Flexible office design can bring joy, energy, collaboration and efficiency to workplace environments, this is nothing new. Today, people are rapidly developing new ways to work. Ideas are sprouting up at home offices everywhere, whether it is using an ironing board to create a sit-to-stand desk, researching the best Zoom background, or creating a new product to make the world better.
Employers are also tasked with staying nimble. Corporations are looking at the numbers of people currently working at home and wondering, do we need to keep our brick and mortar locations? Should we adjust how work occurs at these locations? People want to feel connected and proud of their work. Happy employees work together like a finely knitted afghan, but do we need to sit together five days a week any longer? How can we create spaces where people can come together, just not stay together? First, we need to learn from our past.
Remote work, while undeniably cost-effective, tends to significantly inhibit collaboration even over digital channels. While studying a major technology company from 2008 to 2012, remote workers communicated nearly 80 percent less about their assignments than collocated team members did; in 17 percent of projects they didn’t communicate at all. The obvious implication: If team members need to interact to achieve project milestones on time, you don’t want them working remotely. (Harvard Business Review, 2019)
A migration started several years ago to bring virtual workers back into the office from their homes. Companies learned that keeping teams together in the same physical space fosters random collaboration, and constant mentoring needed to develop a successful project. But, now because of the new world we are living in, companies are considering keeping more workers at home permanently. The challenge for this is what will office spaces of the future look like?
Tech workers will be one of the first groups of employees to make the shift back to the office. They are the most agile and may have likely worked from home in the past. In a tech agile team, employees are provided a “project” to complete. To make sure each worker is progressing and focusing on the end game, these teams need to come together. Good design can play a significant role in efficiency and companies are looking for flexible spaces and schedules for workers to gather to facilitate collaboration.
One approach to this model is to develop a system of shared work points. Instead of dedicated seats, designers will focus on agile environments that can serve multiple uses. In lieu of the dedicated workspace for the individual, project rooms will need to be developed for teams, and the first thing to consider is space.
Every team needs a home base and project rooms will require more space than previous layouts. Employees will need to engage while keeping their distance and project rooms are a solution if they are fully dedicated to the team and not shared spaces for others to use. Keeping them fresh without daily use could be a challenge. For team members to maintain their distance, the furniture should be larger in scale with wider and deeper dimensions. Tech groups love glass markerboards and generally you cannot have enough. It’s also important to give the space some character.
In addition to the project rooms model, more companies are now envisioning a hybrid future, with more time spent working remotely, yet with opportunities to regularly convene teams. CompuCom Inc. may institute “core hours” for its employees, similar to office hours professors hold on college campuses. The idea is that teams would agree to gather for a limited time on certain days of the week to bounce ideas off each other, collaborate and strategize.
Online education provider Coursera expects half of its 650 employees to work “blended” hours once the pandemic passes, with staffers spending three days a week in the office and the rest remote. (The Wall Street Journal, 2020)