Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
Today, good design has become a top priority for many leaders looking to boost productivity, retain employees, attract customers and keep their business competitive. But good design can also be good for business on a more practical level - a professional, well-conceived design can save an owner or developer thousands of dollars over the life of a project.
To some, the office is a humdrum place of meetings, deadlines and pressure. To others, it’s a vibrant medley of collaborative spaces and quiet solitude to drive inspiration, stimulation and creativity.
It’s easy to see which is more beneficial, but how do you create an environment that’s conducive to a positive workplace culture?
There’s no straightforward answer. From effective management and great leadership to flexible working principles and employee development, there are so many different ways to inspire and engage a workforce. One of them is office design, and you can see brilliant workspace design in action at many of the world’s most successful corporations.
Employers need open and interactive spaces to encourage collaboration, and such spaces can introduce distractions. Distractions, however, sabotage focus, and focus work is a necessary part of collaborative efforts. How can we solve this conflict? Approach workplace design so that it encourages both collaboration and focus work: Offer employees a variety of workspace options, choice over where, how, and when to best work, and control over workspace features and furnishings. Make the workplace legible and clutter-free so employees won’t waste effort navigating the workplace. Lastly, include “recharge” spaces; focus work takes intense effort, and it requires breaks.
It is said that if you want to get the same results, keep doing things the same way. By inference, if you want new or better results, something has to change. There has to be a shift in one’s thinking, a change in approach, a revision of well-worn strategies.
Such is the case for high performance corporations doing business in the context of the emerging global economy – who recognize the value of the workplace as a strategic asset and also that the traditional workplace does not capture the potential of the knowledge workers who use ideas and information to create organizational value. A well-designed workplace creates a framework for creativity and collaboration; it allows an organization to realize its full potential for innovation.
With one of the hottest summers on record, your office is sure to have had its share of temperature issues. Employee preferences for office temperature differ but steps can be taken to enhance employee comfort.
With hot and cold calls constantly topping the list of employee complaints, IFMA conducted a survey of over 450 Facility Managers in 2009 to investigate the issue of office temperature. Different preferences resulted in employees using everything, from blankets and gloves to personal fans, for temperature control. During the summer one Facility Manager even reported seeing an employee bring a wading pool into the office under their desk, to cool their feet.
As someone who designs workplace environments, it’s fascinating to participate in the “amenity one-upmanship” happening at corporations throughout the world and at tech firms in particular. From ping pong tables and kegerators to massage and nap spaces, amenities are now ubiquitous to the workday experience. They reduce the formality of the office environment and encourage a higher level of socialization and camaraderie, each key contributors to workplace satisfaction. They make culture more tangible and visible, which in a red-hot market plays a strong role in recruitment, retention and differentiation.
From half-empty office blocks catering to an increasingly mobile workforce to car parking bays outside private homes, what’s there isn’t necessarily a waste of space, it’s a wasted opportunity to use the space in a more productive way.
Now, the sharing economy is looking to change that. Restaurants are the latest buildings looking to make more use of their space. In New York City, start-up Spacious is partnering with restaurants that are empty during the day to turn them into coworking spaces for freelancers, entrepreneurs and consultants looking for a different work environment.
The conversations around Active Design continue! Designers, manufacturers and customers are discussing what it is, what are the benefits and how it is implemented? In the simplest of terms, Active Design is an approach to the development of buildings and workplaces that make daily physical activity more accessible for employees. For a more thorough explanation, check out this post on Active Design.
The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.
Over the last year, we’ve been excitedly planning our new office space. If you’ve ever been through an office renovation, you have a unique appreciation for what this endeavor looks like!
You’d be surprised to learn how important being intentional with space is. Admittedly, this isn’t something I would normally think of unless there was reason to in the moment. Going through this exercise has been a much needed and growth-oriented opportunity for me as a leader in my company. What I’ve come to see is that good design, like a good voice-over, shouldn’t stand out. It blends in because good office design, like a good voice-over communicating a message, is merely a vehicle- it’s a palatable expression that supports the ultimate goal. To say it differently, the spoken word is how people hear a message. Design is how people experience their work.
