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CREATING EXCITING DESIGNS FOR NEW WAYS OF WORKING

Offices are becoming more representative of modern working life

OFFICE SPACES ARE MORE LIKE CAFÃ&#x2030;S

Savvy employers realise creativity is linked to feeling relaxed at work

SLIDES, SLEEP PODS AND HAMMOCKS

They started off as cool and geeky but turned out to be just fads

DESIGNING SPACES FOR ALL TO WORK

Solving the problem of how to accommodate a mix of workers

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Designs for new ways of working

HEAD OF PRODUCTION

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DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER

Jessica McGreal DESIGN

Samuele Motta Grant Chapman Kellie Jerrard

As the world of work evolves, so offices are becoming more representative of the diversity, technology and shifting timescales of modern working life

CONTRIBUTORS

JONATHAN BELL

Editor at large at Wallpaper* magazine, author and former contributing editor of Blueprint, he specialises in architectural design.

REBECCA BURNCALLANDER

Former enterprise editor of The Telegraph, she is the author of The Daily Telegraph Guide to Investing and is currently working on The Daily Telegraph Guide to Brexit.

PETER CRUSH

CLARE DOWDY

JESSICA MAIRS

JEREMY MYERSON

Freelance business journalist, specialising in human resources and management issues, he was deputy editor of HR magazine.

Architecture editor at Dezeen magazine, she specialises in architecture, design and interiors.

Design and architecture freelance journalist, she writes for titles including the Financial Times, The Guardian, Wallpaper*, Monocle and WIRED.

Director of the Worktech Academy, Professor Myerson holds the Helen Hamlyn chair of design at the Royal College of Art.

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BUSINESS

CULTURE

OVERVIEW JONATHAN BELL

ecent writers on workplace innovation would have us believe that the office is in the throes of constant change, with the traditional nineto-five set-up long since consigned to history. In fact, as most of our day-today experience attests, conventional office culture is very much alive and well, with all its attendant familiarities, faults and frustrations. Most of us work because we have to, and change, when it comes, is an unwelcome distraction. There are two distinct narratives of work, each of which plays off the other. The first concerns the physical spaces we go to in order to do our work. The second is about the ways in which we carry out that work. A shiny new office building doesn’t necessarily herald a change in day-to-day working patterns, save for improved facilities and environmental qualities. Large, established companies with hierarchical systems and structures that have evolved over decades are a little bit like ocean liners, unable to change course without plenty of warning. However, those entering the workplace for the first time have far fewer structures, strictures or expectations. They’re used to fastevolving technology and want their workspaces to reflect flexibility and connectivity. So what does this mean for design? The blueprint for the modern workplace, the open-plan office, has existed in various forms for around a century. But regardless of whether an organisation uses open plan, hot-desking, cubicles or home working, the de-

FINANCE

HEALTHCARE

LIFESTYLE

mands of work usually transcend the ways and places where work was done. Historically, culture shapes space and not the other way around. The dotcom revolution sparked a transformation of formal office culture, overhauling not just the appearance and structure of the office, but the nature of work itself. Instead of a workplace landscape or cubicle farm, the new digital office combined elements of domestic, retail and commercial architecture, resulting in workplaces that reflected an emphasis on non-hierarchical creativity and collaboration. In this world, the conventional nineto-five structure has practically disappeared, blown away by the demands of always-on connectivity. To compensate, offices started to look more and more like homes, dorm rooms, bars, amusement arcades and rec rooms. The separation between work and life became skewed to the point of total evaporation, aided by our eager adoption of technologies that blurred the distinctions between public and private, on and off. “The emphasis on fun and sociability was almost an extreme that got people thinking,” says Studio TILT’s Oliver Marlow, architect and author of the book Spaces for Innovation. He explains that as these playful offices became more homogenous regardless of sector, the design process has had to

explore how companies want to work, rather than just aesthetics and form. “You’re pulling together strategic stuff from board level and HR – it’s now all about reimagining the whole organisation,” he says. Design is becoming a form of corporate psychoanalysis, incorporating change management and strategic consultants as well as conventional task specialists. With the increasing reliance on cloud-based data and portable devices, many offices will exist primarily to give physical shape to teams and projects. A different form of hierarchy comes via financing. Investors like to keep a close eye on their latest acquisitions, so the idea of an incubator-like building that splices the demands of the financial sector with a more laid back, creative vibe for cultivating ideas is gaining traction. This year saw the opening of Alphabeta, a radical refurbishment of a traditional sixties office block that’s now a bike-friendly, gym and café accommodating mixed workspace that houses hireable hotdesks alongside big spaces for corporate finance and advertising clients. “We designed Alphabeta to create the ultimate shared creative space; one that encourages visibility between the occupants and chance encounters,” says architect Richard Hywel Evans. “It’s an ever-moving energetic space designed to capture

Design is becoming a form of corporate psychoanalysis, incorporating change management and strategic consultants as well as conventional task specialists

SUSTAINABILITY

TECHNOLOGY

INFOGRAPHICS

Alphabeta, designed by Studio RHE, houses hireable hot desks alongside big spaces for corporate finance and advertising clients

the excitement of its location and occupants.” His practice, Studio RHE, is now converting the East India Dock into the Republic, a workspace designed along similar lines. East London’s Second Home is another small-scale flexible workspace aimed at itinerant freelancers, small dotcoms and other creative types. The idea is that the hybridisation of activity and personnel will cross-pollinate ideas; chances are there’ll be someone down the corridor who can help fund your idea into reality, your app into code or your order into a physical product. A more substantial take on this ethos is now rising above London’s Old Street Roundabout. Designed by AHMM and developed by Derwent, the White Collar Factory offers industrial-grade quality spaces in an office environment, inspired by the high premium paid for converted warehouses and factories. High ceilings and smart services create a plan that is light filled and low energy. In New York, the fashion for flexible, multi-functional maker-worker spaces is spearheaded by A/D/O, a venture partly funded by BMW MINI. This coffee shop on steroids is part meeting room, part restaurant, part maker space, a mixed use structure laser-targeted at the nomadic, MacBook bearing creatives who can do their jobs from anywhere. So although offices might not offer constant revolution, they are certainly becoming more alive to the creative potential of change and collaboration. Share this article online via Raconteur.net

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THE FUTURE OFFICE

03 Hufton & Crow

RACONTEUR

THE FUTURE OFFICE DISTRIBUTED IN

PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH

RACONTEUR

PUBLISHING MANAGER

Rebecca Wetten PRODUCTION EDITOR

Benjamin Chiou MANAGING EDITOR

Peter Archer

Designs for new ways of working

HEAD OF PRODUCTION

Natalia Rosek

DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER

Jessica McGreal DESIGN

Samuele Motta Grant Chapman Kellie Jerrard

As the world of work evolves, so offices are becoming more representative of the diversity, technology and shifting timescales of modern working life

CONTRIBUTORS

JONATHAN BELL

Editor at large at Wallpaper* magazine, author and former contributing editor of Blueprint, he specialises in architectural design.

REBECCA BURNCALLANDER

Former enterprise editor of The Telegraph, she is the author of The Daily Telegraph Guide to Investing and is currently working on The Daily Telegraph Guide to Brexit.

PETER CRUSH

CLARE DOWDY

JESSICA MAIRS

JEREMY MYERSON

Freelance business journalist, specialising in human resources and management issues, he was deputy editor of HR magazine.

Architecture editor at Dezeen magazine, she specialises in architecture, design and interiors.

Design and architecture freelance journalist, she writes for titles including the Financial Times, The Guardian, Wallpaper*, Monocle and WIRED.

Director of the Worktech Academy, Professor Myerson holds the Helen Hamlyn chair of design at the Royal College of Art.

