Relationships between employers and staff are changing -- and that means the physical places where we work are getting an overhaul. We're not just talking about moving furniture around, either. Organizations are putting a lot of thought into making offices conducive to our social businesses, our collaborative ways of work.
Designers and architects are creating space for collaboration and paying more attention to psychological and ergonomic aspects. This, at least, was the message of a workshop recently held at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and hosted by Spain's IE School of Architecture and Design, which in February plans to debut a master's program in workplace design in conjunction with RIBA.
Conference delegates from both sides of the Atlantic gave fascinating insight into how workplace design must change in the future, and addressed the following key questions:
Where will people work in the future -- and how should these places be designed?
What will happen as the boundaries between work and leisure time further dissolve?
What incentives will organizations need to bring future talent together?
One of the challenges facing architects is today's multi-generational workforce, as older employees stay longer, said Jeremy Myerson, director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art:
If you go into an open-plan office now, you'll see four generations at work. There'll be people in their mid-sixties working as well as people in their early twenties, and they're all sharing the same space and the same technology. But they've had completely different experiences. The young people are digital natives; they've grown up with technology, and older people have adjusted to technological change over many decades. It's really, really difficult to design a workspace that will appeal to all generations -- but that's the big challenge.
Another is the decreased emphasis on corporate hierarchy.
Society is breaking away from status-oriented offices and embracing a social culture, explained Simon Jordan, founder of Jump Studios. "That's impacted massively on the workplace, where workspace environments are much more informal and less hierarchical than they used to be."
Technology is the great enabler, removing all sorts of physical barriers for employees and designers.
Cloud and virtualization will play a growing and prominent part in shaping the future. Then again, mobility is also creating a paradox, said Philip Tidd, senior consultant at Gensler:
We've created a whole generation of mobile workers that have spent a lot of time working remotely. One of the problems with that is that it's created a generation of people that feel very disconnected from the workplace. What I'm seeing as a trend is that a lot of organizations are really rethinking the purpose of the office and actually trying to bring the mobile people back because they're trying to reconnect those people with the culture and the values of the organization.
So what should these offices look like?
Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander, co-founders of Studio O+A, envision offices with places where employees can retire to think in peace and areas where people can get together and exchange ideas. Myerson said, "The big issue for designers is not simply to design for the physical or functional comfort of workforces, but actually to design for their psychological comfort."
You can hear the experts talk at more length here.
The architects' goals are clear. However, their visions need to be tempered with a very pragmatic approach by asking the following questions: What do top performers already do differently to increase productivity in the office? And how are work, collaboration, education, and social activity combined in the working environments of organizations seen as leaders in this space, such as Google?
What would you like the future office to look like?
You hit the gym every morning or evening if you care a bit about your health. And then you come to the office where you want to settle and work
@kicheko, not everyone goes to gym everyday because they are very much involved in their work and they spend most of the time in office itself. So if we move stuff out of reach then it will indirectly help.
Anand, -Re: this is very good move by Designers to move stuff out of reach. This will definitely make employees walk more.
i beg to differ on that. I've never seen the justification in forcing employees to walk more. Some people cite exercise but i disagree with that. You hit the gym every morning or evening if you care a bit about your health. And then you come to the office where you want to settle and work . The next thing you learn is that the phone shall be ringing at least once every ten minutes and you shall be standing up to go pick it up.
I've never worked in an open space. When I was at CRN, we all had offices. I was freelance from home for 12 years, and have worked remotely for the past two years as a full-time employee of a couple of companies. One thing I know would bother me is making phone calls with colleagues around; I don't like making business phone calls if anyone is in my home office. Sure, I guess I'd get over it eventually, but I don't like background noise when I'm on the phone and this would be a real annoyance. How have others dealt with it?
You could, perhaps, make small, cost-less changes at your office: Maybe move the coffee pot from one spot to another if there's an empty office area or nook that you can use to encourage colleagues to walk a little further. I know health experts always encourage us to use the stairs -- but too often office stairways are far away, and really unattractive, dimly lit, and to be honest, kinda creepy!
So instead of creating this really convenient office space where everything is at your fingers, designers are now consciously moving stuff out of reach.
@Alison, this is very good move by Designers to move stuff out of reach. This will definitely make employees walk more. Unfortunately my office is designed by old designers and I dont see such initiatives but yes I have observed such designs in other companies where I went to attend some training.
I value the ability to configure my workspace however I see fit.
You reminded me of my laptop desk. It has wheels and feet similar to those of a computer chair, and has airlift as well so I could adjust the height. Then, the desk itself has two levels. The first is the base which is attached to the rest of the "chassis." The second level is around three inches above the base, and it could be used as the desktop or it could be folded out so that the base will be the desktop. It's like a transformer desk. It's helped me a lot, especially in coming up with the right ergonomic position.
Brick and mortar office - There'd only be two people (at most) working there, specifically the ones tasked to receive clients and coordinate projects. The space will only be small, with two desks, a receiving area, a meeting room, and a common work area. The common work area is for those who want to work in the office once in a while, but not permanently. There'd be foldable laptop desks and lockers for anyone who's in.
Virtual office - The rest of the team will often work online. But this area requires planning, too; what will the ideal virtual workspace look like? Automattic uses their P2-themed site for work, while others use SharePoint as their virtual office. I think there should be architects in this space too. The main challenge is creating those common areas where collaboration could happen, plus allowing interaction to be more "personal," i.e. audio- and video-enabled.
This probably won't come about until after a few years, but it does seem to be ideal for me. The design of the physical office, in the end, will be easier to deal with than the design of the virtual workspace.
I think monility has made some new inroads to traditional methodologies of office operations. It has 2 side like others but the chances of making things positive very much higher on it.
In the traditional office there was more private space (offices, especially offices with doors that close off the employee and often with tables for small meetings right in somebody's office) and less public space.
Studies are showing that the most effective organizations are creating more public spaces were people can collaborate. Not just meeting rooms, but rooms or open areas with white boards and furniture that is conducive to people bringing laptops and mobile devices and sharing and projecting screens.
The private space may be remote or it may be smaller closed offices - but the public space is where the real collaborative and creative work gets done.
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