The utopian workplace is here, complete with roof gardens, therapists and time to nap. Can the employee ever escape?
Work imitates life
Office Space And A Growing Company: How To Get The Most Out Of Your Work Environment
As a business leader, many of your most difficult decisions are driven by how quickly your company grows. Decisions like whether or not to move to a larger office space are delicate balancing acts between investing in key resources too soon and too late. When it comes to office space, you do not want to invest in a work environment that you will not use in the near term or distant future. Nor do you want to create a space that is difficult to work in because it is crowded. So, how do you get the most out of your current office while you wait for the right time to invest in a larger location?
WHAT WE LEARNED LAST WEEK ABOUT CHOICE IN THE WORKPLACE
Last Thursday night at the new Social Tables headquarters in Washington, D.C., we gathered a crowd of local workplace experts for a panel discussion about exploring choice in the workplace. Many of us are no longer tethered to a particular location or office, and during last week’s TALK, we set out to address how you might help your workforce (or yourself!) grow accustomed to more choices when it comes to where, when, and how you get work done.
Workplaces Magazine Debuts
How do you handle working alongside a noisy neighbor in the office? What are the best chairs for a call center? How can a worker get the most from her time on a commuter train?
Work is much more than sitting at a desk or tapping away at a computer. Yes, the office remains the hub of what we call work, but it also happens at home, on the subway or airplane, in a far-flung hotel room or a nearby coffee shop. And work is being shaped by products that make the worker more efficient, comfortable, happy and connected. Workplaces Magazine follows everything that makes work happen, from the latest ergonomic office chair to the hottest mobile phone. Yet it is about much more than products. Workplaces Magazine also follows the latest trends about healthy workplaces and new workstyles.
The first issue of the new monthly magazine Workplaces is available for free.
Growth of Social Media and the Flexible Workspace
The modern office is nothing like it used to be 10 years ago. Due to advances in technology, work has become more flexible and fluid, and the ways employees and supervisors communicate is a lot more mobile thanks to social media and various communication oriented apps.
The last few years, we’ve seen how many more workers aren’t required to come in to the office anymore, and how those that do make use of flexible workspaces are a far cry from the mundane cubicles of yesteryear.
6 Ways the Millennial Mindset Impacted Commercial Real Estate in 2015
The Open Office. Crowdfunding. Live-Work-Play. At SeedFeed we believe all of these CRE buzzwords have one thing in common. They exist because of the millennial generation. Now the dominant demographic in the U.S. workforce, this group, born roughly between 1980 and 2000, outnumbers the baby boomers. Their priorities have become the priorities of business, and this has had a profound impact on commercial real estate in the past year.
How to create a culture of early technology adoption in the workplace
Tech breakthroughs are making our lives easier — both in and out of the office.
Ever-improving Apple continues to launch new versions of the iPhone. Wearable tech now employs apps to tell us what stresses us out and what makes us happy. And thanks to technology, more companies are offering telecommuting options to employees, according to a recent SHRM study.
Is the design of a workspace linked to its performance?
First impressions last. For clients, customers, or employees, their first interaction with a business is the physical space it operates in. How important is this workspace in relation to business performance? Callie van der Merwe, CEO of strategy, design and build agency, Design Partnership, says different workspaces have different requirements. However, all are tailored as “machines for workings”.
Barception: Why your reception desk is getting bigger in 2016
In a world where the office is an expression of brand, everywhere is front-of-house. What we consider the “front-of-house” in the workplace (as well as the location for public areas and what we find in them) is increasingly evolving in a communal way. Creative and TAMI (technology, advertising, media and information technology) companies along with start-ups have taken the lead in this transformation.
WHY A GOOGLE OFFICE WON’T WORK FOR YOU
Want an office like Google? Think again! The open plan office versus closed debate rages on, and rather than running out of steam in the face of evidence and reasoned argument by many industry thought-leaders, it seems to have nine lives! New Tech offices seem to be particularly popular examples of why highly open and transparent workplaces do, or don’t work, especially headline-grabbing Google.