BUSINESS

CULTURE

OVERVIEW JONATHAN BELL

FINANCE

HEALTHCARE

LIFESTYLE

Design is becoming a form of corporate psychoanalysis, incorporating change management and strategic consultants as well as conventional task specialists

SUSTAINABILITY

TECHNOLOGY

INFOGRAPHICS

Alphabeta, designed by Studio RHE, houses hireable hot desks alongside big spaces for corporate finance and advertising clients

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THE FUTURE OFFICE

Office spaces can be mo re like hotels or cafés Savvy employers realise that creativity and productivity are linked to feeling “at home” in the workspace, and are commissioning relaxed offices where staff can socialise and collaborate WeWork

HUMAN OFFICE

01 Co-working space provider WeWork is seeing an ever-increasing demand for less structured workspaces

JESSICA MAIRS

he distinction between working and socialising spaces is becoming increasingly blurred as office design takes cues from hotel lobbies, domestic lounges and cafés in an effort to create more enticing environments for workers. Rows of private offices have long been done away with by many companies, and replaced with open-plan layouts that aim to reduce costs and bolster employee relations. But now the banks of symmetrical desks, partitions and swivel chairs that have become the lack-lustre design vocabulary of the open-plan office are being cast aside in favour of plush upholstery, curated bookcases and leafy pot plants. An evolution of the office’s openplan layout is seeing large chunks of space dedicated to socialising and is encouraging workers to move away from their desks. Graham Stirk of London-based architecture firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners says that elements borrowed from the hospitality industry are now being seen as a valuable resource in offices. Pockets of informal seating, coffee bars and telephone nooks allow employees to step away from their desk to carry out a task in a specifically tailored environment, while also opening up the opportunity for chance encounters between members of staff. In an age where so many discussions take place digitally, the immediacy of a face-toface conversation can sometimes prevent an employee heading off in the wrong direction on an idea for weeks, he says. “The concept of cellular working is becoming less required. The whole nature of mobility, how people move around and talk with each other, is where a great deal of decision-making takes place,” says Mr Stirk. “One of the biggest, most amazing aspects of people working in these buildings is collective thought. This is what office working is – it’s about exploring and assisting intellectual capital.” Design firm Gensler’s UK Workplace Survey 2016 found that more than eight million UK employees now work in open-plan offices, but rigid layouts forced almost 70 per cent to sit at the same desk with the same co-workers each day. These workers scored the lowest in terms of innovation in the nation and industry-wide survey, while those offered a boarder variety and choice of workplaces scored significantly higher. With the average person spending the majority of their waking hours in

02 The Sea Containers building, housing WPP companies Ogilvy Group UK and MEC 03 New York headquarters of website platform company Squarespace

Gareth Gardner

THE FUTURE OFFICE

01 an office, it makes sense for there to be more of an overlap between work, socialising and home environments, says Philip Tidd, the principal and head of consulting for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Gensler. Employees across sectors and generations are now seeking a stimulating “experience” from the office, not just a place to work, says Mr Tidd. ”Everyone’s talking about the experience economy and experience design. People want to have a great experience when they go to the workplace. We weren’t talking about that five years ago.” Architects and designers are looking towards not only the hospitality and residential sectors for ideas, but also to the technology industry where experience design has played a significant role in office design for years. International design firm Hassell recently teamed up with specialist user experience studio FreeState to do just this. “Unlike hospitality clients, workplace clients never asked themselves what should the experience be like? One of the most significant translations of hotel design to office design is thinking about the total experience for the visitor from beginning to end – from the moment you enter to the moment you leave,” says Matthew Blain, who is a principal at the company. “Traditional organisations now aspire to innovate and to do so they

Squarespace

of users of these shared office spaces have forced their designers to create diverse settings within one building, ranging from the completely private to the deliberately social and noisy. Receptions more akin to lounges are designed to create a welcoming and less office-like environment on visitors’ first impression, while folding doors can be used to open private meeting rooms to the room. Here, choice and adaptability of workspace are key. “Technology companies like Google really planted the seed for this new way of working. Once other companies wanted to compete with the tech companies for talent, they had to come with more innovative ways to engage employees and respond to what people wanted in a workplace,” says Miguel McKelvey, who is the co-founder of one of the UK’s biggest shared office providers, WeWork. “When we first started, we were trying to replicate successful residential and boutique hotel design to create something that felt like a welcoming and emotionally supportive environment. You want to give inhabitant options, many different ways to be in the space, to let them search out places to exist, rather than give them a set formula.” WeWork runs 14 co-working offices in London and is seeing an ever-increasing demand for less

structured workspaces, with members appreciating that productivity may not necessarily be linked to desk time. The success of this more flexible model for office design is beginning to be measured in workplace surveys, which show that well-designed offices can have a positive impact on workers and in turn on the growth of their companies. “One thing that’s being learnt from retail and healthcare is evidence-based design, basing design decisions on robust evidence. The tsunami of data, gathering techniques and technologies in the workplace, is enabling this and it’s a good thing,” says Tim Oldman, who set up the Leesman Index to measure how workplace design affects work productivity. “Workplaces with outstanding collaborative, informal and social spaces are the ones where employees report the highest sense of pride, enjoyment and productivity. And these spaces are no longer the reserve of the tech giants or web startups. Banks, retailers and manufacturing companies are realising this and producing a new wave of socially cohesive spaces,” says Mr Oldman.

We are the UK’s foremost designer of lighting solutions. For over 30 years, our passion for developing and manufacturing energy efficient products has seen us deliver our portfolio of lighting and controls solutions to some of the UK’s most innovative businesses.

Disruptive innovation that started in the tech industry has moved into the mainstream, driving businesses towards collaboration as a means of improving innovation

03 want to tap into the entrepreneurial sub-culture that exists in their own organisations but also to engage with a wider entrepreneurial pool of talent who often occupy co-working spaces. Disruptive innovation that started in the tech industry has moved into the mainstream, driving businesses towards collaboration as a means of improving innovation.” Technology companies such as Google were among the earliest

adopters of experience design for the workplace. But its initial approach, which saw the company including gimmicky design elements such as indoor slides and themed rooms in its UK offices, are being swept away by more sophisticated offerings. Over the last five years, a deluge of co-working spaces opened across UK cities, targeting startup companies and freelancers seeking affordable offices. The sheer variety

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THE FUTURE OFFICE

HUMAN OFFICE

01 Co-working space provider WeWork is seeing an ever-increasing demand for less structured workspaces

JESSICA MAIRS

02 The Sea Containers building, housing WPP companies Ogilvy Group UK and MEC 03 New York headquarters of website platform company Squarespace

Gareth Gardner

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Disruptive innovation that started in the tech industry has moved into the mainstream, driving businesses towards collaboration as a means of improving innovation

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OPINION

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ERGONOMICS CLARE DOWDY

Private office

4.2 Shared office

4 Workstation with medium panels

3.8

Workstation with high panels

3.7 Desk or bench without panels

3.6 3.5

RICHARD KAUNTZE

Room with three or more

Source: Gensler 2016

Taking comfort in functional design Efficiency at work, and how designing healthy offices can improve it, are top priorities as the UK’s continuing poor productivity causes concern

01 The Sand System activity-based workstation by Nowy Styl Group offers more opportunities for movement and interaction 02 Humanscale’s reclining Diffrient Lounge Chair enables you to put your feet up and work almost horizontally

AIR

Chief executive British Council for Offices

3.5

ies were designed to move,” he says. At the same time, open-plan environments are getting a bad press, with suggestions that they favour extravert personalities over introverts. Open plan has also become associated with stress and anxiety because of the propensity for disturbance and distraction. “Everyone’s got headphones on, which is a cry for privacy,” says David Watts, managing director of human behaviour and design firm CCD. “If open plan was meant to encourage interaction, it’s failing.” As wholly open-plan environments fall out of favour, offices are being redesigned to accommodate more varied work settings, known as activity-based working (ABW), and more opportunities for movement. Staff at Australian health insurer Medibank have more than 26 different work settings to choose from at its Melbourne headquarters. These include indoor quiet spaces, collaborative hubs, wi-fi-enabled balconies and places to work standing up. This ABW approach not only encourages people to move around, it can be good for the social and collaborative aspects of work.

