Office workspaces7/4/2023 Few companies measure whether a space’s design helps or hurts performance, but they should. How do we know whether any of these approaches is effective? The key metric companies use to measure space-cost per square foot-is focused on efficiency. We just take old ideas, put them into a kind of kaleidoscope, and turn. With apologies to Mark Twain, there’s no such thing as a new office design. Cubicles are torn down for open plans, which leave introverts pining for private space. The park mixes spaces for work, living, and play, encouraging serendipitous meet-ups.įaith is nice, but do executives have proof that this works? Social space like Samsung’s could be just another in a long line of fads and broken promises in workspace design: The “action office” becomes the cubicle. Workspace in the Downtown Container Park, part of the Las Vegas Downtown Project. Young digital workers believe that these spaces improve their performance. Silo-busting requires spaces that draw people out of their offices.Ĭoworking spaces are a response to the oppressiveness of the cubicle and the loneliness of the telecommuter. Public areas can become semipublic meeting places. Outdoor and large public spaces are sandwiched between floors. headquarters, in San Jose, features a central atrium. The new building “is really designed to spark not just collaboration but that innovation you see when people collide.” Cutting Edge Workplace Design “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor,” says Scott Birnbaum, a vice president of Samsung Semiconductor. Vast outdoor areas sandwiched between floors will lure workers into public spaces, where Samsung’s executives hope that engineers and salespeople will actually mingle. headquarters, designed in stark contrast to its traditionally hierarchical culture. Yahoo notoriously revoked mobile work privileges because, as the chief of human resources explained, “some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions.” And Samsung recently unveiled plans for a new U.S. Google’s new campus is designed to maximize chance encounters.įacebook will soon put several thousand of its employees into a single mile-long room. In Silicon Valley the tight correlation between personal interactions, performance, and innovation is an article of faith, and innovators are building cathedrals reflecting this. Sales rose by 20%, or $200 million, after just one quarter, quickly justifying the capital investment in the redesign. To get the sales staff running into colleagues from other departments, management shifted from one coffee machine for every six employees to one for every 120 and created a new large cafeteria for everyone. In another example, data collected at one pharmaceuticals company showed that when a salesperson increased interactions with coworkers on other teams by 10%, his or her sales increased by 10%. The CEO credits the design of the offices with helping Telenor shift from a state-run monopoly to a competitive multinational carrier with 150 million subscribers. The Norwegian telecom company Telenor was ahead of its time in 2003, when it incorporated “hot desking” (no assigned seats) and spaces that could easily be reconfigured for different tasks and evolving teams. They’ve learned that face-to-face interactions are by far the most important activity in an office creating chance encounters between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization, improves performance. The authors have collected data that capture individuals’ interactions, communications, and location information. Few companies measure whether the design of their workspaces helps or hurts performance, but they should.
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