hang around,” as reported in Harvard Business Review. What it really requires is thoughtful attention to the spaces where people connect, something that has been top of mind in the era of returning to the office.

Similarly, entrepreneur Meng Liu, who sought community amid the hustle of city life, established Wowza Hangout, a social club designed to unite people through shared interests and activities. “A crucial component of these hangouts are their settings: board game cafés, bars, museums, parks. They’re venues that populate a vibrant city like New York, but where attendees might feel awkward approaching someone they don’t know,” Liu told Vox. Liu's club aims to break down some of the barriers of connection, making it easier for people to meet in familiar yet inviting environments.

Harness CSR to Cultivate Community

Companies can also leverage their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to create or support spaces that foster connection. In San Francisco, Salesforce funds a public park with lush walking trails and lawns for sitting, an amphitheater, and even on-demand board games. While not every company can fund an entire park, they can promote volunteerism to support local parks and other existing third places. These CSR efforts benefit both the community and employees, boosting wellness and engagement.

Encourage Flexible Work

Flexible work schedules can provide employees with the time they need to invest in their communities. Work-life balance isn’t a new concept, but with opportunities for hybrid work, employees can seek out these places even during business hours. JLL’s 2022 Workplace Preferences Barometer found that improved flexibility has increased not only the ability, but the desire to work in cafes, lounges, and co-working spaces.

With some employees continuing to work fully remotely after the pandemic, the distinction between home and office has become blurred. Co-working spaces are designed for work but can also serve as a third place, allowing employees to connect and collaborate in a public setting that is both affordable and accessible.

“Corporations and organizations, many with newly reduced real estate footprints of their own, are becoming the biggest third place consumers,” according to the co-working platform Liquid Space. “C-suite leaders are striving to use space more efficiently. Providing employees with access to high-quality, flexible third space co-working environments near their homes and their teammates is one way they’re doing it.” The use of co-working spaces not only encourages employees to collaborate, but also to venture out in their neighborhoods. Hybrid work isn’t just about working from the couch anymore. About 36% of employees work in third places at least once a week, an increase of 8% from the previous year, according to JLL’s report.

Ultimately, third places offer a sense of fulfillment, so everyone should do their part to help preserve them. These special spaces are “where we turn together, cultivating friendships, broadening and deepening our own lives and the lives of those around us. It is in conversation that we find belonging,” writes Kyte. And in today’s world, belonging matters more than ever.

Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One.

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Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | December 18, 2024

How Companies Can Lead in an ‘Age of Outrage’

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Now that you’ve identified what is an attainable and appropriate response, how will the leader win the support of others in influential positions as well as the support of the workforce?And finally, build resilience. “A resilient organization (or system) is characterized by the delegation of authority,” Ramanna writes. “By situating decision-making close to ground realities, the organization both improves the informativeness of its decisions and diversifies its thinking and, as a consequence, can endure and even thrive amid negative shocks.”Are Corporate Values Outmoded?Values statements and public commitments to causes or communities may be useful guideposts for how to focus corporate response in the age of outrage, but they can also make it harder to deliver. Companies have caught themselves in dreadful thickets in the name of transparency and principles. When corporate behavior, or the behavior of business leaders, doesn’t reflect publicly stated values and beliefs, companies feel the pain. Ramanna cites Disney’s entanglement with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 2022. Despite being a public advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, the company did not publicly oppose the bill and was at the same time writing checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians who sponsored it in the state senate. 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The second thing is, as a business, you have to figure out a way to work through that.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by Solstock/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 04, 2024

