In the 90s the office jokes were all about cubicle culture. In the 2000s it was about how you had to ‘throw out the conference table and put in the ping pong table.’
In recent years designing the modern workplace has become much more complicated.
The trend towards having fully remote workers and employees that split time between home and office has dramatically changed the way we need to design the workplace. The way we meet, communicate and collaborate is different, and brings new challenges and opportunities.
This, combined with increased awareness and demand for healthier workplaces, is creating new trends in workplace design.
Companies are becoming more aware that a better work environment results in better employee productivity, happiness, and loyalty. This connection to the bottom line is putting more value on the upfront investment into thoughtful design.
From a marketing standpoint, the visual face of the company has never been more important. Images are a huge part of brand strategy. Spaces that look good and that make people look good are important for websites, online marketing, social media strategy and in real life events. Creating these photogenic moments is a trend that’s part of most workplace design conversation.
Prioritizing Brand and Storytelling in Workplace Design
That different types of business have different workplace design goals is self evident. An office for a tech company will prioritize innovation. An office for a design firm needs to balance collaborative spaces with spaces for focused work. A law firm might prioritize stability and privacy.
As we discussed, companies want their employees to thrive and their brand to grow stronger. This means that designers are building the narrative into the design. Most companies don’t want generic office space anymore. They want their design to build their culture and tell their story.
As different and unique as each design can be, any good designer is going to focus on the fundamentals: good lighting, nice materials, efficient space planning, ergonomics, clean air, and so on. These aren’t trendy, but there are trends within any of these categories.
Space Planning for Modern Work
One of the biggest and most obvious changes to the work environment is that people don’t always have to come to work anymore. Designing a workplace to accommodate this flexibility has been a challenge that has evolved over the past few years. When a company does this well, it can build a positive culture with many benefits for their employees. They can skip the commute, leaving more time for family and activities. They have more flexibility to adapt their work to their lifestyle, including making taking part in the workforce easier for parents with small children. They can be more productive when they need to focus, with fewer of the distractions that come with the office environment. (There can be drawbacks as well. Companies with remote staff need to build a strong culture so people don’t feel isolated, and so their work time doesn’t overwhelm their personal time.)
At the level of the individual office or personal desk space, there are space planning challenges. Companies don’t want to pay for empty desks and offices. Rent is expensive. Do you have less offices and less desks? Does your team care about having their own space to come to, or are they ok plugging their laptop into a desk that is shared with someone else on the days they aren’t there?
Flexible spaces sound nice, but are people going to move walls and desks enough to make them worth it? Or do they just want to come in and get to work?
Cubicles turned out to be not so great. Being able to hear everything but not see anything didn’t create nice places to work. Modern workplaces need quiet, private places where people can focus, and they need places where people can get together for conversations, meetings and brainstorming sessions. Enclosed offices have made a comeback, even if you can’t pack as many people in per square foot. Open offices without the cubicle dividers are popular and spatially efficient, but aren’t always the best for focus time, and have challenges with acoustics for offices that rely on phone calls of video meetings.
These are the types of questions that need to be addressed to create an environment that builds employee satisfaction, encourages productivity and reduces unnecessary overhead costs.
At the collaborative level, there are different concerns. A meeting where everyone is in the same room is easy enough to design for. You need the right size table, the right number of chairs, good lighting, the ability to block out sound and interruptions, appropriate presentation space, and so on. Technology like Zoom has made it easy to hold all virtual meetings. But meetings where some of the group is together in real life and some people are joining virtually are tricky and awkward. How do you design so that everyone can hear and be heard? How do you design so that everyone can see the presentation, and feel like they are ‘in the room’ as much as possible? Designers, tech teams, and AV experts need to collaborate to come up with solutions that make these spaces work as best they can.
Emphasizing Employee Well-being and Comfort
Creating a work environment that prioritizes employee well-being and comfort helps to maintain a productive and satisfied workforce, which is exactly what we focus on in our practice of wellness architecture. Modern workplace design is trending toward incorporating elements that cater to physical, mental, and emotional health.
Natural light and biophilic design principles play a crucial role in enhancing well-being.
How do you design the principles and experience of nature into an environment as unnatural as sitting in a chair looking at a screen? It’s a challenge! But that’s the beauty of biophilic design. Just because you are starting with a condition that isn’t ideal doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity to make it better.
Starting with nice light is a good step. Natural light goes a long way to making a space feel better. If you have views of nature, that helps too, granted that this isn’t always possible in an urban setting. Adding plants to the spaces is nice. This is all straightforward, but from there, it gets more fun as a designer. It becomes about materials, patterns and textures. It becomes about designing the details that add layers of interest. Glass and steel and concrete and drywall don’t make you feel like you are part of the natural world. You start asking yourself questions like: How can we bring in natural materials; wood, plaster, stone etc.? How do you achieve a rhythmic pattern, like being in the trees? How can you add details that catch light and vary shadow? Is this done through literal motifs or abstract references?
