DESIGN & INTERIORS
FUTURE PROOFING OFFICE DESIGN
What should offices look like in a post-Covid world? Optima brought together leading professionals from the commercial architecture, design, asset management and HR worlds to discuss and debate the topic. Here, Allan Wood, Managing Director at Optima, talks to Tomorrow’s FM about some of the findings.
Covid-related remote working measures have remained eased since the summer and the Prime Minster is intent on keeping it this way for as long as possible. He announced at the Conservative Party conference in October that returning to the office was important for building a productive workforce. But now as winter begins to take hold, and with news of a further variant, facilities managers are still facing uncertainty and extraordinary challenges, unlike anything we’ve experienced before in business and beyond.
A new UK-focused report by Schej, a hybrid workforce scheduling app, titled Hybrid Working 2021; Manager’s & Employee’s View, reveals that only 20% of respondents said they would seek a fully remote job. Further, according to a Michael Page survey from September this year, more than 50% of London office workers had expected to split their time between the office and home, with at least three days a week being at their desks in an office. As the end of the year approaches, businesses are continuing to manage the huge, and still uncertain, switch to hybrid, where physical office space is being used in a very different way compared to pre-pandemic life.
The morass of problems faced by businesses attempting to return-to-work was discussed at a roundtable we hosted recently. Optima brought together leading professionals from the commercial architecture, design, asset management and HR worlds to discuss, debate and investigate the issues companies and their workforce are facing. ‘What should offices look like in a post-Covid world?’ was one of the many questions we unpicked in detail during the 90-minute event.
The outcome of these discussions revealed that office design played a huge part in how safe people felt in their working environment. As such, it was deduced that a big part of the solution could be delivered within the design of the office space itself. Our experts predicted that the office spaces capable of enticing staff back, and making them feel secure will be those that manifestly meet all the required health and safety measures, and are flexible enough to provide the ability for them to adapt in the future. With so much uncertainty continuing to dominate, and this hybrid model still up for discussion in many businesses, the ability to be agile will continue to be key in office design as we move into 2022.
Versatility is the name of the game Our roundtable experts highlighted a real need for purpose-driven and activity-based work areas. These give
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employees the freedom to choose to work in the type of environment which will benefit the task they have at hand, whether that be a quiet zone for ‘heads down’ work, including both sit and stand desks, or recreational breakout areas, formal meeting areas, and presentation spaces for more collaborative work. This notion of versatile spaces that adhere to varying working styles and needs is here to stay.
The days of jam-packed offices are over, noted one of the participants. “The big driver used to be: how many people can we get in this space? People aren’t accepting that now. They want to come into the office less, but have a pleasant experience when they do, and they want collaboration spaces.”
Now, we are seeing more highly-sophisticated fixtures, fittings and finishes available for contemporary commercial office spaces being specified by architects and interior designers. They’re also increasingly advising on new solutions to help their clients create flexible and cost- effective workspaces, with layouts that can be largely reconfigured or changed to suit new needs as time evolves. One example is freestanding adaptable meeting rooms (AMRs). These compliment new emerging working methods, from collaborating, to socialising to private working.
Happy, healthy working
environments Workers want to feel they’re looked after by the environment they’re in, as much as by the company they work for. Analysing the air quality, improving HVAC systems, specifying more natural lighting and importantly delivering flawless acoustics, are all factors that will undoubtedly transform office environments for the better.
New lifestyle-led aspirations should be considered, which might mean the adoption of a more ‘home-style’ aesthetic and flexibility to work and collaborate across the office, rather than be fixed to one desk.
Mental and physical wellbeing is now playing an important part in office design and that’s why curating people- centric offices is so crucial. After a long time working apart, there’s now a renewed interest in community. As such, social interaction, the flexibility to collaborate across the office and hot-desking, have become increasingly popular requirements for businesses. We’ve seen first-hand that many employers are valuing physical and mental wellbeing at work more than ever before. One recent example is MoneySupermarket’s head office. This
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