Make furniture and layout a strategy, not a design solution
Download the WorkLife brochureThe In-Between Spaces
Today, in-between spaces are more important than workstations or even meeting rooms, as people continue to be driven by interconnectedness. The art of connecting people through furniture and spaces has become a key management tool - the ancillary furniture pieces and the in-between spaces are very critical in linking areas to business objectives.
Executive
The best thing a company has to offer is its culture. The workplace must be unique to the corporation, define its personality, and articulate a particular brand narrative. Competitive advantages in services provided or products manufactured can be short-lived, especially in these days of knock-offs, but a company's strong visible culture is almost impossible to duplicate and is therefore its best long-term competitive advantage.
Kick Back
Focus and collaboration are complementary work-modes - an office cannot choose one or the other and be successful. Work environments where the employees have the autonomy to choose their work area based on the task, as well as on their individual sensitivities, are more effective, high-performance environments. Balancing focus and collaboration is key.
Lounge
"Networks are self-organizing structures held in place by relationships of trust."
- Professor Karen Stephenson, Erasmus University
There is organized collaboration because people have to meet. and then there are chance encounters which are different from planned meetings. These are about unplanned cross-organizational engagement, and they have results that are also unplanned and unforeseen.
Meeting
Most meeting rooms are under-utilized, and seating capacity is excessive, which results in wasted space. More than a third of the time spent in the typical office environment involves working with others, so let's create conference and training rooms that allow brainstorming to be at its peak.
Touchdown
Touchdown, hoteling, non-territorial workstations entered our vocabulary as a result of studies that showed 50%-60% of desks and offices are unoccupied for most of the day. Along with this under-utilization of space, the advent of the internet and the cloud made telecommuting possible. It's important to accommodate nomads in the work environment, giving them a place to reconnect with colleagues.
Neighborhoods
Open plan should not mean one large open space with repetitive furnishings - a better term would be multi-space, where a variety of spaces support the different work processes and styles of the employees. For employee retention, companies need to invest in an employee experience that not only attracts the best people but creates a sense of place, a convergence of stimuli, and support for individual styles and strengths.
