The Well Designed Office is Not Emptying Out, It’s Better than Ever

At the end of last year, the CEO of Redfin, Glenn Kelman predicted that in 2019, “the office will empty out.” He said, “the whole point of an office weakened years ago with the disastrous open floor plan, a warren of people wearing headphones and messaging their brains out, together in name only.” 

He pointed out all the forces working against a physical office including, but not limited to, Slack, Github, Jira, working from home, parental leave. He left out a few more…video conferencing, cell phones, traffic, housing costs, childcare and all the others you can add in the comments below. Oh, and digital nomads too. 

Then, he gets sentimental. “What we’ll lose is the water cooler, which alongside the altar and the school entrance, was a place for us to connect with new people. Offices are also one of the last spots in an increasingly secular society for all of us to get a sense of community and purpose. I’ll be sorry to see them so diminished." 

Glenn, I’m with you, part-way. Old-school offices are disappearing. But, the modern office? It’s more dynamic and vibrant than ever (check out this video evidence). It’s my job to imagine the office of the future and make it awesome, precisely because that shared sense of community and purpose is not only humanizing, but also business critical. 

The high performing office must be a tool for stimulating creativity and communication. Both academics and CEOs have been championing this idea for a long time. We must bring people together, face to face - research tells us propinquity stirs innovation. At the same time, we need to give people quiet places for heads-down work.  

Here’s how we use real estate and design as a tool to stimulate creativity, communication and collaboration. 

1. Create Collisions 

To get people moving and talking, we invest in fantastic break rooms. We place them in areas with the best views and the best natural light. We hope the great ambience and gourmet snacks create high-traffic areas where “office collisions” and unplanned dialogue happens. Scott Birnbaum, a former VP at Samsung said in a Harvard Business Review article, “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor.” 

People may not be focused on a task while catching a coffee break, but researchers found that in some cases even a 5% drop in personal productivity can have a positive outcome on group performance. 

Another example? LinkedIn has occupied a number of separate floors in the Empire State Building for the past few years. Because each floor was developed at a different time (as the need for additional space arose), each had a different environment and separate dining experience. As a result employees rarely visited colleagues on other floors. Then, we built a café for all the LinkedIn employees on the oversized 3rd floor. On the first day of business at the café, there were tears. People hugged one another saying, “I haven’t seen you in years!” Now, a wider group of employees regularly interact socially and collaboratively, which ideally brings them more happiness, energy and inspiration and helps boost the company’s competitive edge. 

Break rooms and cafes provide a place for people to spontaneously meet and chat, and the informality of it can stir ideas that may not be vocalized in a formal, scheduled meeting in a conference room. Time spent bonding over a meal is some of the most special time families spend together and we find it has the same positive effect on our teams and culture. I believe that this holds true even for small or mid-sized companies for whom providing food to all its employees on a daily basis is just not a financial possibility. For those organizations I say, create a “kitchen table” a center of connectivity where people gather, share their favorite baked goods, host birthday and holiday celebrations. A place that feels like the employees’ home away from home, that builds and then continues to reinforce positive energy and a collaborative culture. 

 2. Enable Productive Pop-Up Meetings 

In the past, people equated body-at-desk with body-at-work. No more. Gensler’s most recent U.S. based workplace survey found that top innovators work away from their desks 2.2x more often than non-innovators. This tells us we need to focus more energy on everything that is not the desk. We need to encourage pop-up meetings and make that magic moment as productive as possible.  

We’ve piloted a number of programs to remove barriers and encourage spontaneous meetings, and we’re rolling them out across the company. 

• We've installed strong wi-fi everywhere, and put power supplies in the ceilings, tables and walls, so no one wastes time connecting or powering up. 
• We replaced laptops that needed a fistful of cables to function, with laptops that need a single USB-C cable. Now, workers can grab and go with their laptops instead of untangling cables.  
• We distribute file cabinets and paper trays sparingly to encourage people to be lightweight, instead of carting mountains of paper around.  

We understand that people also need quiet, focus time, so we’re rolling out silent library spaces on every floor in every building. As I wrote recently, we aim to give people choices in their workspaces. 

 3. Prove the benefits of working in person 

We like people to come into the office, but we also use video conferencing, instant messaging, screen sharing etc., so anyone who wants to work remotely, can. 

Still, we believe in-person meetings can be more efficient and effective than the most advanced tech. How about that string of emails and IMs that lead to misunderstandings and end with awkward in-person conversations to straighten things out?  

At LinkedIn our IT team has developed a video conferencing platform that works extremely well, most all of the time, but that is not the case at the vast majority of other organizations. For most, there are the technical frustrations and time sink of malfunctioning video conferences. If you haven’t seen this video, of a video conference call gone technically wrong, you’ve got to. It’s hilarious. 

Perhaps the office of old is emptying out – just like Glenn Kelman of Redfin predicts.  But, I remain committed to ensuring that a modern office remains valuable and serves as a tool to facilitate communication, creativity and collaboration. What makes a company competitive hasn’t changed much over the years – good ideas, good people, good teams. And if you want to be successful, you better have all the tools – including real estate – that bring those incredible assets together. 

 How do you make your office a communication tool? 

Thanks to Francesca Segrè for editorial support.