Matt Blain, a principal at Hassell, which designed the office, points to the bold staircase which winds up the atrium. “The stairs were about movement throughout the workplace and getting people to travel between floors, so it broke down the silos and encouraged physical movement,” he says. A similar approach was taken on London’s Southbank at Sea Containers House, the new 226,000sqft home of WPP businesses. “If you provide an environment with choice and diversity, then you have to facilitate ease of movement from one setting to the other,” says Colin Macgadie, creative director BDG, which designed the interiors. BDG installed 12 new sets of stairs between floors, meaning some floors have three staircases. “That gives people greater interconnectivity between floors, without having to swipe a security card, and encourages them to be active,” he says. But it goes further than that. The steps in Sea Containers House are wider and shallower than normal; shallower to encourage people to move more slowly, and wider so they can stop and chat.

While more and more workplaces are getting on the ABW bandwagon, Dr Sailer cautions: “People are not as flexible as everyone likes to think. I think people are creatures of habit. A lot of people just can’t be bothered to switch work settings.” And if they hot-desk, her research shows they are likely to return to the same spot each day to sit with their friends. The irony is that some of these new settings may not be that good for us. Being slumped in a squishy sofa and

working from a handheld device is not a healthy set-up for long periods. “We need to start thinking about making these informal, collaborative spaces healthy, productive environments to work in,” says Mr King. Humanscale’s Diffrient Lounge Chair hopes to do that. It reclines so you can put your feet up and work almost horizontally. And it has a tray for a laptop, plus the option of a 27-inch touchscreen, where you can dock your phone or iPad. Many workplace designers believe that we are only on the cusp of this new work environment. “The big organisations are adopting these principles and smaller ones will follow,” says Mr Blain at Hassell. Next, it will be landlords and real estate developers hoping to attract multiple tenants. BDG’s Mr Macgadie adds that the workplace will borrow increasingly from the hospitality and leisure industries. This could be a yoga room for some stretching, a juice bar for a healthy smoothie or relaxing on terrace. “In the future, alternative settings will shift to be less about work and more about wellbeing,” he predicts. Share this article online via raconteur.net

WELL BUILDING STANDARD Components in measuring, certifying and monitoring the impact of building features on health and wellbeing

Future office design must meet standards of best practice, and ensure workplaces are where employees want to be and work for the people using them

Workstation with low panels

Humanscale

ellbeing in the workplace is rocketing up the agenda for a host of reasons. White collar work is increasingly about ideas and collaboration rather than repetitive clerical tasks, so staff needs are changing. And for companies engaged in the war for talent, wellbeing can be a differentiator. These issues coupled with the costs of recruitment and falling production levels are having an impact on office design, layout and ergonomics. Many of the changes are backed up or informed by recent academic research into wellbeing in the workplace and take into account the new WELL Building Standard, a system for measuring, certifying and monitoring the performance of building features that impact health and wellbeing. The upshot is a slew of new ways of working that are designed with the employee front of mind. For office designers and employers, productivity levels are a particularly hot topic as UK productivity remains stubbornly poor. In response experts say we need to think of people not as units of production, but in terms of the whole person. In wellbeing terms, as long as staff have a decent office chair and a sitstand desk, there’s less risk of physical injury. Instead, mental health issues such as depression and stress are major concerns. According to a report from the Health and Safety Executive, stress accounted for 45 per cent of all working days lost in the UK during 2015-16 due to ill health. So getting the workplace right is important to public health officials as well as employers and, of course, their employees. Likewise, paying attention to wellbeing can bring down recruitment costs as staff are less likely to leave. The cost of recruiting a skilled person is estimated at £100,000, says Dr Kerstin Sailer, reader in social and spatial networks at the Bartlett School of Architecture. “If you reduce your staff turnover by a small percentage, you can save a lot of money and the design of the workplace is something people [potential new recruits] are increasingly wanting to see,” he says. Couple this with stiff competition among employers for knowledge workers, then wellbeing in the workplace comes into its own. Offices designed with these issues in mind can make people feel better emotionally and physically, and can help them with concentrating and collaborating. The physical wellbeing of sedentary office workers is high profile because of all the data collected, explains Bob King, chief executive of ergonomic office furniture company Humanscale. “There’s been a recent rash of studies saying sitting still is the new smoking because our bod-

WATER

NOURISHMENT

LIGHT

FITNESS

COMFORT

MIND

The evolution of the workplace over the past 25 years has largely been characterised by an increasing understanding that the office must work for the people using it. For any business, staff are the primary asset and cost, so ensuring the working environment enables them to thrive is crucial. While the modern employee can often just as easily log on remotely from their kitchen table as work from a dedicated office space, recent research shows that less than a third of the modern workforce would like to work from home. Most people want the collaborative space and conviviality that an office brings and, while its form will change, its function as the home of business will remain. So what does this mean for the future of the office? Certainly the rise of technology will continue to shape the places where we work. As computers have evolved from rare desktop-bound giants to prolific pocket-sized phones, so too have the spaces from which we work. Buildings must continue to accommodate these shifts, evolving to become more technologically porous as wireless and wearable devices influence the shape of the future office. In a recent PwC survey, 49 per cent of people believed these advances will increase workplace efficiency, and the British Council for Offices’ own research shows such technologies could significantly improve productivity, efficiency and safety through leveraging business data. The sustainability agenda is another factor driving office change, developing from a niche concern

among passionate activists to a fundamental pillar of many developers’ business models. The near-universal acceptance of sustainability’s importance has led to new buildings outperforming their predecessors, but looking less self-consciously green, given it is no longer a credential which sets them apart. But we cannot allow sustainability excellence to slip; reviewed against the latest BCO Guide to Specification (2014), only around 2 per cent of commercial buildings completed since 2010 represent best practice for sustainability. Developers must continue to aim for excellence within these updated specifications, ensuring offices deliver both practically and environmentally for the future. The future design quality of workplaces will be more important than ever before. From the technology we carry with us daily, to the intuitive digital experiences that are now so present at work and home, people are increasingly discerning of great quality design and expect that to translate to their workplace. Though inevitably the lens through which the aesthetic quality of offices is judged shifts, there are fundamental and enduring basics to get right. Generous ceiling heights, quality of natural light and the character of the floorplate are all areas where buildings are being enhanced to deliver a better product. Office occupiers and developers must be equipped to keep pace with the rise of technology and adapt to the needs of an ever-changing workforce. In doing so, we can ensure the office is not only a place where employees choose to work, but a place that works hard for the people using it.

