Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
After a strong and impactful 2015 that included both the introduction of industry-first collaboration technology that redefined the market and a celebration of its 25th anniversary, human collaboration specialists Polycom this week revealed their top seven collaboration technology predictions for 2016—trends that will transform the Workplace of the Future.
This week’s British Psychological Society Occupational Psychology Division annual conference in Nottingham has proved to be a fruitful hunting ground for insights into the nature of modern work and workplaces. The week culminates today with the presentation of a new study from business psychologists OPP which claims that personality has a big impact on the type of office environment people prefer to work in. Modern features such as shared space and open-plan floors appeal mainly to extroverted workers and made introverts uncomfortable. Over 300 people (71 per cent female and average age 47 years) completed an online survey about their current workplace. The participants had previously completed a personality test to ascertain their personality type. The results showed that many features of the modern office were more likely to be preferred by extroverts than by introverts.
It's no surprise that workplace stress is a bigger problem today than even 10-years ago. In the 1990's the term work-life balance was coined to describe the solution for being able to "have it all" and manage it with ease. Time management courses popped up all over Corporate America in effort to help people balance their family, career, health and social life; promising a golden solution via setting priorities, maintaining a schedule and creating time boundaries. People everywhere jumped at the chance to bring solace to their life by way of this new buzzword, but rather than balance many found themselves taking on more and feeling greater pressure to perform better in all areas of life. The result...more stress.
Though ergonomics and sustainability have long been influencing workplace design, wellbeing is the most recent consideration making headlines when planning your space. Wellbeing is a holistic design focusing on the user, aiming to encourage healthy living by providing wellness programs, social interaction and supporting cognitive activities.
“Why are these buildings empty?” A client recently asked us this question in reference to an unleased project in the Bay Area, arguably the hottest real estate market in the country right now and the epicenter of the movement towards creative office. The answer to that question took us on a journey that culminated in “Spec for Tech,” a thought leadership presentation on how to build on spec for tech tenants.
You spend about half of your waking hours at your job. While certain jobs like construction or manual labor have clear hazards, you can't assume that if you are clocking time in an office environment that it's a healthy place to be. Many occupations deliver stress, sedentary behavior, and unhealthy habits along with the paycheck, which can take their toll both physically and mentally.
As fun as they sound, holograms, robots, and levitating desks do not necessarily represent the office of the future. However, being tied to a desk at the office is becoming a thing of the past. As technologies such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, and chat and videoconferencing programs allow us more mobility throughout the workday, the traditional office setup could become obsolete.
As the lines between when and where work happens continue to blur, the office will serve as a hub for colleagues, peers, and friends. Each January, at the outset of each new year, we stop to ask ourselves the same question that always yields a different answer: Where is the future of office design headed? In a recent IA survey, over 75 percent of participants stated that their office reflects the company culture for whom they work, and that their individual work space reflects their individual interest in some way. But does the workspace really just reflect the individual, or is the individual increasingly defining the workspace?
According to BOMA’s 2015 Office Experience Exchange Report, the average cost of unused space in the U.S. is $25 per square foot or more. Imagine that a company’s entire real estate portfolio is 40% vacant—as was the case with a Gensler client who had multiple locations around the globe.
If workspace density is too high, staff productivity, performance and retention may be at risk. Research shows the danger zone is anything less than 5.6 sqm per desk. Even up to 9.3 sqm per desk, there are risks that not all aspects of work – particularly knowledge-based work – are fully supported.
What a year! 2015 has been a fast-moving 12 months of furious activity in flexible workspace, with countless expansions, mergers, and outside-the-box thinking. There have been closures, challenges and departures too. But above all, 2015 has seen yet another spectacular flurry of growth and change within our industry, which has laid yet more strong foundations for 2016 and beyond. It’s time to look back and celebrate as OT counts down 15 momentous moments in 2015…
When it comes to productivity, willpower plays a far smaller role than we might think. We also have to consider the effects of our talkative coworkers, energy-draining schedules, and way-too-comfy office chairs. Having looked at dozens of published research studies, office design company Steelcase has come up with key ways companies can help people do their jobs better.
Good news! According to a recent IA survey, most workers are not marooned in interior offices without any access to what’s happening outdoors! Eighty-five percent of respondents to our interiors questionnaire reported they know whether it is raining without standing up from their desk. For millennia, our very survival has depended on our understanding of environmental cues, and we continue to have a natural interest, in and connection to, what is going on outside.
Compared with environments such as libraries, theatres and the urban realm, too much workplace design is fundamentally out of balance, prioritising either experience or practicality at the expense of our emotional needs.
The average worker is interrupted or distracted every three minutes and it takes them fully twenty-three minutes to return to a task after being interrupted. Office workers are overwhelmed by distractions, due mainly to a lack of understanding of how to manage attention. Distractions and the inability to focus negatively affects productivity, engagement, wellbeing and overall performance in organisations. We long to be more effective, but the harder we try, the more tired our brains become. Attention meltdowns are epidemic because workers do not understand what attention is, how to manage it or have access to the best places to support their tasks. In workplaces throughout the world scenarios of near constant distraction have become the norm, to such an extent that often people do not even feel compelled to comment on them and their consequences.
A strategy called “design thinking” has helped numerous entrepreneurs and engineers develop successful new products and businesses. But can design thinking help you create healthful habits?
Urban planning and development professionals still view offices as a distinct category of real estate and most real estate professionals view offices in terms of the delivery of floor space. Some things have changed. For some time, the hybrid economy of serviced offices has turned the product into a service. But, in many cases this has simply made the leasing of space simpler and more flexible.
The modern office has thrown out the rule book which once dictated that working environments should be formal, enclosed spaces based more on hierarchy than seeking to inspire creation and productivity among the entire workforce, says Nigel Crunden from Office Depot. The trend for creating more open plan spaces is now firmly embedded in workplace culture with office spaces now increasingly used for a variety of purposes and sometimes, by multiple businesses.
A New Year's resolution is the easiest thing to make—and to break. If you're looking to make a positive, more enduring change in your life we've got a far better system for you, and it involves a bit of good ol' design thinking. Ayse Birsel's "Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future" is the result of decades of the award-winning designer's experiences and wisdom, distilled into a concise process for redesigning your life in a realistic, do-able way.
I define “employee experience” as an organization creating a place where people want to show up instead of assuming that people need to show up. This shift from “need” to “want” is the fundamental change that organizations around the world are starting to experience. This is why we see so much investment in new offices spaces, health and well-being programs, maternity and paternity leave, healthy foods, workplace flexibility, and so much more. There are a lot of things that can go into creating an employee experience but the good news is that every single company regardless of their industry, geography, or size, only need to focus on three things.
