Office Productivity
The Office of the Future, Part 3
Published July 22nd, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
When it comes to discussions about the office of the future, you can’t leave architects out of the mix. Architects, after all, are at the heart of office design.
Office designs can enhance productivity, accommodate collaboration, help with issues like work-life balance – and more – if they are designed with these objectives in mind.
aBetterOffice.com caught up with Tom Vecchione is a principal at Gensler and director of the firm’s Workplace Consulting Group, to discuss his designer-minded views on the office of the future.
How will the office of the future look, design-wise?
Alternate and adaptable environments are key for the office of the future. Offices will feel almost club-like in their choice of environments in which employees can spend their day. Offices will be less static in terms of assigned desks, will be more open, transparent and of course, they will be media rich as well offering Wi-Fi throughout, ample teleconferencing suites and other immediate access points to remote colleagues and clients around the world.
How will the office of the future enhance productivity?
The office of the future will enhance productivity by fostering employee engagement and connection – with the brand, the company and each other. The future office will be designed to help employees and clients understand and embrace its core mission and values, as well as the brand ethos of the organization quickly and seamlessly, thereby helping employees from around the corner and across the globe to quickly engage.
A more transparent office, by the same token, will enhance productivity by allowing for more collaboration and socialization among employees – seeing is knowing, after all. And the better employees know each other the more likely they are to feel comfortable with each other and work well together.
How will the office of the future accommodate collaboration?
The office of the future will support a culture of convenience. That is, the office will be designed to foster collaborative experiences in a variety of settings: an expansive and welcoming café style area for lunch, snacks, etc.; seating areas with couches, comfortable chairs and tables scattered throughout the office to encourage and accommodate informal meetings, and a number of conference rooms appropriate for the space. The norm for offices of the future will be collaboration space.
How will the office of the future help with issues such as work-life balance?
The idea of an “Extended Workplace” is key to enhancing work-life balance. Creating a workplace that extends employees’ options vis-à-vis time, tools and environment will be critical. What does this mean? The office of the future must include amenities such as a gym, rooms for nursing mothers, a variety of on-site cafes offering healthy foods. Organizations that embrace amenities that give employees options to help them balance their lives will be demonstrating that the health of their workers is a key value. This will become increasingly important when considering rising insurance premiums and proactive health care, as well as when thinking about employee retention and hiring.
How will the office of the future include sustainable technologies?
In the future, the sustainable focus will be on conserving energy – both of the employees within an office and for the physical building systems themselves. Many sustainable technologies will do double duty in this regard, for example window shading technologies that can both help manage heat gain and loss for an office building, as well as aid in cutting glare on computer screens that can cause headaches and eyestrain for employees. Traditional HVAC systems will be replaced with individual underfloor air units that can be manipulated by employees and give them more control over their own temperature and comfort, while also help lower an office’s overall power consumption.
Office décor is also going green, with paints, fabrics, carpeting and all manner of office furnishings and finishes designed to be biodegradable and made with low- or no-VOCs. In addition, technological advancements will allow workers to store paper files on-line, mitigating the need for extensive file storage. Of course, this just scratches the surface of sustainable options for the future office. There is so much research going into this question that no doubt there will be many more sustainable choices for offices in just the next five to ten years.
Can you share with us some futuristic ideas for the workplace of 20 or even 50 years from now?
Office as Flagship: Offices will become central places of knowledge and insight for a company and its employees, the standard-bearer of the company’s global brand and ethos
Office as Venue: The office will serve as a place to showcase ideas, learn & train employees, and engage internal and external audiences. We think of the office of the future almost as a gallery where one, or an entire group’s, efforts can be displayed and critical information disseminated
Office as Marketplace: The office will be a place to bring individuals together to share ideas, trends, insights, and information. Sharing this kind of disparate info from employees across an organization will provide an up-to-date pulse on the market, and create an office setting almost like a trading floor, with employees responding to shared data and coming up with new insights
Overall, the future office is all about Networks (connections, social interaction), Reputation (office as the physical embodiment of a brand’s reputation) and Adaptability (offices need flexible space to best respond to workers’ needs).
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About the Author
Rob Zeus July 28th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Wow. Now this is a well-rounded, very solid perspective on the office of the future. What a great idea to talk with an architect. Looking ahead 20 or even 50 years is a tall task, but this guy really seems to know his stuff. It’s really a whole different way to look at office usage.
Elizabeth Sanchez July 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
These are theoretical perspectives, but it’s really the way the workforce has to move in terms of the office space and virtual office technologies facilitating productivity. There are major workforce shortages predicted in the future and we’ll need to do more with less. Office space design needs to accommodate this shift. It’s great to see leading architects getting on board with solutions.
Melanie Jones July 29th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
From what I’ve read, it seems to me that the office of the future is all about enabling collaboration. Serviced offices fit into that model, but so does telecommuting, coworking spaces and virtual technologies. Already, it’s not just one size fits all. But large corporate settings tend to have a technology advantage over smaller serviced offices. New technologies will level the playing field and diversify office usage.
Maggie Correta July 29th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The work life balance issue is huge in the realm of the office of the future. I believe whatever enables work-life balance is going to become ever more important, whether it’s technology, flexible office spaces, flex schedules, etc. This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue all the time.
Bill Brookshire July 30th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Sustainable design is such a huge concept, I can definitely see how it will play a large role in the office of the future. Indoor Air Quality has been shown in various studies to make healthier employees. In other words, Sick Building Syndrome, which comes from poor IAQ, hinders productivity. Sustainable design isn’t all about the environment. It’s also about the people.
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