Only around 2 per cent of commercial buildings completed since 2010 represent best practice for sustainability

2 07

COMMERCIAL COMMERCIALFEATURE FEATURE

COLUMN

Don’t let standards slip with new design

WORK SETTING IMPACT

UK OFFICE WORKERS SCORED WORK SETTING OUT OF FIVE

XXXX THE FUTURE OFFICE

DESIGNING OFFICES WITH PERSONALITY Offices must reflect the personalities of the people working in them to get the best results, says Steve Elliott, chief executive of BW: Workplace Experts

Timothy Soar

f there’s one thing you won’t have failed to have noticed, it’s that offices and office space is evolving. A growing body of evidence now links fantastic work environments to fantastic improvements in productivity too, with all the happiness and wellbeing benefits that come with it. Quite rightly, there has been significant progress in the planning and design of more agile and flexible working spaces. Firms like Google, with its campus, playbased approach to work, is heralded as having reinvigorated the work environment by shifting the focus on how it gets the best results from its brightest people. This is a subject that fascinates us at BW: Workplace Experts, so we commissioned Lily Bernheimer and her team at Space Works Consulting to produce a white paper on our behalf to interrogate personality, productivity and work. The acceptance of the relationship between space and work is to be applauded. But does this mean research into space should stop? We don’t think so. In fact, we believe the default Google approach isn’t always appropriate. Workspace is actually much more complex than being just about the building. It has to be about the relationship it has to the people that occupy it and, as we all know, people are different. As we enter the so-called fourth industrial revolution, when workplaces need to understand different people’s “personal algorithms”, it’s our view that buildings must meet the different psychological needs of workers within them. In short, offices need to have a twoway relationship, but with lots of different personality types. Typically, human resources tools, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, have divided workers

Steve Elliott Chief executive BW: Workplace Experts

BW: Workplace Experts own office

by different personality traits, the big five being open, conscientious, extrovert, agreeable and neurotic. But it’s well known this doesn’t tend to account for personality development or growth. As such, we believe current personality productivity research is an outdated framework to look at productivity. Under this spotlight, traits such as conscientiousness or agreeableness are still analysed as “inputs”, which are then correlated with outputs like job satisfaction and earnings. We feel this no longer applies in today’s workplace. That’s why we’ve begun to use a model – the Enneagram – that instead establishes the behaviour and the type of thinking patterns people fall into. The Enneagram Institute is leading this research and has identified nine “types” – the reformer, helper, achiever, individualist, investigator, loyalist, enthusiast, challenger and peacemaker. So why is this so important. Well, because the Enneagram model identifies unique patterns of traits, motives and values, we believe it has the potential to transform the next phase of workplace science. Knowing that investigators experience the world differently to helpers, for instance, is dramatically important. Investigators seek privacy to recharge and analyse. Open-plan, break-out-based office space would be a completely stressful place for investigators to work in. By comparison, reformers, who are dedicated and committed, and motivated by a set of high internal standards, need a working environment that will inspire them to be more creative and relieve more stress. We believe the Enneagram model provides new insights and new

ways to challenge the accepted view that personality traits are “inputs” in the productivity machine. What we believe is that office space needs to be far more personal. It needs to support different personality types in a way that fosters their strengths for maximum output. The fourth industrial revolution will require an iterative approach to office design, one that is responsive to workers’ patterns and contributions. The future workspace should at least be sensitive to the complex combination of personality patterns in terms of layout, seating allocation, and the balance of open and sheltered space. Ultimately perhaps, understanding the future office is about understanding what the purpose of a building really is – an asset to be invested in, to help get the maximum return from the people in it. We believe office design that is more reflective of its people can have a bigger impact on productivity and performance than other areas human resources directors typically focus on first, such as training and development. To ignore how your office impacts people is to ignore both of most organisations’ biggest assets and cost centres. A building can so easily become an asset that isn’t performing, but if thought about with its occupants’ productivity in mind too, both can be managed so they’re working at the top of their game. BW: Workplace Experts are committed to delivering defect-free fit-out and refurbishment projects, driven by innovation and characterised by transparency, personality and fit-out expertise. For more information please visit www.wearebw.com

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OPINION

Nowy Styl Group

ERGONOMICS CLARE DOWDY

Private office

4.2 Shared office

4 Workstation with medium panels

3.8

Workstation with high panels

3.7 Desk or bench without panels

3.6 3.5

RICHARD KAUNTZE

Room with three or more

Source: Gensler 2016

Taking comfort in functional design Efficiency at work, and how designing healthy offices can improve it, are top priorities as the UK’s continuing poor productivity causes concern

AIR

Chief executive British Council for Offices

3.5

WELL BUILDING STANDARD Components in measuring, certifying and monitoring the impact of building features on health and wellbeing

Future office design must meet standards of best practice, and ensure workplaces are where employees want to be and work for the people using them

Workstation with low panels

Humanscale

WATER

NOURISHMENT

LIGHT

FITNESS

COMFORT

MIND

Only around 2 per cent of commercial buildings completed since 2010 represent best practice for sustainability

2 07

COMMERCIAL COMMERCIALFEATURE FEATURE

COLUMN

Don’t let standards slip with new design

WORK SETTING IMPACT

UK OFFICE WORKERS SCORED WORK SETTING OUT OF FIVE

XXXX THE FUTURE OFFICE

DESIGNING OFFICES WITH PERSONALITY Offices must reflect the personalities of the people working in them to get the best results, says Steve Elliott, chief executive of BW: Workplace Experts

Timothy Soar

Steve Elliott Chief executive BW: Workplace Experts

BW: Workplace Experts own office

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07 / 12 / 2016

THE FUTURE OFFICE

From slides to sleep pods, hammocks and internal grass They started off as cool and geeky, but some of the weird and wonderful office “attractions” introduced into workspaces have failed to stand the test of time TOP TEN FADS CLARE DOWDY

03 HOT DESKING

04 INTERNAL GRASS

06 EXERCISE BALLS

zhu difeng/Shutterstock

[Andrew_Popov/Shutterstock]

Ping-pong tables, indoor golf and table football have been popular for some time among tech startups and other businesses hoping to attract millennials. But many workplace designers predict that they are nearing their sell-by date. It is rare that they are much used, outside of the free-beer-and-bonding sessions on a Friday night. And if the next generation push even harder for a decent work-life balance, as expected, they’ll surely want to get their kicks away from the office. Although electronic games with virtual reality headsets could keep people late at the office, albeit in a virtual place.

dotshock/Shutterstock

Google is best known for their installation of slides in some offices, including its Tel Aviv headquarters, but they’re not the only ones. LEGO put a metal one into their Danish office and Microsoft’s Vienna HQ followed suit. Slides look marvelous in the publicity photos, and seem like a super-fun and fast way of getting to a lower floor. The perfect visual metaphor for fast-moving companies, though they transport workers down rather than up. However, slides can ruin your clothes and, after some initial excitement among staff, they quickly resort to old-fashioned staircases.

05 MOBILE MEETING ROOMS Where office rents are high, it’s sensible to make the precious space work hard. The current buzzword is flexibility, meaning areas that have multiple functions. Some people do this with temporary partition walls, but a novel alternative is the meeting room on wheels. The idea is that it can be parked anywhere in the office. However, most organisations can’t afford the extra space needed to manoeuvre a glazed box around nor do most staff have the energy to manage such laborious relocations. Meetings on wheels may not be sustainable therefore.

Perhaps these briefly caught on because some people struggled to get to grips with all the knobs and handles on their super-adjustable task chairs. The large, bouncy inflatable balls had already migrated from the gym to be appropriated by ante-natal yoga groups or pilates sessions. While they might serve a purpose for expectant mothers, they were incongruous in the office and their bold colour palette rarely went with carefully chosen decor. Office workers can probably wait to after hours to tackle an exercise ball in their inner-city gym.

10HAMMOCKS

08 VINTAGE VEHICLES

When sitting was hailed as the new smoking, office furniture manufacturers envisaged the bottom falling out of the lucrative desk-chair market. So they put their thinking caps on. One of the more sensible and potentially enduring solutions was the sit-stand desk, which at the touch of a button or turn of a handle, gets workers on to their feet at intervals. A few firms thought outside the envelope and came up with the treadmill desk, a modified treadmill base attached to a counter-level work surface. However, they haven’t really caught on.

