Office Interior Design for a Happier, More Productive Team
Options for Office Layout to Maximize Productivity
Office layout and planning is a major factor in worker satisfaction and productivity. If you are considering an office renovation in New York City or beyond, it’s time to consider how to ensure your employees are happy in their workspace, resulting in greater productivity and retention. This is especially true today, when companies of all sizes are figuring out ways to entice workers back to the office and encourage them to stay, after months of home office.
In this article, we will delve into the different types of office layout to help you decide which one is right for your company. We will go over:
Office Design Through the Ages
A little history will shed light on the concepts behind office design, which has been evolving for, well, as long as there have been offices.
The layout that prevailed until the end of WWII was based on the office design of American engineer Frederick Taylor. Influenced by the manufacturing industry, it was straight and linear, with workers crowded together in open office areas, and those higher up the ladder given a private office. However, this office layout was found to create worker dissatisfaction and discourage productivity, and was soon displaced by a more democratic office layout that encouraged collaboration.
In the 1950s, American office space planning began to adopt the German concept of Burolandschaft (“office landscape”), which replaced uniform rows of desks with organic configurations using items such as plants, screens, and office furniture to encourage interaction. Managers were placed on the office floor rather than in a private space. The result was a more open-plan office layout, which remained popular for several decades.
The 1970s and 80s saw the birth of “cube farms,” which were designed to block out the noise and distraction of the open office layout. However, some employers used this type of layout to cram cubicle upon cubicle, as much as possible into the available floor space. The lack of sunlight, individuality, and communication in each workstation left the employee feeling isolated and disgruntled.
The concept of flexibility in the office space was introduced at the beginning of the 21st century as a result of technology, which helped liberate the employee from their cubicle. Offices were designed to accommodate a mixture of work and leisure activities, with game rooms and relaxation areas integrated in the floor plan and filled with lounge furniture. As office space planning evolved to be more focused on community and collaboration, an open plan layout became popular once again, though now, the office floor plan was designed with multiple spaces for large and small meetings--a hybrid layout. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created the need to reimagine office space planning once again, with the comfort, happiness and health of employees becoming the primary concern of the commercial space planner.
The Hybrid Office: The Balance Between Cubicles and Open Plan Designs
We have witnessed an office space plan swing from open space to private space and back again. Today, office layout has settled between these two extremes, using concepts intended to ensure the comfort and happiness of workers, hence increasing their retention and productivity.
Today’s office should be designed to appeal to today’s workforce. Allowing employees to choose where they want to work is key to their satisfaction and engagement. Cubicle-designed offices and open floor plans have both been shown to contribute to worker dissatisfaction. As a result, many companies are taking a hybrid approach that incorporates the private office within a larger open office plan for meetings and collaboration, creating a functional and comfortable workspace. A hybrid configuration accommodates a mixture of work and leisure activities, allowing workers to choose an environment most appropriate to the task at hand. It includes the incorporation of the private office, for individual work without distraction, the collaborative space, meeting room, and conference room, for informal and small teamwork, and large, more creative open office space for collaboration and brainstorming. This office layout also allows employees to move around, which helps improve their health and well-being.
Several hybrid office concepts have recently gained popularity:
Agile office configuration
Agile, or flexible, workspaces offer a mix of furniture styles and work zones, with different office space designed for groups of different sizes. Lounge and office furniture, movable office dividers, and demountable walls all create options for flexibility, allowing the available space to be rearranged to accommodate varying numbers of people and to change with a company’s needs.
Because a company’s needs change over time, a flexible office layout is a great option. Sometimes modifications have to be made quickly, or may be only temporary to accommodate a specific project. Those doing home office may come in for weekly or monthly meetings. Office layout should be agile in order to accommodate these needs, without requiring an investment in major changes.
Activity-based working (ABW)
This is a design model that empowers employees to choose among a variety of work settings geared towards specific activities in order to be productive. The term was originally coined by the Dutch consultant Erik Veldhoen, who conceived the idea that the office floor plan could be designed around activities rather than roles. ABW design includes a variety of spaces that allows workers to choose the environment within the office space most appropriate to the tasks at hand, as well as offers a balance between fixed and flexible spaces, with rooms designed to fit specific activities. It includes the incorporation of private spaces for individual work, open offices for informal and small teamwork, and large, more creative spaces for meetings and brainstorming.
ABW design can result in savings based on a decrease in space requirements and operational expenses. Less expensive than remodeling a traditional office space, the cost of change is also minimized, because ABW solutions are more adaptable than traditional office design. Companies can use techniques such as incorporating mobile desks and chairs to modify the office floor plan based on a company’s changing needs. In general, if workers are moving around, less desk space is required, hence reduce square footage for the office space needed.
Another major benefit of ABW is increased employee success due to a higher morale, increased productivity and the ability of employers to attract and retain talent, especially because today’s workers demand more than just a traditional cubicle or an open work environment.
Hoteling
Current trends in pandemic-related office planning, such as hoteling, and its cousin, hot-desking, are designed to lessen the real estate costs associated with extra square footage required by assigned desks or cubicles, by providing identical workspaces on an “as needed” basis. In hoteling set-ups, personal desks are replaced by generic desks. They can be used by whomever needs to work there on a particular day, so part-time workers’ desks no longer have to sit empty when the workers are not in the office.
There are some drawbacks with the hoteling model. It can disrupt stability as workers have to move to different surroundings each time they come to the offer, and results in less personalization of one’s office space. It also creates sanitation issues.
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