Traditional architecture excelled at this level of thought and detail. Columns and engravings and patterns were integral to the design. Modern architecture stripped this away, disconnecting us from our inclination to seek out nature. This doesn’t mean that a workplace needs to feel like an old English library, although those can be very nice. It’s a question of how to use the principles in a way that we resonate with.
Light and Air
It can be debated whether using a whiter color temperature in your lighting will make people feel less tired in the afternoon, and therefore be more productive.
The idea of using harsh light to squeeze more work out of your staff is perhaps a little cynical, even if you are couching it in the language of ‘circadian rhythms.’
What does make sense is that people get more done when they feel better, when they aren’t distracted, when they breathe better air, when they don’t have glare on their monitors.
LED technology has led to big changes in workplace lighting design. Fluorescent lighting was never great to be around. LED lights can be an improvement over fluorescent lighting, but it isn’t a guarantee. Too often you find yourself in a space where LEDs have been swapped in that are underpowered, the wrong color temperature (generally too cool) and that are low on the Color Rendering Index (CRI). Nothing looks good, your eyes are strained, everything feels off. If following the trend toward using LED lighting, make sure you are doing it right. Spending a little extra on high-quality bulbs is more than worth it.
Another under-appreciated part of modern workplace design is getting the lighting right for computer work. Even if the daylight is nice, glare on the monitor can make it hard to get work done. There is a science to organizing desks to that light angles are optimized to reduce glare.
The air you breathe is vitally important to how you feel. It has been shown that fresh air improves energy levels and ability to focus. The more the better. How do you get more fresh air into the design of a work space? Opening windows is sometimes possible, if the building allows for it, if it’s not too hot or too cold or too humid outside. In most cases you’ll be relying heavily on your HVAC system. Work with your consultants to raise the amount of air changes you’re getting. Implement a high-quality filtration system and use ERVs to save energy heating or cooling the air coming in.
Materials that Inspire
We mentioned that strong design is part of a company’s brand-building effort. Fortunately, this also connects to a healthier and more inspiring space.
Not much is less inspiring than a blank painted wall. (Blank cinder block wall, maybe?) Choosing materials for a workplace design is important. Non-toxic and Zero-VOC materials and finishes are a baseline standard in our practice. This gives you better less offgassing and better air quality, but this can still leave you with the blank painted wall as your backdrop.
Using materials that add texture and variety are great for aesthetics and the sensory experience. A plaster wall has a depth and richness to it that paint can’t achieve. A wood desktop has character, and feels nicer than melamine. The possibilities are limitless.
Budget is important, to be sure, and painted drywall will undoubtably be part of almost any project. But looking for opportunities to use healthy, natural materials will improve your design from many angles.
Ergonomics are Everywhere
It’s pretty well accepted that sitting in chairs, looking at screens isn’t good for us. We know that we are fitter and healthier when we are outdoors and moving. Yet we’ve designed our entire society so that we spend our days sitting inside, in chairs and looking at screens. Until a new technology comes along that changes our interaction with computers, we are tied to the use of desks and screens and keyboards.
How do we design to take this unhealthy condition and make it better?
People have tried out different chairs over the years. Ergonomic office chairs, massage chairs, yoga balls, kneeling chairs, wobble chairs all have their benefits. Standing desks are popular, but it isn’t simple to optimize the ergonomics. Desks with adjustable height have become more available and user friendly. Walking desks and treadmill desks are practical for some types of work, but the space needs to be designed to fit them.
Even with all these options, most people end up spending many hours a day sitting at their computer. How can a space be designed to encourage them to get up and move? Can a company find ways to promote walking meetings, getting outside, getting up to stretch, without interfering too much with the work?
In this regard, the ping pong table isn’t a bad idea, if it gives people a chance to get up, play, more and blow off steam. That being said, most people want to come to work to get work done, not goof off, so it might not be the right fit for your office culture. Maybe a gym space is better, or memberships to a nearby gym. Maybe incorporating a meditation, yoga or stretching space is a positive addition that will help give your team a needed break from their desks. Maybe it’s as simple as designing a great lunch/gathering area where people can spend their break time building camaraderie with their fellow team members. And maybe a combination of the above ideas. Your designer can help you come up with concepts that fit your space and your ideal work environment.
The Wellness Workplace and Beyond
At its essence, we see workplace design as being inextricably linked with wellness architecture. A healthy workplace is a happier workplace, and therefore a more efficient and productive workplace. Great design that considers these factors is a win-win across all levels.
Making something pretty is one step. A beautiful, elegant design does feel good to be in. But there are bigger questions to consider. We have touched on a couple, such as how you get people to move more and sit less. Between the designer and the company executives, deeper questions can be raised, such as, for example, how you design a workplace or a work culture that promotes better nutrition and eating habits?
Certainly, there are lines that can’t be over-stepped, and both companies and designers can only take this idea so far. But simple ideas, like provide more fresh food and less fried food in the cafeteria, or designing the staff kitchen so it highlights a supply fresh fruit, vegetables or healthy snacks are all within the realm of possibility.
As workplace design trends, these ideas are still in early phases, but the fact they are being considered is a great sign for a wellness future.