Fairfax Media/Getty Images

09 SLEEP PODS

Google

AFP/Getty Images

For some years, the capacious reception areas of creative or wouldbe creative businesses were likely to house a vintage ambulance, caravan or similar. These were installed as quirky meeting rooms, intended to inspire staff, and make clients and visitors jealous. They certainly had a wow-factor and, like slides, looked good on camera. But the reality was that by their very nature they were incompatible with modern working practices. Even after their original equipment had been stripped out, they were often cramped, uncomfortable and awkward to use.

The perfect cocktail of academic research and uptake by a few high-profile tech companies has given the fledgling trend of sleep pods a shot in the arm. The reasoning goes that humans are designed to have two sleeps in a 24-hour cycle. So why not turn that post-lunch lull into a 20-minute power nap? Sleep pod manufacturers are targeting firms operating in multiple time zones or with staff who travel overseas a lot and live far from the office. However, some people are skeptical that they will catch on big time. People would rather sit in a chair and look out the window.

John Chapple/Getty Images

07 TREADMILL DESKS

Back in the mid-1990s, ad agency Chiat Day’s New York office makeover heralded their own brand of non-assigned desking or “hot desking”. On arriving at the office each day, staff were assigned a desk and computer. It garnered many headlines at the time and was trumpeted as a clever way of using space efficiently. But the experiment didn’t last, as employees missed having a desk in a familiar setting and with drawer space for storage, or even a computer, to call their own.

The trend for biophilia or mimicking nature in office design is gathering pace. Workers are stimulated by being surrounded by fauna, real or otherwise, the theory goes. However, those attempting to reproduce the great outdoors in air-conditioned, hermetically sealed buildings should think again. Real lawns were a popular gimmick for a while, until people realised they couldn’t be kept alive, and instead wilted into something brown and odorous. Synthetic astro turf doesn’t have the same appeal.

Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

02 GAMES

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01 SLIDES bbernard/Shutterstock

Yet another trend that has its roots in the fast-growing tech companies, these were eye-catching manifestations of a fabulous lifestyle enjoyed by those privileged to draw their salaries from such organisations. They were also early examples of what has come to be known as activity-based working, which delivers different settings around the building for different tasks. However, hammocks are not really very comfortable, have little to recommend them ergonomically and, like beanbags, smack of a children’s nursery rather than a place for grown-ups. No wonder they are falling out of use.

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THE FUTURE OFFICE

03 HOT DESKING

04 INTERNAL GRASS

06 EXERCISE BALLS

zhu difeng/Shutterstock

[Andrew_Popov/Shutterstock]

dotshock/Shutterstock

10HAMMOCKS

08 VINTAGE VEHICLES

Fairfax Media/Getty Images

09 SLEEP PODS

Google

AFP/Getty Images

John Chapple/Getty Images

07 TREADMILL DESKS

Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

02 GAMES

Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

01 SLIDES bbernard/Shutterstock

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COMMERCIAL FEATURE

CASE STUDY: WWF UK Janie Airey

Creating space where everyone can work With the UK workforce now more diverse than ever, employers and office designers are faced with the problem of how best to accommodate the mix of employees

DESIGN AND DIVERSITY JEREMY MYERSON

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Building Robotics

he UK’s offices host a more diverse workforce than ever before. It is not uncommon to walk into a large open-plan space and see four different generations at work at their desks. Legislation addressing age and disability discrimination in the workplace has removed some of the barriers to people of different abilities. Women have broken through the glass ceiling in many previously male-dominated companies. Inside our larger urban business districts and corporate campuses, employees from all creeds and corners of the globe contribute to the UK economy as part of the free movement of labour that has been integral to the British workplace for the past 20 years. A workforce that is essentially a kaleidoscope of such a broad span of different shapes, sizes, abilities and cultural preferences represents a much greater challenge for workplace designers today than in the past. The mid-20th-century office population – the “family-formation workforce” of 21 to 45 year olds, as economists have described it – was overwhelmingly white, able-bodied and male. Today, one size does not fit all. Not only is the UK’s office workforce more diverse, it is also more demanding and dissatisfied. While physical injuries in the workplace have reduced from a generation ago, mental health problems are now sharply on the rise. Working days lost through stress, anxiety and depression are costing the UK economy more than ever before and contributing to its current productivity crisis. Not surprisingly, strategies to combat a wellbeing deficit in the workplace are now at the top of the boardroom agenda. And while some of the wellbeing problems that

01 01 Workplace designers are able to give employees more control over their surroundings, such as the Comfy app by Building Robotics which enables workers to change the building’s thermostat for the space around them 02 Workspaces must become more diverse to meet individuals’ needs, not offer a universal solution to a broad mix of employees

workforces experience can be put down to inappropriate employment policies, inadequate training, insensitive management or unreliable IT systems, the work environment itself is under real scrutiny. So what can workplace designers do to improve the wellbeing of employees? Research in the field suggests that, whatever the age, gender, ability or culture of the employee, having a sense of control is a key driver of wellbeing and happiness at work. This control takes many forms, control over work-life balance, time, tasks, interactions with others and patterns of commuting, for instance. But it also relates to our immediate surroundings. This is where workplace design comes in. A sense of control in workplace design is expressed through individual control over physical environmental conditions (heat, light air); choice in

terms of different types of workspace to use (not just the standard desk); freedom to reconfigure your workstation (height-adjustable desks are increasingly popular); personalisation (hacking your workspace is a growing refrain); and participation in the design process itself. All of these trends are now evident in workplace schemes. The rise of the intelligent building, in which new technology will increasingly enable the physical environment to respond automatically to the needs and preferences of the people working inside, holds the promise of giving over more control to employees. However, in the use of sensors to plot movement, sense presence and engineer social interaction, technology also has the potential to cast a big brother shadow over the workplace and reduce wellbeing rather than boost it. Nevertheless, the opportunity to give employees a direct say in how the workplace is designed is gaining ground. Compared to other areas of the built environment, such as community housing or neighbourhood schemes, co-design techniques have been underutilised in the workplace. That is beginning to change as designers focus more intently on a target described by the leading environmental psychologist Jacqueline Vischer as “psychological comfort”. In her work, Professor Vischer has identified three levels of comfort in the workplace. The first is physical comfort or the most basic threshold of habitability that very few modern buildings fail to meet today. The second level is functional comfort, which supports employees in being better able to perform their tasks. Lighting,

acoustics, thermal quality, spatial layout, ambiance and ergonomics are all important here. This is the level at which most workplace design stops, with raising performance. But there is a third level, psychological comfort, right at the top of the pyramid of user need that is concerned with raising more than just performance. This level relates to such factors such as territory, privacy, trust, control, attachment and belonging. To improve mental wellbeing, this is where workplace design has to reach. British researcher and consultant Craig Knight conducted an unusual experiment to test productivity and wellbeing in different environmental conditions. He found that when office workers were empowered to enrich the workspace themselves with plants and photographs, the speed and accuracy of their work improved compared to when the researcher arranged the space on their behalf or provided no visually enrichment at all. When the researcher intervened to disempower them by reorganising their workspace after they had designed it, levels of performance dropped. Dr Knight’s results suggest that, given such a diverse workforce, we need a much better understanding of individual employee’s needs and preferences to redesign the workplace to raise wellbeing. A

common approach has been to try to segment the office population by age. Huge attention is currently being given to the behaviour of the millennial cohort, the most recent generation to enter the workplace en masse, and their different attitudes to space and technology. At the other end of the age spectrum, baby boomers with extended working lives due to the pension shortfall also command interest. How can they be engaged? Evidence suggests that older workers have particular problems with noisy open-plan offices. It is recommended that dedicated spaces to concentrate and recuperate are provided in the workplace. But open-plan distractions and the relentless, exhausting grind of office life under fluorescent glare affect all age groups. Younger people can burn out just as quickly as older workers. Inclusive design that improves the environment for all is increasingly seen as the way to go rather than providing interventions for any special needs group. Indeed, segmenting the workforce through the lens of age, gender or ability is under challenge. Far better, say the experts, to look at what people actually do at work and how they interact with the building. User typologies are

