The December 2015 Harvard Business Review studied how eating together can enhance group performance. "Team Building in the Cafeteria" discusses how providing spaces and time for communal eating can be more effective than just spaces created for serendipitous encounters.
"It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth."
- Friedrich Nietsche
High-performance work comes from an active environment that drives casual and spontaneous collisions. Physical and visual proximity increases the ability to have impromptu discussions, thereby speeding up processes and decisions.
LoungeWork is a different work style - in designing inclusively for individual temperaments, for affording choice, and offering a holistic and active setting which encourages people to move, furnishing for this kind of work style is essential. Care must be taken to avoid a replication of a person's living room at home; while workers don't want elements of the office in their homes and would prefer elements of home at work, typical residential furniture does not adequately support work activities.
"When virtual distance is high there is a 93% drop-off in innovation and an 83% evaporation of trust."
- Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski, Stony Brook University
The age of remote and nomadic workers causes a heightened demand for informal points of contact. In addition to fostering a collegial atmosphere, it is vitally important to create a community of trust.
