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.
No one can deny that technology is transforming nearly every aspect of the workplace. It’s helping ease communication across distributed teams, improve the physical aspects of workplaces, and increasing productivity.
However, in order to adapt and continue to thrive in these ever-changing conditions, companies must stay one step ahead of the trends for success both in the short-term and the long-term.
It's been billed by big business as a way to inspire a new generation of networking, productive team-players working side by side (albeit in a smaller office), but a new study shows that desk sharing can have a negative impact on an employee's productivity and make them feel less appreciated.
The study published this month in Science Direct surveyed 1,000 Australian employees who work in shared work environments, ranging from open plan office spaces through to, at the extreme end, staff who hot desk -- where staff have no permanent space, arriving each day and setting up at an available desk.
In office design, we often look for ways to bring the outside in—through the placement of plants and trees and the use of natural materials and natural lighting. People are inherently attracted to the out-of-doors. Worker wellbeing goes up when nature provides the backdrop.
So, what if designers also worked on bringing the inside out? What if employers embraced the benefits of getting outside and invested in great outdoor workspaces for their people?
At a time when more traditional businesses are scrambling to adopt the efficiencies of leaner startups, help is on the way. WeWork is currently in the research phase of a new initiative through which it will revamp companies’ offices for them, remaking them in WeWork’s image and arming them with office-management technology and a cultural attaché.
It's more important than ever today, when the problems facing our world are so complicated that overcoming them may require multiple solutions, all deployed at once. Design thinking starts by challenging people to be empathetic -- to put themselves in the end-user's shoes. Solutions aren't imposed from on high; they come from the bottom up.
Corporate real estate has assumed a far greater importance for today’s companies. Instead of just cutting costs, companies need a fully-realized workplace strategy to attract and retain employees, says JLL.
As director of real estate management at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, Nina Gazzola gets to match startups with the perfect place to thrive. The 1.5-million-sq.-ft. innovation hub comprises private offices and common workspaces for entrepreneurs big and small, giving Gazzola a window into their frenzied lives.
“Their world is fast-paced and they’re focused on growing their business, so they want a space that is going to help them attract talent, that’s going to be inspiring and that’s going to be easy to be up and running instantly,” she says of the psychology behind office design.
Anyone who has worked in an office can relate to the many distractions fellow colleagues can produce. From loud conversations to pungent wafts of lunch foods, coworkers are often real roadblocks to productivity (you might even be experiencing it at your desk right now). Indeed, a study from researchers at the University of Sydney found that office noise was cited as the most frustrating aspect of the work environment by about 50 percent of employees in open offices. What's more, Oxford Economics—an independent global advisory firm—found that 53 percent of office employees complain that workplace noise reduces their satisfaction and productivity.
With more people working remotely than ever before, and an uptick in gig-type occupations, coworking spaces have emerged as a popular and cost-effective option for businesses and the part-time, full-time and contract workers they employ. In an effort to tap into the global talent pool, more and more large companies are providing access to coworking spaces around the world. In fact, the number of coworking spaces worldwide has increased by 1,000 percent in the last five years.
Metropolis publisher and editor in chief leads a panel about the changes happening in the workplace of the federal government.
Courtesy of a global, networked economy, change now happens faster and with less warning or pattern than ever before. Today, change is the new normal. So how do you harness change as a force for improvement and innovation? How do you create an organization where change is part of its DNA?
Workplace change has the power to inspire people to transform organizations, taking them to the next level. Yet the conventional approach to workplace change has concentrated on controlling chaos and handling resistance until things return to normal.
The workplace of the future is one that is mobile, flexible and IT-intensive. Advances in many areas of technology have reformed the future workplace, and conventional practices are no longer as relevant as before.
The Impact Hub is one entity that has arisen from such changes, redefining what a workspace could be. It consists of a global network of people, places, and programs that inspire, connect and catalyse impact, all condensed into one collaborative space. What began as a single Hub in London in 2005 has evolved into a rapidly expanding, diverse global network of more than 15,000 members in over 80 locations.
Of all the memes and narratives that corrupt public discourse about workplace design, the most pernicious is the one that suggests there is a linear evolution to some grand end point called the Office of the Future. There is a natural human inclination to buy this sort of idea, fed by an assumption that what we find most interesting, aspirational and hence what we read and talk about forms a goal. Read any style magazine and you’ll see the same process at work in every facet of our lives. This is why so many people are quick to consume and then regurgitate the idea that what we see happening in the world’s great tech palaces and creative offices represents the apogees of design to which the rest of us must one day succumb. It rests on misguided assumptions about what really goes on in such offices and what these assumptions mean for firms in other sectors. It is the great apex fallacy of workplace design and it is one we must constantly challenge.
“A really poor aesthetic working environment can have an negative effect on employees psychologically, because it conveys indirectly to the individual that the organisation doesn’t care about them. It says that they are just ‘worker bees’ or disposable assets,” Sir Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Alliance Manchester Business School, says.
The modern office is no longer a grey room and some cubicles. It’s a mix of hot-desking, open plan layouts and co-working spaces. Flexible working, “jelly bean working” and virtual offices. With so many new trends and alternatives, deciphering what is the best option for you and your business can be a difficult task.
Secluded pods that allow office workers to meditate, smash things or scream will be commonplace in two years time says UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel, after research found that stress-related illness costs the US economy $300 billion a year.
The Dutch architect claims that many big companies will install breakout pods in their workplaces in the near future to combat the "epidemic" levels of stress experienced by office workers all around the globe.
The company just scored a Petal certification from the Living Building Challenge. Next on the agenda: achieving zero waste by 2020—and maybe convincing other tech companies to follow its lead.
Graduating from college is as daunting as it is exciting. Young adults leave the familiarity of their campuses and classrooms and head into the vast unknown that is the workforce. There are so many new, moving parts that it's no surprise an overwhelming number of companies found their employees are often "lost in transition" right after graduation.
Lighting plays a significant role in the built environment, impacting not only ambiance and functionality but also productivity and wellbeing—all of which are vital in today’s resilient workplace. Given the complexity of designing interior lighting schemes, an expert should be engaged for every project, whether an existing facility or an as-yet-built one. In the process of helping clients achieve optimal lighting scenarios, certain concerns come up again and again: how to mitigate glare and brightness and whether LED is the healthiest and most sustainable choice.
Offices are embracing open-concept layouts as a way to improve communication and collaboration between employees, but removing walls and cubicles is only the starting point. There are several items you can tackle in your office design to overcome the challenges associated with open office working and encourage increased collaboration.
Here are four of the most popular design ideas to improve collaboration in open offices.