Inclusive design that improves the environment for all is increasingly seen as the way to go rather than providing interventions for any special needs group

You might expect the WWF UK head office in Woking town centre to be an exemplar of sustainability, given what the organisation does on a global basis in the area of conservation. Indeed WWF’s £13-million Living Planet Centre, which was designed by Hopkins Architects in 2013 for 300 staff, is a model green building that is cleverly constructed with a curved timber frame, on top of an existing car park, and borders wetlands and a canal. But what makes the WFF office stand out is the respect shown to people as well as the planet.

now being more widely deployed in workplace schemes: concepts such as the “anchor” (always in the office at their desk), “connector” (always in the office, but never at their desk) and “navigator” (rarely in the office, always on the road) are seen as more helpful to getting office design right than making traditional assumptions based on sex, seniority or disability. In a global knowledge economy, despite current political upheavals that might put up new barriers, we will continue to have a diverse workplace operating in a business

A study by the Royal College of Art with architects Gensler found that employee wellbeing and satisfaction is supported by such workplace factors as a connection with the outside world through natural light, birdsong, trees and plants; a positive and purposeful environment, which is welcoming and easy to navigate; a variety of spaces to suit different tasks; personal autonomy over use of space; some say in how the workspace is planned; and a clear alignment between organisational purpose, and both the functional and psychological needs of employees.

climate that requires increasing levels of innovation, collaboration and communication. We will need to fix the UK’s productivity gap with other industrial nations. Work is increasingly a social activity and offices will become more convivial and supportive of human interaction. Redesigning the workplace to lift the mental wellbeing and satisfaction of employees is a vital first step along that road. Share this article online via raconteur.net

THREE LEVELS OF WORKPLACE COMFORT PHYSICAL COMFORT The most basic threshold of habitability that very few modern buildings fail to meet today.

FUNCTIONAL COMFORT Supports employees in being better able to perform their tasks. Includes lighting, acoustics, thermal quality, spatial layout, ambiance and ergonomics. This is the level at which most workplace design stops, with raising performance.

PSYCHOLOGICAL COMFORT Concerned with raising more than just performance. This level relates to such factors as territory, privacy, trust, control, attachment and belonging. To improve mental wellbeing, this is where workplace design has to reach. Source: Professor Jacqueline Vischer

Derwent London’s White Collar Factory – London’s first long-life loose-fit office buildings

BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH WHITE COLLAR FACTORY Office design impacts creativity, staff wellbeing and brand identity

wenty years ago, legendary architect Frank Duffy was ahead of the times. When developers were “max-packing” people into their offices, he was doing the polar opposite. He spoke of European ideas of Bürolandschaft (office landscaping) and the relationship between office design and productivity, of flexible space where open, airy atria and sunken lounges went in, and tired, maze-like dark corridors came out. To have explored this when mobile working didn’t even exist shows just how bold this thinking was. But it took until the late-1980s planning use class change, allowing the conversion of light industrial spaces to offices, for these concepts to really travel. Fast forward to today though, when the millennial generation expects informal working spaces, and the world of work and workplace design are finally becoming aligned. It is now more widely understood that simple, expansive, deconstructed spaces, with raw backdrops and modernist design, allows staff to feel creative, but also enables the brands themselves to fit out space to reflect their own unique culture. In short, purposeful office design is rightfully recognised as an enabler of creativity and collaboration, not just an address people travel to. But, while times may have moved on, there is still a huge difference between good and great offices. Later this year we open White Collar Factory, a new 16-storey office building, recently crowned Most Visionary Building 2016 by Mipim UK, complete with

supporting campus-style buildings and public space. It’s our most ambitious scheme to date, totalling around 300,000sqft and one which we feel is the future of offices. Our 3.5m ceiling heights make us, we believe, the only developer committing to such generous levels of daylit space. While some might squeeze another level or two into the same combined height, that’s not the way we believe modern offices should be. We’ve called it White Collar Factory for a reason. A hundred years ago factories were for the traditional blue-collar worker. Today it’s a newer “factory” of ideas and innovation for the mobile white-collar worker. We have always enjoyed old industrial buildings for their volume and character, and have converted them for creative brands. And we have been exploring ways to build new offices borrowing from the past to enhance the future. With architects AHMM and engineers AKT-II and Arup, and taking inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Headquarters and industrial systems of Jean Prouvé, White Collar Factory synthesises all our thinking, mixing form and function. The structure’s thermal mass is activated by a concrete core cooling system, removing the need for costly air conditioning, and staff can even open the windows – you wouldn’t believe how many office buildings don’t allow this. The internal layout allows for collaboration and co-working, and it has just achieved the UK’s first WiredScore Certified Platinum rating for digital connectivity, while the

building itself is greener and more efficient as occupiers can reduce their carbon footprint by 25 per cent. At a time when people can work from home or anywhere, offices need to present compelling reasons for people to congregate, and to help attract and retain top talent. So, why not make an office building even more inviting than home – comfortable, airy, with places to go and relax and take in fresh air – we even have a running track on the communal roof terrace. The fact White Collar Factory has been 74 per cent prelet to startups and grown-ups, and many have only seen plans, confirms they are signing up to our vision. Many traditional offices are sealed boxes with stale air. It’s no wonder staff feel demotivated and unhealthy working in them. Our approach changes this. Most importantly, we appreciate that buildings evolve. Our long-life, loosefit approach offers flexibility as tenants come and go and as work evolves. This is a truly progressive building that can evolve with it. The process of bringing people together in shared spaces has been happening for centuries; the office is not disappearing any time soon. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be better or have a “place-making” role where they are not just a hub for workers, but somewhere others can meet. Organisations can’t just dictate that staff work flexibly or socially, the building they are in needs to support and encourage it. That’s exactly what great offices will do. For more information please visit www.derwentlondon.com

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COMMERCIAL FEATURE

CASE STUDY: WWF UK Janie Airey

Creating space where everyone can work With the UK workforce now more diverse than ever, employers and office designers are faced with the problem of how best to accommodate the mix of employees

DESIGN AND DIVERSITY JEREMY MYERSON

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Building Robotics

Inclusive design that improves the environment for all is increasingly seen as the way to go rather than providing interventions for any special needs group

THREE LEVELS OF WORKPLACE COMFORT PHYSICAL COMFORT The most basic threshold of habitability that very few modern buildings fail to meet today.

