Listen First, Design Smarter with Deborah Simmons

On this episode of Workplace Visionaries, host Jane Young sits down with Deborah Simmons, a strategic insight consultant who brings UX and behavioral research methods into workplace strategy. Deborah founded her insight consultancy Camino in 2013 after years in brand marketing and service design research, and later spent a year as a digital nomad through the Remote Year program, which first got her thinking seriously about how physical space shapes different working styles. In this conversation, Jane and Deborah dig into why so many return-to-office mandates run on pressure and fear of career damage rather than genuine preference, and what that says about hybrid leadership. They talk through:

• Why surveys tell you the “what” but rarely the “why” behind employee behavior, and how observation and contextual research close that gap
• HubStar’s Hybrid Occupancy Index finding that quiet, private space is in high demand but short supply, driving poor meeting-room utilization
• Why roughly 70% of change efforts fail, and how co-creating workplace change with employees, not just surveying them once, cuts costly rework later
• Where AI helps workplace strategy, and where over-relying on data without human judgment goes wrong
• Practical first steps: audit the research you already have, set a baseline before you change anything, and start with a small proof-of-concept