Office Design & The Return to the Workplace | 360 Commercial Projects
The office now has competition.
For many employees, that competition is a quiet room at home, no commute and a kitchen approximately twelve footsteps away.
Simply providing a desk is therefore no longer enough to make a workplace valuable.
The more interesting question is:
What can the office provide that people can’t easily get elsewhere?
Give people a reason to be there
The role of the workplace has changed.
Individual focused work remains important, but offices increasingly need to support interaction, collaboration, culture, learning and social connection alongside concentrated work.
RICS identifies changing working patterns and employers’ desire to create higher-performing workplaces as important factors behind recent investment in office refurbishment. RICS Modus
That means workplace design should start with behaviour rather than furniture.
One office, many ways of working
Think about a typical day.
At 9am somebody might need a quiet place to prepare a presentation.
At 10am they’re on a video call.
At 11am they’re collaborating with three colleagues.
At lunchtime they want somewhere relaxed to eat.
During the afternoon they may need another hour of uninterrupted concentration.
Expecting one desk to perform all those functions isn’t necessarily the best answer.
Instead, successful workplace design can provide different settings for different activities.
Collaboration without chaos
Creating collaborative environments doesn’t mean turning the entire office into one giant conversation.
Good design balances interaction with concentration.
Open collaborative spaces can sit alongside quieter working zones, enclosed meeting rooms and smaller spaces for calls.
Acoustics matter enormously here.
An office that looks spectacular but sounds like a railway concourse may quickly become frustrating.
Think about the human experience
Light, temperature, acoustics, comfort, colour, materials and furniture all influence how a workplace feels.
The BCO’s current fit-out guidance explicitly identifies human-centric design and wellbeing as important aspects of best-practice office fit out. BCO
That doesn’t mean filling the office with beanbags and hoping productivity blooms.
It means considering the people who will actually spend their working day there.
Create spaces that encourage interaction
Some of the most useful workplace interactions aren’t scheduled in Outlook.
A conversation over coffee can solve something that might otherwise generate twelve emails and three meetings.
Kitchens, breakout spaces and informal meeting areas can therefore play a meaningful role in workplace culture.
Their position within the floorplate matters too.
Good workplace design can create natural points where people encounter colleagues without forcing interaction.
Technology should support the experience
Hybrid working has also increased the importance of technology.
Meeting rooms need to work equally well for people physically in the room and those joining remotely.
Power and connectivity need to support more flexible working locations.
Technology should feel integrated into the workplace rather than bolted onto it afterwards.
Your workplace communicates your business
An office also tells a story.
Customers, prospective employees and existing teams all form impressions from the environment around them.
The workplace can communicate quality, creativity, professionalism, confidence and culture without placing those words on a wall.
The strongest interiors don’t simply apply a company’s logo to reception.
They translate something of the organisation’s personality into the space itself.
Don’t design for a trend
Workplace fashions change.
Your business has to live with the result.
Rather than chasing whatever currently photographs well on social media, focus on understanding how your organisation actually works.
A good workplace should be attractive, certainly.
More importantly, it should work.
Is your workplace still working for your people?
If working patterns have changed but your office hasn’t, it may be time to reconsider how the space is being used.
360 Commercial Projects creates commercial interiors designed around the organisations and people who occupy them.
