Day-to-day influences like your office space can affect how employees interact, what they do and if they have common interests and behaviors—all of which add up to company culture, Cushman & Wakefield tenant rep Kevin Meissner tells GlobeSt.com. We recently spoke exclusively with Meissner, who has written a thought piece on the subject, on how office space and culture work together to create a successful company.

Via globest.com >

Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are innovative business giants known around the globe. They all have at least one thing in common. They each find a way to control the immense demands on their time, making sure they give their brains the ability to think of the next big thing or solve their most pressing problem. It’s very valuable and requires the intentional search for privacy.

For the average job-seeker or any parent wondering what kind of livelihood awaits the next generation, the current headlines are the stuff of anxiety attacks. In June, the Associated Press announced that it would begin using an automated writing service to cover more than 10,000 minor league baseball games each year. Driverless trucks may soon be taking over from humans, elbowing out an entire profession. New technology purports to bring great change to a surprising number of fields, including law, medicine and financial services. What will be the human toll and net effect on the economy? Has the U.S. reached an epoch of irreversible job loss?

Via weforum.org >

Take a moment to think about the first desktop computer you used in a professional setting. Chances are, it was a lifeless taupe or black box and clunky keyboard attached to a bulky computer screen that weighed more than a healthy teenager, all connected with a pile of cords that looked like a plate of spaghetti.

“Now,” said computer designers to the office furniture industry, “build something to hold this stuff. And while you are at it, manage all those cords and the the power needed to run it all.”

That’s the point when furniture became nothing more than a prop for technology tools. I recently looked through a book on workplace designs from the mid-1980s. I immediately wanted to assign blame for the sea of cubicles and sterile office chairs found in that era of the office. Should we blame the office furniture makers for creating lifeless panel systems? Perhaps it is better to blame the interior design industry for bastardizing the products the industry created and applying them in the wrong way?

Via Ki.com >

As W. Clement Stone once said, “You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective.”

That’s what employees around the world seek, and that’s what office managers responsible for creating efficient spaces strive to remember when setting up workplaces that would not be just shelters for workers but also strategic tools for their productivity and growth.

Yearly, experts take a try to predict the most useful trends in office design. These have inspired us already, but 2017 is on its way with new predictions and trends. What is more, it’s going to be a year when Generation Z enters the workforce: born between 1994 and 2010, they are even more entrepreneurial and flexible in their approach to careers compared to Gen Y. 60 per cent of them wants to have an impact on the world with their jobs, so it might be challenging for employers to create the ideal offices, which would satisfy their needs and motivate them to work.

Read the article on huffingtonpost.com >

Improving employees’ physical and emotional response to their working environment – from the look and feel of a workplace to non-visual sensory inputs such as smell, noise and temperature – can significantly improve productivity and cognitive performance, a new report suggests. According to Decoding the workplace experience: how the working environment shapes views, behaviours and performance the workplace experience is not just about how well the workplace satisfies functional needs, it is about the overall impression it leaves on the user; and the way an employee experiences an environment is emotional and occurs potentially at a subconscious level. Sensory influences such as the smell, noise and temperature of the working environment are among the main factors that influence employees’ experiences of the workplace and do impact productivity and performance. Expectations of the workplace also change depending on personality, background and numerous other factors; which is why understanding your workforce is the key to creating an effective workplace experience.

Read the article on workplaceinsight.net >