Your reception area is vital to making a great first impression and the office design as a whole can really help enhance this experience. Jane Streat, Head of Client Services at Lexington, catches up with Kursty Groves, designer, innovation consultant, and co-founder of Headspace to find out more about how our work environment has changed and how to maximise the use of space.
Whilst we are now very firmly in a new era where leaders understand the need for collaboration and how this supports creativity leading to innovation it’s taking a while for things to really change in the way they need to when it comes to our working environment.
Yes, our work environment has changed in that there are more multi-tenanted buildings and open plan offices but this need not be a barrier, it actually encourages collaboration. There’s also been the introduction of co-working spaces, which revolutionised the life of freelancers, and there’s now the third space, a place for staff to work and socialise, which is neither a traditional office nor living quarters. But the reality is that when you boil things down the shape of the office hasn’t really changed much over the years, according to Kursty.
Kursty says, “The way we operate and manage our workspace is based heavily on the deep rooted philosophies and techniques of the post-industrial revolution era when businesses drive to grow was driven by a need to do things more quickly and efficiently. The more linear, siloed and compartmentalised the work process and the people, the better.”
Typically organisations approach workspace design by the number of desks required according to Kursty this is the wrong way to approach things. She says, “We need to start by thinking about the work we do, how we work, who we are and what we value, then understand what works well and what we can do better. “
Research, carried out by Leesman, shows 53% of employees believe that their workplace enables them to work productively. But what about the remaining 50% of employees – is the work environment having a negative impact on their ability to do their job?
As a species human beings are incredibly adaptable which is why we’ve been so successful in our evolutionary steps towards becoming a successful species. “There is a downside to this though,” says Kursty. She explains we will quite often put up with an environment that works against us. Why? Because it doesn’t appear detrimental enough that it warrants investing time and money into optimising it for our unique needs.
According to Kursty facilities managers have a bit of a battle on their hands. She says, “Facilities Management have grown up in the traditional workspace but in order to engage and empower people to be their creative best we need to change the physical environment. Now is the time to take a more joined up approach – facilities need to be working with experts across their business, like HR and marketing, to ensure workspace is on their leader’s agenda and enough investment is made.”
Research shows there’s a huge opportunity for us to transform our working environments to encourage more efficient ways of working, increase productivity and improve business profitability, whilst ensuring the needs of our team and visitors are met. Facilities teams have a huge responsibility to drive this forward and work with other partners to ensure offices are set up and managed to foster employee wellbeing and productivity.
According to Kursty businesses need to consider three main things when thinking about workspace and they need to do it in this order:
1. What is it the people in that space need to do?
2. What do we want them to experience? What do we want them to think and feel? What brand, personality, tone and mood of we want to create?
3. What does the space itself offer to enable this experience and what of we need to create to enable it? (From physical, technology and people perspectives?)
