As W. Clement Stone once said, “You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective.”

That’s what employees around the world seek, and that’s what office managers responsible for creating efficient spaces strive to remember when setting up workplaces that would not be just shelters for workers but also strategic tools for their productivity and growth.

Yearly, experts take a try to predict the most useful trends in office design. These have inspired us already, but 2017 is on its way with new predictions and trends. What is more, it’s going to be a year when Generation Z enters the workforce: born between 1994 and 2010, they are even more entrepreneurial and flexible in their approach to careers compared to Gen Y. 60 per cent of them wants to have an impact on the world with their jobs, so it might be challenging for employers to create the ideal offices, which would satisfy their needs and motivate them to work.

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Improving employees’ physical and emotional response to their working environment – from the look and feel of a workplace to non-visual sensory inputs such as smell, noise and temperature – can significantly improve productivity and cognitive performance, a new report suggests. According to Decoding the workplace experience: how the working environment shapes views, behaviours and performance the workplace experience is not just about how well the workplace satisfies functional needs, it is about the overall impression it leaves on the user; and the way an employee experiences an environment is emotional and occurs potentially at a subconscious level. Sensory influences such as the smell, noise and temperature of the working environment are among the main factors that influence employees’ experiences of the workplace and do impact productivity and performance. Expectations of the workplace also change depending on personality, background and numerous other factors; which is why understanding your workforce is the key to creating an effective workplace experience.

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The idea of the perfect home came about over thousands of years centered around what would make a person happy if they were there all day. They have personal spaces where they rest, sleep, maybe a work room. They have common spaces where they cook food, eat food, use electronic devices, a playroom.

But now they’re not at home all day. They’re at the office.

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Developing workplace strategies around trends or benchmarking has always been of great concern to me. Many clients want to know what the latest trends in workplace design are, what others in their industry are doing. Workplace designers have been all too accommodating in providing this data and information, often at the expense of better research into how to quantify performance and uncovering more substantial information that better connects a particular workplace design strategy to an organization’s performance.

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“People are the chief currency and greatest asset of any business. With up to 80 percent of a company’s expenses coming from human resources, it’s vital that their workforce is productive, engaged and empowered. Unfortunately, 68 percent of U.S. workers are disengaged, according to the latest edition of Gallup’s annual engagement survey.

“Though there are many factors contributing to this alarming statistic, attitude plays a major role in workplace engagement. And although a well-designed space will have a positive impact on the occupants, we cannot discount or downplay the impact of individual attitudes.”

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You know what they say, the grass is always greener on the other side. These days in the workplace, there is one example of something many never thought they would miss, until it was gone—cubicles. Yes, cubicles, those sad monotonous structures symbolic of our workplace oppression. Your own personal cave where you could privately wallow in your case of 'the Mondays'. 

The past few years have proclaimed the dawn of the open-plan office revolution, but statistics are beginning to point to the idea that workers actually seem to be missing the dismal cubicle culture due to the collective feeling that they lack privacy within their office space. A fascinating survey conducted by Gensler with over 1,200 UK office workers in 11 different industries shows that effectiveness ratings in the workplace decrease the more people you share an office with and the less privacy you have at work. 

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Workplace design is not just about the physical space, says Charlie Grantham. It must include and integrate talent leadership practices and build upon a technology infrastructure if it’s going to support the whole person in his or her livelihood. Here’s how you can do it.

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