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Among the most coveted qualities in a HR chief is agility, and cross-industry work naturally develops that skill. Now companies recruit CHROs with much of the same criteria they use when recruiting business leaders: experience with mergers and acquisitions and the grunt work of combining workforces, knowledge of a P&L, plus familiarity with thorny issues like labor-union negotiations. “At a company juncture—say, a new CEO comes in and they’re tasked with some turnaround—they often need a different type of CHRO for that phase of the company,” said Jennifer Wilson, co-head of the global HR officers practice at Heidrick & Struggles. “With the amount of M&A and cost-cutting, and then getting back to growth, they want to find somebody who’s been through that cycle.” Why Your Next CHRO May Also Be a JDIf you’re looking for a CHRO with cross-industry experience, plenty of exposure to the C-suite, plus experience with assembling multiple companies and quelling labor disputes, a labor-and-employment lawyer often satisfies the brief. With greater exposure to risk (as a sample: reputational, environmental, technological, privacy, and supply chain) it’s reassuring to know there’s an attorney occupying the seat. “There’s the employee-engagement lens, and there’s the productivity lens, there’s the regulatory lens, and there’s the profitability lens,” said WTW’s Bremen. HR is no longer a static department, now it has to make things happen.Law practice also develops the confrontational confidence CHROs need. “You need to have had the experience of walking into a senior leader’s office, closing the door, giving them feedback, and challenging them on an issue where you think there’s a pretty good chance of getting fired today,” Korn Ferry’s Kaplan said. At times, it’s as diplomatic as managing the CEO’s personality and presenting even the most uncharismatic leaders to the workforce as people who can be trusted, which sounds a lot like what might happen in a courtroom.Before Claudia Toussaint became the chief people officer at the global water-technology company Xylem, she was the company’s general counsel. CHROs can’t afford to be intimidated by hierarchy, she said. They have to be prepared to tell the CEO that they’re out of line, and why it matters. The professional training of an attorney comes in handy too. Lawyers gather evidence, make conclusions, and present a case. “That skillset, I think, is far more valuable today in the HR function than five years ago or ten years ago,” Toussaint said. “I think that’s why people are increasingly saying, ‘These people that have a law degree and have been trained to think systemically, to take data, analyze data, reach conclusions from it, and then drive impact from those conclusions—that’s actually not a bad background for leading HR function.’”HR and the general counsel’s office have a natural relationship. Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s, felt she was effectively moonlighting as an HR professional while working as the firm’s attorney, applying the law to all kinds of employment matters. “I was really lucky because Moody’s is a very successful company and also has a really fast-growing information-services business within the traditional ratings agency. Because they were growing so fast, a lot of employment issues arose,” she told From Day One. “We were in different jurisdictions. We had different questions we wanted to answer about ‘How do we do hiring right? How do we handle performance management? How do we maintain a focus on being inclusive? How do we do promotions right?’ There are legal questions, then there are operational and human capital questions.” Kazanjian’s first time leading the people function was at WeWork during the dog days of the pandemic. In February 2022, she returned to Moody’s, where she occupies the chief people officer job today.Jennifer Manchester, the CHRO at Fiserv, is a relatively new arrival to the C-suite, and like Kazanjian, has jumped industries. Manchester first crossed paths with HR at her former employer, the Dow Chemical Co., where she worked in the general counsel’s office on mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions. “I always loved the employment piece and the people side of things the best. That’s where I figured it out: That was really ultimately what I wanted to do.”Manchester moved over to Fiserv in 2015, working closely with HR as a labor attorney, and ascended to the CHRO seat last spring, “I’ve always gravitated toward people issues, trying to solve problems. It’s such a dynamic role.” But about this she was clear: You can’t just pluck any attorney out of the legal department and promote them to the chief position. “You have to have some substantive core expertise in HR or employment. HR is a real science, and I don’t think anyone can just do it.”Deep, Successful Experience in HR Counts TooA background in HR is hardly irrelevant. Among the 10 highest-ranked companies on the Fortune 500, most of their CHROs have spent decades as HR practitioners. Melissa Hagerman, CHRO at insurance firm Genworth, came up through the HR department, and, like many of her peers in the Fortune 