No more rows please

The dance of the office space

This week I thought I would follow up on my flexible working article by looking at the Office and asking the question, 'is that communal space we used to occupy together really part of our working future and if it is what should it look like?'

As a workplace assessor you see a lot of office spaces. Some are more open plan than others, some have separate rooms for meetings and the people in charge, others have everyone out in the same space. The one thing that typically all these spaces have in common is rows. Row upon row upon row of desks. Sure, some people have made their rows look less like straight lines by using 120 degree desks or curves of some nature to make more interesting geometric patterns flowing across the carpet tiles but still they are basically rows.

As anyone who has ever been involved in an office move or redesign knows, hours have been spent making sure that the right people are sat in the right position in these configurations. There are those who like windows, those that don't, those who hate air con, those that find the light in this space too much, those that just need to sit looking one way as having your right hand side to a wall just messes with your mind!

We have spent years dancing with the politics of the office and people's space to work. It can be very time consuming and tedious for management. Don't get me wrong these places are not without their pleasures. Most tea rooms and breakout areas, which now come in all shapes and sizes offer people a place to congregate and break up the day and if you find yourself in a particularly cool office space that has a flatscreen TV pumping out music all day long then you might even see some bobbing up and down behind the screens.

And then we went home

Then Covid-19 came along. People had to leave these spaces, go home and find themselves working where they could. Some had proper desks already, they had built their arks for just such an occasion. Others had to fight for shared ground which became precious as both students and workforce both needed space. We were reminded that, despite our work deadlines there were other important things happening like the need to prepare dinner so could we get out of the kitchen, or even better come help!

We learnt a lot. We learnt that we can do the work that we were doing in that building we called 'Work' at home. We learnt that, whilst sometimes this space we call our own isn't ideal it can be improved upon and it can be productive. For some people, a realisation was made that their homes, should this continue, are too small and maybe a move might be in order at some point.

Get the rows out of here

What I want to know is, have we learnt that we don't want the rows anymore? Some rows here and there are probably fine and if you must have your team altogether in one great pool of telephony ping-pong then great. However, I have a suspicion, based on the number of people who are now saying they like working from home. that we might want our offices to look different.

Without a doubt, the one thing that everyone tells me they are missing about the office is getting together with their colleagues, who for many, are also their friends. People are missing people. This is not really a shock and in many ways must have been the main reason we decided to bring people together under one roof in the first place. That and it helped to control the work.

Oh but we are modern thinking now and should be able to embrace flexible working, which means we trust our staff and therefore they can work when and where they like because they are great people! If we believe, we are, indeed flexible and up to the challenge. Then the only reason left that people want to come together is to be together. Which gets me back to my argument about rows. You see, I think people have now worked out, that, if I can work at home productively, when I go back to that shared space, I want a different experience from home. I don't want to sit in a row, I don't want to spend all day sitting looking at a screen or answering the phone or another online call, I can do that at home. What I want is to be with my people, creating, energising, learning, throwing ideas around, moving around, even dare I say it playing as some of the best ideas have come out that way.

Flexible design

Equip your people well at home. Provide them with the things they need to work safely and comfortably. I am trying out the new Kensington Orbit Fusion Wireless Trackball as I write and very comfortable it is too. I love bits of kit that have so much functionality and are wireless like this as I love to work wherever I want to around the house. I like to be flexible both in terms of my time and my space. I also have Echo music devices in most rooms too for the same reason. I want to take my music where I go.

At some point, when it is safe to do so, we may want to entice people back to an office. Just stop to ask them. Is this what you really want this space to be or is this the opportunity to make it so much more.

Look at desks or tables that move, use docking stations to make it easy for people to use that space with their technology in a more temporary way by providing easier access.

Look at seating ideas that promote group work or discussion, look at designs that encourage people to people interaction as goodness knows they will have missed it.