Some topics generate a level of debate totally out of proportion with the underlying facts. Whether it’s the benefit of sit-stand desks, the influence of colour on productivity or the threat (or potential) of robotics in the office, too often it’s all sizzle and no sausage. Agile working falls into that category. It’s one of those ideas that sounds too good to be true: give people a raft of settings to work in, power them up with a few mobile gadgets and you can magically transform your workspace to ‘Google standards’ and attract all the best talent in town. But what about the reality?
For the past couple of years, we have been running a workplace consultancy (Kinnarps Next Office) that engages leaders and employee teams in an in-depth investigation of their current work patterns and preferred workstyles if given a more agile space and more choice. Through staff workshops, an online survey and a user app, Next Office results in an understanding of how offices are currently used and how a client’s staff would like to work. This in turn informs the design process, and results in a workplace designed for and driven by staff.
Kinnarps has access to a wide range of organisations in different countries and sectors. We have now undertaken over 60 such engagements, recording the feelings and experiences of over 5,300 staff in a variety of markets.
The people have spoken
The consolidated results vary little from the individual reports, and clear themes emerge. For example:
- Office work is varied, and yet traditional workplace planning defaults to just one setting – the personal workstation. However, given the choice, people would spend less than 20 percent of their working day operating at a personal workstation.
- Most organisations have too many large, inflexible meeting rooms and not enough smaller spaces suitable for spontaneous get-togethers and project huddles.
- Despite mounting evidence that too much time spent sitting down presents significant long-term health risks, over half of workers spend little or no time standing or moving.
- The office environment plays a critical role in employees’ personal job satisfaction, and therefore offers a major opportunity for an organisation to differentiate itself from its competitors.