4 Trends to Follow to Create a 'Wow' Workspace

The best strategy for asking people to Return to Office (RTO)?

Build a space people want to be in. (One that makes them say, ‘Wow!’)?

And do it right.

Across the board, how we work and what our priorities are at work have totally shifted.?

What worked in the past to entice people to perform at their best, will not even get their attention anymore.

Returning to the office is about embracing and catering to ease of productivity. It's about fostering and leading a positive culture, AND it's about attractive, immersive workspaces, collaboration and equal access to leadership.?

We’re seeing these priorities across the board in what our industry is creating -- and in what our clients are asking for.?

Companies across the region consistently discuss the need for synergy between designing for profit and creating spaces people want to be in–and can do their best work in.?

With the surge of RTO mandates, here’s how you can adjust–and how you can do it so well, your employees will say, "Wow, it feels good to be back to the office."?

Four trends we’re seeing:

Trend One: Smaller office buildings.

Setting the stage: In many cases, RTO mandates require three in-office days per employee per week, which means interior spaces only need to hold 30-40% of a company’s staff at any one time. (Unless the whole team needs to meet, which I address below.)

Because of this, we’re seeing less money allotted for the building and more money funneled into the interior experience and amenities, building immersive workspaces that attract and retain talent.?

Challenge: Privacy. Don’t waste your money on privacy pods. Nobody uses them. We just talked to a local business owner who put in six privacy pods and he said, “We move them all over the office and no one uses them because they're very claustrophobic.”?

Solution: Create inviting meeting and conference rooms and other spaces (not coffin-sized) for more intimate conversations, where people can get some privacy.?

Trend Two: Community spaces.?

Setting the stage: We’re seeing significant focus and large budgets on community spaces. This helps solve the problem of having the entire staff in a space built for 30% regular occupancy. Interiors are leaning towards bench seating, large breakrooms and huge monitors for gaming or happy hour entertainment.?

The biggest thing we’re seeing is a surge in office bars. When we put a bar in our office 12 years ago, only one other company had one. At least 50 companies in our area now have a place to grab a drink, from beer to a full bar, and 15 were installed in the last six months.?

Challenge: Hearing what you need to know from your people when they’re only in the office three days a week.

Solution: Bars keep people around after work and meetings. As a leader, if you drop by the company bar for 30-40 minutes twice a week, you’ll get more good information in one week than you would in a month of being in your office.

Trend Three: Sound masking.?

Setting the stage: Smaller buildings, open spaces and bench seating are fantastic and more collaborative. They also create density and noise.

Challenge: Sound reflectivity issues. We’re having more conversations about acoustic treatments today than the past 20 years combined.

An office space that didn't need to be acoustically treated before (because cubicles ate up the sound and provided privacy and the open workspace plan creates more noise) now requires a tamping down sound so it doesn't travel and your people can get sh*t done.?

Solution: Sound masking. Speech intelligibility in an office reaches 25 feet. If you were to take a rope in the middle of a call center or community bench workspace, walk out a 25-foot circle, you’ve got 50 feet of sound, side-to-side and everyone within that 50 feet is a potential distraction. With sound masking, reflectivity is reduced to 12 feet. That coworker who’s four seats away and always talks about her date the night before? You can’t hear her anymore.

Trend Four: Control and automation.?

Setting the stage: We’re having conversations about lighting, shade and environmental temperature control and automation we only dreamed of having 20 years ago.?

The new systems out today are all low voltage, which puts control in the hands of the user at a level we couldn't before.

Challenge: Leaders now want the ability to set the thermostat, control the shades, turn lights on or off, remotely. When we show them we can change everything in our whole building, every light, every window shade, all security on all floors, including locking and unlocking the front door with one button from a phone, they’re in.

Solution: Do it up front. The cost to do this today is a fifth of what it was five years ago. And the cost to do it upfront is a fifth of what it is to retrofit it.?

We’ve built NextSpace so everyone who walks through our doors benefits from our experience and that of our partners.

We’re involved (daily) with some of the most exciting commercial immersive workspaces in the region. We understand buildings and we understand the people who need them. We understand we are creating the future of workspaces, right now.

Don’t let a lack of ideas or concepts of unconventional spaces like open-plan workspaces, community spaces, acoustic concerns stop you from creating an office people will want to return to again and again. Stop by and take a tour instead. We are here to help you make the best decisions for your next space–and get it right the first time.?

Come visit us and get it right the first time. Go here to book a tour.

#NextSpace #WorkspaceGallery #inspirethepossible #immersiveworkspaces

Jeff Emmons founded Immedia in 2004, and it is now the top workplace technology company in the southwestern US and one of the top employers in Arizona. Jeff has personally met more than 6,000 people in the community and the industry over the last 20 years, and because of these relationships, in 2023, Jeff brought together a dozen partners and over 100 manufacturers to open NextSpace, a 14,000-square-foot immersive workspace gallery featuring product categories and solutions that help end users imagine the possibilities as they design their workplaces of the future. He is also a husband and dad, loves trail running and hiking, is involved in Greater Phoenix Leadership and served as president and part of the advisory board for the Notre Dame Preparatory High School Dad's Club.