See the latest progress made at Apple Campus 2. Featuring stunning shots of the "spaceship", auditorium, r&d center, and more. Landscaping and other smaller structures are beginning to pop up throughout the campus. Recorded using a DJI Phantom 3 Professional.
Google has recently opened its new London office, set to be the company’s largest in Europe – we take a tour around the interiors to find out what it is that makes Google’s working environment so unique.
At this time and date, one thing is for certain- how happy and productive your employees are often depends on how beautiful your office looks. Gone are the days, when the company's workplace was regarded as a place which merely housed employees as they went about their daily set of responsibilities, thus being of little significance- design wise. Today, that has completely changed and now, the workplace is the king. Companies are slowly starting to realize that the way to a employee's heart is through a beautiful workplace and are as a result investing much more on ensuring that their workplaces walk the talk and reflect what they stand for.
Fueled by a desire for collaborative team experiences, Workplace design is experiencing a move away from personal offices to an open concept. This new layout enables views of 70 to 90 percent of occupied spaces, pushing the conference rooms and closed offices to the core and placing workstations at the perimeter.
The open office concept inspires mechanical designers to find innovative solutions in order to provide adequate ventilation, and heating and cooling for these large open spaces to support increased efficiency and personal comfort.
Disengagement in the workplace, and the $415 billion dollars it costs the global economy each year, has become an outright epidemic. According to “360 Steelcase Global Report: Engagement and the Global Workplace,” 37% of employees worldwide are highly or somewhat disengaged at work, with the majority of the others surveyed falling somewhere on the low- to middle-end of the curve. In fact, of the more than 12,000 individuals surveyed, just 13% report being both highly engaged and highly satisfied with their organization and workplace.
Are employees pining for their old cubicles? And if we take a cue from home, the kitchen is the center of family gatherings, making it now number one on the list of company amenities. Robin Weckesser, founder and president of a3 Workplace Strategies, discussed this and other water cooler buzz in this GlobeSt.com office trends exclusive.
Every day, companies are introducing new ideas, strategies and technologies that change how and where we work. Each year, new graduates enter the workforce with bold ideas about their work style preferences and needs.
New research is constantly emerging that points to new ways for us to work smarter, healthier and more effectively. Collectively, these influences are reshaping workplaces and pushing them to a future state that never stops evolving.
For years, companies were caught up in the debate about open vs. closed workplaces and their respective merits. Recognizing this debate never led to a strategic solution; companies have been ramping up investment in research and employee engagement to better understand the types of work their office spaces need to support.
This ability to foresee and adjust defines how we approach our everyday. Arguably, how we adapt is very much constructed by our surroundings, and more specifically, the built environment. Because, the reality is, we spend 90 percent of our lives indoors.
The corporate real estate profession will be influenced, disrupted and transformed in the years ahead by a powerful combination of forces that are re-shaping business strategy and operations, consumer preferences, and how and where people want to live and work, according to a new report from CoreNet Global. The Bigger Picture: The Future of Corporate Real Estate draws on the expertise of more than 30 thought leaders to provide insights from multiple perspectives beyond CRE: technology and the internet of things; risk mitigation; cyber security; environment, energy and sustainability; corporate social responsibility; the global economy; people, talent, wellbeing; and the future of cities. The report argues that CRE must deliver greater value in this dynamic business environment and a world that is changing rapidly, is more interconnected than ever before, is constantly disrupted by technological innovation, and is replete with both risks and opportunities.
Noise levels are one of the leading causes of workplace complaints. The open office trend is making noise levels a growing problem: fewer walls to block sound and more people in a shared space.
The American Society of Heating and Air Conditioning Engineers recommends that offices have a noise range between 49 and 58 dBA so as not to interfere with conversations or distract workers. But workers themselves prefer lower noise levels – not exceeding 52 dBA.
