A well-designed workspace has the potential to positively impact your business in many ways.
It starts with the initial wow factor that supports how people perceive your brand. That also influences how potential clients and employees see you, so it affects your business development and recruitment. And having a workspace that is appealing and efficient has long-term effects on employee satisfaction and retention.
As if that’s not asking enough of your work environment, there is even more that it can do by encouraging creative thinking and productivity. In every field, creativity leads to great ideas and their execution, whether you’re in healthcare, retail, financial, manufacturing, or another sector.
So how does a great workspace achieve all of this? It starts with an understanding of the fact that people are happier when they are more creative and productive in their work. Then we look at what helps people achieve this. Sometimes it involves collaboration and other times it requires the privacy needed to dig in and get things done.
Once we look at the interior design of your workspace through this lens, we can design spaces that inspire people without compromising performance by allowing creative work to happen more naturally.
While so much of our work today requires collaboration, research shows that privacy is also important and that it is the second-highest factor that influences creativity. That means your workspace needs to be able to accommodate all kinds of work, including collaboration in pairs or groups as well as individual areas for focused work.
So much of this can be achieved not only in the office layout but in the furniture that creates separate areas and can be moved around to adapt to your team’s needs. One additional consideration in this is technology. In most cases, it no longer makes sense to have a computer connected directly to a single desk without the ability to move around.
Here are a few ideas for areas you can create in your office to achieve optimal productivity and creativity.
Focused Spaces
These are spaces intended for an individual. They are completely private so that an employee can collect their thoughts and get their work done.
It is generally a smaller space with an adjustable height work surface to allow for both and standing and sitting. Focused spaces also benefit from having whiteboards to jot down instant thoughts.
Duo-Spaces
This space allows two people to hash out ideas, speaking freely without any outside interruptions.
This is a larger area, still partitioned off for privacy and with whiteboards for ideation. It may also need a smart TV mounted for skype calls, research, and two adjustable height workstations side by side for collaboration. Smaller lounge seating is also an option to allow for movement, conversation, and quick collaborations.
Ideation Space
An ideation space is an area where many people can collaborate, speak freely, expand on the current idea at hand.
This may include a bar-height work surface with stools to promote movement and interaction, as well as whiteboards, a smart TV for meetings and external interactions. It will also have private walls to keep the conversation in and not bother others. You can also include lounge seating as another way to collaborate.
Maker Space
When you’re ready to take an idea into the development stage into rapid prototyping, this area is designed to allow people to switch between conversation, experimentation, and concentration.
This space supports a range of postures – seated, standing, lounging, perching — encouraging movement without breaking flow.
In entirely open workspaces, focused and collaborative work often don’t coexist well together. The goal of having these different types of work areas is to have a more flexible space that has been thought through to include many different options for different styles of ideation and creativity. Each space will have different needs and requirements specific to your industry and their specific space itself.
Talk to us about how work could flow better in your office.