Read the blog by Dr. Caroline M. Burns on carolinemburns.com >
Whatever you might be told, this is not the Office of the Future
It seems like we don’t have to wait more than a few days at a time before some or other organization is making its own prognoses about how we will be working in the future, especially at this time of year. The thing these reports about the office of the future all share in common, other than a standardized variant of a title and a common lexicon of agility, empowerment, collaboration and connectivity, is a narrow focus based on several of their key narratives and assumptions. While these are rarely false per se, and often offer some insights of variable worth, they also usually exhibit a desire to look at only one part of the elephant. The more serious reports invariably make excellent points and identify key trends, it has to be said. However, across them there are routine flaws in their thinking that can lead them to make narrow and sometimes incorrect assumptions and so draw similarly flawed conclusions. Here are just a few.
2016 Interiors Awards Winners Announced
Contract magazine's 37th Annual Interiors Awards winners were announced January 29th at the Interiors Awards Breakfast at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York. The event honors the winners of the Interiors Awards, which recognize international projects across 14 categories, as well as the Designer of the Year and the Legend Award winner.
Office design as talent attractor
With low unemployment rates and the necessity to attract talent at the top of many organizations’ lists, something as simple as an office redesign could make the difference. Millennials aren’t impressed by the isolation of cubicles.
How The Growth Of Mixed Reality Will Change Communication, Collaboration And The Future Of The Workplace
Mixed reality has the potential to allow a global workforce of remote teams to work together and tackle an organization's business challenges. No matter where they are physically located, an employee can strap on their headset and noise-canceling headphones and enter a collaborative, immersive virtual environment.
The future of next generation TMT workplaces explored in new report
A new report from property adviser Cushman & Wakefield claims to outline the key future property trends for TMT workplaces based on the views of decision makers from global Fortune 500 organisations, architects, designers, founders of start-ups and high-growth businesses. The Future of the TMT Workplace report produced in association with Unwork, identifies the key forces ‘driving change and necessitating TMT players to fundamentally rethink their workplace strategies’. These include frictionless growth, engineered serendipity, the ‘gig’ economy, the pace of technological change, demand for top technological talent far outstripping supply and where to locate in order to succeed.At this week’s launch event for the report, a panel of expert speakers agreed that workplaces have a critical for TMT firms to respond to challenges such as the need to attract the most talented tech workers.
AN OFFICE TO “KEEP IT SIMPLE AND FUN”
Fuhu, the creator of nabi, gave the designers at Kamus + Keller one major directive when they set out to transform the company’s 17,500 square foot space: keep it simple and fun.
WORKPLACE DESIGN AS A MINDING PROCESS
When you treat workplace design like a minding process, it changes the game. Dr. Charlie Grantham, a Reiki master and workplace expert, is back to explain his non-traditional approach.
A Year in Review: Ten Workplace Trends of 2015 - Part 2
Last week, I posted the first half of a look back at the top trends of 2015. This is a continuation of that article. It seems everything from working postures to the materials and layouts selected in the physical work environment are getting more casual. The contract furniture market is now competing with quality and price points from stores like CB2, Z Gallerie, and IKEA. Some say that this is due to the fact that these comfortable, familiar residential products are not available through traditional contract channels. Others suggest that it is because of the emergence of young entrepreneurs and rapidly growing companies unfamiliar with the contract furniture industry. Either way, as this trend proliferates, the days of beige walls and cubicles are quickly fleeting.
How to Design Innovative Hubs for Big Ideas
The piece recognizes that companies are focused on increasing innovation in their organizations and offers ideas from outside industries that can help spur big thinking within companies. Specifically, the piece looks at Education (Lassonde Studios at University of Utah), Medical Science (SUNY Buffalo and Kaleida Health’s GVI/CTRC) andArt (DePaul University’s new Theater School) as industries pushing new ideas that can influence workplace design.
4 WAYS YOUR OFFICE MAY CHANGE BY 2025
In 1999, the movie Office Space lampooned the ubiquitous grey office cubicle. Fast-forward more than a decade and a half later, and tech companies are more likely to look like sleek open warehouses with lines of workstations and Aeron chairs or standing desks.