The average full-time employee works 1,900 hours a year, most of which are likely to be spent in the office. Today, due to the pandemic, these trends are changing little by little, but some companies still have a policy that all employees must come to work in the office five days a week. Although management policies and company culture are dominant factors in making employees feel good at their workplace, office design certainly plays a role.
As well-being and comfort in the workplace became a priority for attracting and retaining a skilled workforce, companies are more willing to invest in the workspace, ensuring, for example, quality lighting and access to natural light or noise-reducing materials that can help keep employees healthy. It is important that the design of the office creates the best possible working environment in order for the employees to have a pleasant, relaxed and productive stay in the office.
What is office design?
Simply put, office design is a tool that enables productive and purposeful work in a given space. It encourages creativity, while also leaving room for customization and personalization.
There are many office design factors that contribute to a positive workspace, while promoting productivity and purpose: lighting, colors, plants, materials, ergonomics, etc. The combination of these factors in the physical space has a significant impact on the health and morale of employees, as well as on their creativity, productivity, and collaboration.
Before designing any space, it is necessary to determine what the design is trying to achieve. What challenges do employees face in the space? How can the space be better adapted to the needs they have in their workplaces?
First, it is important to look at how employees use the current space. The best way is often the simplest – find out by talking to them. In the conversation with the employees, get information about anything that might bother them in the office they are currently in or anything they might feel is missing. It is equally important to find out what are the things they like. It is often very important to implement the qualities of the existing space into the new design of the office, along with introducing new elements and removing the shortcomings.
A good start would be a workplace analysis in the form of a questionnaire. This way, one can find out how employees like to work, collaborate, and carry out the activities that take place in each space. It should be kept in mind that sometimes what people want is not necessarily what they need. It will certainly not be possible to satisfy every wish of the employees (the budget is a limiting factor, among other things), but the employees should feel heard and included in the office design process.
Our experience shows that when designing an open workspace, employees are most worried about too much noise and loss of privacy. Nothing can replace your own 4 walls, but it is possible to remove some of the disadvantages of an open workspace while maintaining its advantages. Noise can be reduced by installing acoustic panels that partially absorb sound. Privacy in open workspaces can be achieved by setting up rooms that are used for conducting short telephone conversations and rooms for focused work mode where employees stay for up to several hours.
The open workspace can be divided into well-designed collaborative zones. These zones are there for collaboration, as well as spontaneous meetings that are proven to enhance the creative work process.
When planning smaller closed spaces in the office, such as focus rooms or phone rooms, it is particularly important to consider sound insulation. This includes considering the composition of walls and inclusion of partitioning elements such as glass walls. When choosing glass walls, you should think about the layers of glass, but also about the connecting points between elements – the door to the door frame and the profile to the wall. Getting this right creates quiet spaces that employees can use, and those are essential for occasional isolation employees need in order to reach deadlines or overcome creative obstacles. Isolation of this type also means noise reduction in the open work area when phone calls are made in a soundproof environment.
When we design a space with the well-being of its users in mind, the focus should be on creating different zones for the different ways people want to work.
If you care for office space design and you find it important that your employees feel good at their workplace and in their working environment, the DC&T expert team can help you adapt the office space according to the needs and wishes of your employees.
