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As creatures of our environments, improving employee wellbeing and productivity starts with tackling the workplace and challenging preconceptions around the traditional office ecosystem. However, great office design goes beyond a few simple physical adjustments, and looks to meet deeper human needs around personalisation, motivation and flexibility.
As creatures of our environments, improving employee wellbeing and productivity starts with tackling the workplace and challenging preconceptions around the traditional office ecosystem. However, great office design goes beyond a few simple physical adjustments, and looks to meet deeper human needs around personalisation, motivation and flexibility.
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Freedom and Flow
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Creating flexible spaces that allow individuals mobility and autonomy, enables them to switch up their environments to meet various productivity needs. A study on comfort in the workplace by Herman Miller found that ‘worker comfort directly affects important predictors of operational efficiency, such as productivity, job satisfaction, retention, well-being, and at its most basic level, of course, worker health’.
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Gone are the days when employees would be expected to be chained to a single office cubicle or desk. With more remote workers opting to tackle their tasks on the go, from coffee houses to co-working spaces, finding freedom and flow has never been more freely available. The latest in technology facilitates this process, allowing members of shared workspaces to book a hot desk in advance, or gain live insights into current occupancy rates.
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Community
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The constant virtual connectivity provided by laptops, mobiles and tablets has diminished the need for in-person contact. Yet encouraging face-to-face interactions at work is vital for social welfare needs, as are chance encounters and unplanned interactions. Having unassigned desks and communal work areas means that employees are more likely to move about throughout the day, which is vital for collaboration between people who might have minimal interaction otherwise. Steve Jobs is said to have obsessed about office design - even strategically planning the location of the bathrooms to optimise serendipity, having understood the critical role it played in creativity and success, with many of today’s best innovations being provided by strong collaborative efforts and spontaneous meetings.
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Mobile Models
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Flexible workspaces offer a win-win solution when it comes to maximising spacial efficiency while cutting costs. Hot desking and open spaces often come with lower overheads, but better meet the demands of growing companies with many part-time or freelance employees. Whereas in the past, many companies would have to jump through a lot of legal and real estate hoops to meet changing demand in their space needs, flexible office space allows you to expand and contract in size, as and when required. Instead of commitment to long-term leases and expensive office furnishings, companies can now opt for monthly rolling contracts in fully serviced and furnished spaces, up and down the country. Whether a temporary solution or a long-term strategy, flexible workspaces consistently demonstrate an ability to meet employee productivity and satisfaction needs, while offering businesses the room they need to evolve with the environment.
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Furnished for Focus
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As well as the layout of the space, furnishings should be designed with focus, collaboration and comfort in mind. This comes in the form of everything from mobile desks and smart white boards for impromptu meetings, to furniture designed to help you find your flow. With insidious workplace injuries such as back pain stemming from ill-equipped office facilities, furnishing for focus also better impacts longer-term health. Many modern smart offices also come with an increasing array of options for adjusting offices to meet individual needs, by gathering data and delivering personalised solutions to issues regarding productivity, space occupancy or workplace sustainability.
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Workplace Wellbeing
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Alongside furnishing a space correctly, prioritising workplace wellbeing means designing spaces that provide access to things like greenery and natural lighting, as well as fostering better lifestyle habits. This could include access to garden spaces with outdoor wifi, alternative furnishings such as standing desks and floor seating, wellness services and events, fitness facilities and changing rooms, access to nourishing foods, or a games and social room. While many offices are furnished for function, they crucially forget to include fun. Folly and functionality work together to build a work space and culture that keeps people wanting to come back.
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Room to Zoom
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While having shared workspaces is perfect for fostering creativity and collaboration, access to separate segments such as private pods or quiet areas is vital for more solitary tasks. Having a dedicated quiet area means these demands are met without sacrificing the benefits of a communal space of likeminded businesses and entrepreneurs. Other options to take note of include private phone booths with sound-proofed walls, private meeting rooms, and conference areas for more confidential events and tasks.
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Clean Aesthetics
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Especially given the advent of COVID and the need for offices to introduce measures around social distancing, having large open spaces that keep employees from feeling cramped and crowded is a necessity for both a tidy desk and a tidy mind. In the past, long-term lets on the traditional office space would often mean that space utilisation went to waste during periods of lower occupancy. The flexible workspace optimises for this by spreading out a variety of companies that change shape as and when they need, under one well-designed roof.
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Technological Talent
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Technology is allowing us to work smarter, by taking over more menial tasks so that concentration can be directed elsewhere, such as innovating and creating. Ensuring your workspace is well-equipped with the latest in smart office design means getting the fundamentals right, from high speed internet to interactive whiteboards, apps and customised services. The high-tech hybrid with a human touch better connects employees to their work environments, enabling efficiency and productivity, or streamlining services regardless of location.
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Communication
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Creating the best workplace for your customers means asking them what they need. Better communication is a corner stone to having processes in place that facilitate feedback, and change up solutions to flexibly meet this demand. This is enhanced through fostering collaborative networks and community, which the design of many open and shared co-working spaces already prioritises. Organic communication is often more insightful than formal or artificial means of feedback acquisition.
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Effective Ergonomics
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Effective designs fit the solutions to the people, and not the other way around. It recognises both the physiological and psychological demands of the job and employee, meets any mismatches between demands and capabilities, and takes a holistic view to all of setup, surroundings and tools. This acknowledges that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to great workplace design, meaning that flexibility is key when it comes to evolution via on-going iterations, and involving employees in the design of their own workstations can enhance commitment, productivity and health long term.
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