Derwent London’s White Collar Factory – London’s first long-life loose-fit office buildings

BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH WHITE COLLAR FACTORY Office design impacts creativity, staff wellbeing and brand identity

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COMMERCIAL FEATURE COMMERCIAL FEATURE

‘Freedom’ of not turning your phone off Businesses are adapting to manage remote workers and freelancers, whose flexible working may be convenient, but means they are “always on” and available anytime, anywhere

Lystable

ALWAYS-ON CULTURE REBECCA BURN-CALLANDER

Employing ingenious methods to extend offices in sought-after areas of London pays off for landlords and tenants

ittle known to many Londoners, the city’s offices are getting bigger. There is a host of innovative ways that, under their noses, these buildings are expanding. Roofs are rising by a couple of storeys, perimeters are extending and floors are pushing out on to balconies. These changes may be under the radar, but they are making a significant contribution to the capital’s usable and lettable office space. This is good news as demand is outstripping supply, a fallout from the 2008-12 recession, when developers and investors stopped committing funds to new buildings and construction work ground to a halt. Savvy commercial landlords with a lease coming up for a break are rightly considering how they can get the most out of their asset. Construction and fit-out specialist 8build works with a number of major landlords, including British Land and Great Portland Estates. The firm helps them to consider all the options to create a more efficient building with more space that can be used and let. There are a number of ways to achieve this. The biggest trend is to add one or two floors on the roof. Soho Wharf is a mixed-use development in a period warehouse

Despite the extra effort that can go into these sorts of projects, they are immensely rewarding

property on south London’s Clink Street. There, 8build is removing 1.5 floors and replacing them with three new ones. This can be achieved even where building heights are restricted, by making sure the extra floors are not visible from the ground. Sometimes the answer is to go out rather than up, by boxing in balconies to increase floorplates. 8build took this approach on the upper floors of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW) building, creating 2,900sqft of extra internal space. Another efficient way of optimising space can be found at Salters’ Hall, the Grade II listed livery hall and office building. As well as working on the refurbishment of the brutalist structure, 8build extended the perimeter by building out to the edge of its cantilevered roof. This increased the net lettable space by 40 per cent. 8build can also increase a building’s usable space by radically rethinking the interior structure. Extra square feet can be freed up by removing or relocating staircases and large atriums can be partially filled in by extending floorplates across the void. Once 8build has reduced the atrium at Greater London House, an iconic commercial building in Mornington Crescent, there will be an extra 53,000sqft of space on three floors. Below ground, ceiling heights of existing basements can be improved to enable occupancy. And if the water table allows, it is sometimes possible to dig down to add extra subterranean floors. “With London office rents at £60-£80 per square foot, if you can create an extra square foot of space,

your building asset value is going up,” explains Andy Tooley, director at 8build. “What’s more, adding space to an existing building is far more sustainable and cost effective than knocking it down.” Nor do such changes need to be terribly disruptive to existing tenants, forcing them to move out for a period. 8build’s work at the ICAEW is being carried out while the building is occupied. A number of issues have come together in London to make it the right place for all this activity. The cost of construction is high and logistically difficult there. Plus there is the demand from tenants and rents that are significantly higher than the national average. Despite the many advantages of this approach, extra time and effort can sometimes be needed to make allowances for so-called “discovery costs”. Common problems include dealing with asbestos or stumbling upon an unexpected electrical feed embedded into a wall. And, of course, it is vital to ensure that the existing structure can efficiently bear the additional load. “Despite the extra effort that can go into these sorts of projects, they are immensely rewarding,” says Mr Tooley. And if the co-working trend continues, he predicts that even with the revival of new-build office construction, there will continue to be an appetite for smaller, trendy buildings. “Landlords of these sorts of buildings would be wise to make changes to make the most of their asset,” he concludes. For more infomation please visit www.8build.co.uk

SFIO CRACHO/Shutterstock

LONDON’S OFFICES ARE GROWING

he UK could be turning into a nation of remote workers and freelancers, giving up the soul-destroying daily commute for a day spent in the home office or local café. According to a report by the Design Council, there was a 40 per cent increase in the number of freelancers in the UK between 2005 and 2010. The benefits of throwing off the shackles of the office have been well documented: you can save money on travel, not to mention time; choose your own hours; and manage childcare more easily. Even Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson has waded in to the debate: “I’m a big advocate of letting your team work from wherever suits them best – whether that’s at home, in the office, or on the top of a mountain,” he says. But there are signs that there could be downsides to this mode of working. Being available outside the traditional nine-to-five workday also means there’s no clear downtime. So is the trade-off really working? Fans of the always-on culture extol the virtues of a flexible workday, claiming this empowers workers and results in increased productivity. They are not wrong. According to recent research, 91 per cent of remote workers believe they get more work done when working remotely and those working flexibly are almost twice as likely to work beyond 40 hours a week. “The nine to five, in my opinion, is nearly completely redundant,” says Peter Johnston, founder of Lystable, a website used by Google, CNBC and Expedia to manage their freelancers. “We are moving towards a way of working where the number of us operating as freelancers and independent workers is overtaking those in full-time roles. This ben-

efits both individuals and businesses – the former get to pick and choose when and who they work with, and the latter are able to build teams with relevant skills for specific projects and tasks.” Many companies find that staff enjoy the autonomy of flexible working and respond well to being trusted to manage their own hours. “We’re fairly flexible on the hours we require from our staff,” says Tim Kitchen, founder of online marketing agency Exposure Ninja. “As long as they are broadly available during

EMPLOYEE HAPPINESS BY WORK TYPE

ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN, HOW HAPPY ARE YOU AT WORK?

Seven days a week with shorter hours Random, on call, sporadic throughout the day

8.49 8.12

Typical working-week hours, Monday to Friday, nine to five

7.88

Untypical working week, nights, Sunday to Thursday

7.82

Other

7.67 Source: TINYpulse 2016

UK work hours, they are free to take breaks, visit friends or go to the gym throughout the day. All of this seems to make them happier and we feel it reduces the ‘Friday afternoon funk’ because if they’re not feeling up for it, they don’t have to work.” It’s not just the employee who is breaking free of the office cubicle. More and more people are starting companies from their kitchen or spare room and are now able to grow successful virtual startups, employing teams who rarely meet in real life. Shaa Wasmund, a serial entrepreneur who helped grow the Dyson brand from Sir James Dyson’s kitchen table and later built and sold business advice website Smarta.com, now runs Shaa. com, which helps people build online businesses. “I recently transitioned from the old-school way of working,” she says. “I went from an office, with lots of employees, to a new way from my garden with a lean team and great outsourcing. “In my mind there are absolutely no downsides and only upsides. We are far more profitable, have a much more balanced life and, although we probably start earlier and maybe even finish later sometimes, I have no commute and I get to take my son to school almost every day.

“Gone are the days when working from home means you had no ambition or were working for peanuts. Today, you can build multi-million-pound businesses from your garden and have a life too.” Sanjana Karnani is a beauty entrepreneur, selling a range of products from her home in north-west London via the Amazon platform. She started her business, Verdure Plus, three years ago and now turns over £1 million a year. “I used to work nine to five for a charity,” she says. “But it made me unhappy leaving my daughter at nursery every day. “Now I work just five hours each day, which means I spend a lot more time with her, and I am also able to take 40 days holiday each year to visit my family in India. This would never have been possible with a regular job.” Home business is now big business in the UK; it is the nation’s most popular startup location. At last tally, there were 2.75 million people running a company from their home, which represents around half of all Britain’s small businesses. These home business owners are clearly on to something. When polled by entrepreneurs’ organisation Enterprise Nation earlier this year, 89 per cent said they were expecting to grow their venture over the next 12 months. No more office banter. No watercooler moments. Less collaboration. Fewer eureka moments. According to Andy Payne, a serial entrepreneur with several businesses in the gaming industry, these are just a few of the drawbacks to employing remote workers. “Being physically together in a physical environment can be really powerful in a creative busi-

LEFT Peter Johnston, founder of freelance platform Lystable, says the nine to five “is nearly completely redundant”

ness,” he says. “Human contact and the buzz of a busy office can get juices flowing. People can look at others’ screens and say, ‘What do you think of this?’” Most people never turn off their smartphones and this can lead to more work-induced stress. Mr Kitchen warns: “The challenge when an increasing number of our clients are always on is that you have to make sure you are consistent with your communication times. Otherwise, they get the impression that you are available 24/7 at their beck and call, particularly at the weekends.” Clever messaging applications, cloud-based software and videoconferencing, alongside the inexorable rise of the smartphone, have all helped to enable the always-on economy. But the available technologies are still far from perfect. “We do a lot of team calls on Skype,” says Mr Payne. “But unfortunately internet connectivity is still so useless that we can’t have ten faces on screen yet.” Yet, according to technology giant Cisco, by 2019 more than 80 per cent of web traffic will be video. Are workers happier in the new always-on economy? Early indications suggest they are. A report by consultants McKinsey found 60 per cent of independent workers in the UK and wider Europe were highly satisfied with the flexibility that being a freelancer offered. The study canvassed the opinions of 8,000 people and found just 14 per cent would prefer a traditional nine-tofive job.