500, has worked across industries, including consumer and automotive retail and healthcare. She joined the HR field when it was still known as the personnel department. Being an effective CHRO takes compassion and diplomatic agility, she said. And it can’t be done without a natural curiosity for businesses. “As a CHRO, you have to really genuinely care about what the business is doing and where we’re heading, and you have to care about the people that are on the path to get us there. That is something that I really try to embrace and live by every day.”Hagerman is also a keen scout, continually monitoring what’s going on both inside and outside the organization, “understanding what’s happening politically and socially in the markets so that I can weigh in, whether that’s with our executive team or with our board of directors, or being able to think about how those may impact eventually our workforce.”HR has far more credibility and influence than in the past, Hagerman said, reflecting on her decades in the department. “The world now understands that people resources are really fundamental to the bottom line. Succession planning, development of associates—the focus on those things is far greater now than they ever were. Of course, cybersecurity, protection of data–all of those things–are more in the limelight now than ever.”Yet Your Next CHRO May Not Be Working In HR Right NowA career in HR can win you the seat at the top now, but that may not be true for the next generation of CHROs. Today, businesses seldom want an HR executive who has spent all their time in the department, said Wilson at Heidrick & Struggles. “In the companies we work with, it’s often said that if you can find somebody with a business background who’s either been in management consulting or held either a P&L role or a functional role outside of HR, that’s more interesting to us.”The next crisis is always around the corner, Korn Ferry’s Kaplan told From Day One, and HR has to be there to meet it. He rattled off a list of recent trials, from financial and economic wobbles, political unrest, racial injustice, reproductive rights, return to office, artificial intelligence, and gun crime. “If you are not prepared to put on your dance shoes and figure it out, you can’t do this job. More than academic credentials, intellect, or experience, you have to be able to tap dance.” As a result, people aren’t exactly grappling for the seat, he said. It’s a big job and it’s tough to recruit for. Some people get too close to the sun and opt out; others don’t realize what they’re signing up for before it’s too late.Everyone is looking for agility in the role. Bremen at WTW speculated that consumer-oriented industries–like retail, fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics, or fashion–may be developing tomorrow’s most coveted CHROs. Tech firms develop great HR talent too because they have to marry operational complexity with consumer demands. Regardless of industry, he believes the most successful future CHROs are schooling themselves in the application of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and have analytical capabilities far superior to their predecessors.In case you were thinking of plucking your next CHRO from the Wharton School, however, Kaplan cast doubt on the wisdom of choosing an MBA for the job simply because they’re a whiz at business. “If someone says to me, ‘I’m not an HR person, I’m a business person,’ that is a sign that I’m wasting time. I’ve never heard a CFO say, ‘I’m not a finance person, I’m a business person.’”Disciplines like finance can be taught in school, Kaplan argued, but HR is learned through apprenticeship. Management consultants who spoke to From Day One predicted that the future chiefs who are coming up through the HR department are leading complex functions at the moment, as heads of talent or directors of compensation and benefits.As today’s CHROs consider their potential successors, what are they looking for? At Moody’s, Kazanjian wants someone who is open-minded, bold, and analytical. She imagines that person might be in law, or they might be in management consulting. Toussaint wants someone who deeply understands the company culture at Xylem as well as how the business makes money, someone who’s good at data analysis, and someone who is a “truth teller,” uncowed by hierarchy. Manchester hopes her Fiserv successor has financial acumen and an always-learning attitude. At Genworth, Hagerman wants a values-driven, business-minded leader with deep knowledge of HR and a knack for diplomacy. Someone who is willing to uphold integrity, “above all else.”“Once upon a time, it was possible to be the most senior HR leader in a company and not have a grounding in the business fundamentals,” Bremen said. “That skillset is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.” Yet business acumen alone isn’t enough without a deep understanding of the CHRO discipline, though he’s seen it happen. “They struggle. Just as you would struggle if you put someone in a chief marketing officer role who did not have a background in marketing. Sometimes leaders take those HR skills for granted.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 24, 2024