Fans of the alwayson culture extol the virtues of a flexible workday, claiming this empowers workers and results in increased productivity

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turning your phone off

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Lystable

workers and freelancers, whose flexible working may be and available anytime, anywhere

LEFT Peter Johnston, founder of freelance platform Lystable, says the nine to five “is nearly completely redundant”

Fans of the alwayson culture extol the virtues of a flexible workday, claiming this empowers workers and results in increased productivity

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COMMERCIAL FEATURE

WORKSPACE DESIGN AT THE HEART OF ANY BUSINESS PLAN

BDG architecture + design

CASE STUDY: CHARTER BUILDING

Future office design is no longer a bolt-on strategy, says Bronte Turner, managing

director at HLW

Opening office spaces to the local community

and examinations, designers can understand their clients’ wider requirements, not just physical property needs. With this knowledge and guidance, organisations can consider how their workspace is connected to the success of their organisation. Getting the right design in place is as much about assisting and supporting the reinvention of how an organisation functions as making space changes. They can consider how different people work best – some on their own, some in teams, some agile and others not. The top three issues facing all the large and small organisations we work with are profit, talent shortage and understanding the impact of technology on operations. All three can be addressed through workplace design. The first, profit, is a result of many factors including productivity and employee engagement. So how can these elements be directly influenced by the workplace? Productivity, when speaking to a chief financial officer, is easy to quantify as time, billable hours, overheads and so on, but it is actually much harder to qualify. From our experience, temperature, light quality, health, acoustics, technology and placement of people all have an impact on productivity. Profit also comes from employee engagement. If a business can get employees to invest emotionally and have belief in its goals, it is proven to have positive outcomes. A working environment is one part in addressing these parameters – designing a work space that enables people to work in their own way, and to engage with the business and its identity, to collaborate, to have quiet time and to be healthy. There are so many challenges our clients are facing, influenced in part by what the market around them is doing. We always advise

Community involvement and access to office spaces are now a priority as employers and developers strive to get closer to local people through inclusive design

COMMUNITY OFFICES PETER CRUSH

02 them to get back to basics, to address and identify who they are. Then we ask them to explore and understand what competitors and non-competitors are doing, and how they are tackling business challenges in the office environment. The next issue we see is how to address the talent shortage that many businesses are experiencing. Attracting and retaining staff is essential and the businesses that offer staff a workplace that they can connect with, that provides them with the choice of pace and style of working that suits everyone, and a workplace that supports individual and team needs are a step ahead of their competitors. It is not about replicating the design and the offer that competitors have, but developing their own office, brand and identity.

03 01 Microsoft 02 Fintech client 03 Willis Towers Watson 04 Bronte Turner Managing director HLW

Workplace design is integral to any business plan because of its impact on the way people work

The final and biggest issue is also the fastest moving, and the hardest to anticipate – the business world has become less predictable because of technology. It has affected how we work, where we work and the tools which we need to work. By understanding our clients’ use of technology, their style of work and the effect current and expected future systems have on them, we can design workplaces that support and promote business. Flexibility, mobility and agility are all catchphrases that originate in technological change. Physical space needs to keep up with the rate of transformation, otherwise it hinders and holds back the people and the business. As a result of these changes, our clients are asking where their people should be working. What are the positives and negatives of mobile, flexible and agile working? With more businesses and staff operating in shared spaces, such as WeWork, from hotels or home, or in offices provided “as a service” (OaaS), there is a temptation to change the design

outlook and approach to office facilities radically. It is necessary, however, to consider that while the trend is to encourage greater “work anywhere”, many businesses still need a sense of community and collaboration. This in-house aspect must be central during design and not forgotten based on fashion. Design should be about understanding a business and making the office suit strategic and operational requirements. Many businesses now recognise that the analogy of “square peg, round hole” is not good enough if they are to maximise their potential. The investment businesses make in their office space needs to be assigned a high importance. It dramatically strengthens brand and identity, and future employee productivity, all of which add up to substantial gain and impact to business success. To find out more about how smart workplace design can help your business, visit www.hlw.com

trolling around 700 Bourke Street in Melbourne, home to National Australia Bank, and visitors could be forgiven for thinking they’re in a shopping centre not an office. The ground-floor “village” has racks for 600 bicycles, a pedestrian forecourt that funnels into a pyramidal central atrium, there’s a rooftop garden and people can even stop for a coffee, access the free wi-fi and rub shoulders with the bank’s 6,000 staff. Designed by Woods Bagot, the 63,000sqm building heralds what many believe the modern workplaces now needs to be – a place that doesn’t just house staff, but involves the local community. “Australia is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world,” says Andy Swann, founder and curator of All About People, a project that brings experts together to analyse how people thrive. “But more and more buildings are now incorporating areas they want the community to embrace.” And, according to Mr Swann and other experts, this dual-use is as much being driven by employers as it is by architects and town planners. “The new premise is that a building should be part of the community,” says Matthew Blain, design leader and principal at design practice Hassell. “Not only is this because employers want to attract

people as potential employees from the local area, but there is a growing sense they should give back to the community they occupy too. In particular, the young have different demands about what they expect buildings to do; they see community participation as an important reason for choosing an employer in the first place.” Chris Hiatt, director of London real estate developer Landid, says: “There is no distinction between work and life anymore, which means buildings need more public-like amenities.” But the overwhelming reason is to achieve what architects are increasingly calling “place-making”. According to Colin Macgadie, creative director at building de-

sign consultancy BDG: “Employers are wanting to break down the ‘ivory tower’ view of offices. It’s crazy most workspaces stand empty after 6pm through to 8am the following morning. Giving an office area back to the community after hours, or even during the day, keeps a building vibrant, gives it more of a purpose, keeps the neighbourhood exciting.” Mr Hiatt adds: “Employers no longer know what their day-to-day headcounts are. As buildings are already morphing into places to meet people rather than be home to desks, the view is why shouldn’t the public enjoy this meeting space too?” With his team he is working on buildings designed specifically to

01 Studio RHE is converting London’s East India Dock into The Republic, which blends community leisure space and commercial offices 02 White Collar Factory at Old Street roundabout features a mix of office, retail and residential space

Derwent

or many years, businesses have viewed office and building design as something to think about after everything else. This is no longer the case. Workplace design is integral to any business plan because of its impact on the way people work. This means design firms need to be viewed as consultancies that can help companies operate successfully and profitably. Productivity, successful business process and strategy go hand in hand with the work environment. Strategically led design positively influences businesses’ success and future development. Experienced designers can provide an objective view that allows businesses to discover and define their personality and purpose, and then respond by creating environments that dramatically improve performance and efficiency. Businesses must start their needs assessment with a thorough examination of their operations. The first aspect of this involves understanding current strategy and structure, goals for growth, diversification, efficiency and profitability, business processes, including how productive they are, and brand and identity. From these thorough conversations

Studio RHE

service – it belongs at the centre of business

Occupying more than 244,000 sqft, Uxbridge’s Charter Building is one of the largest office blocks in west London. According to Colin Macgadie, creative director at building design consultancy BDG, it’s an office that also invites the public to be part of the space too. “The idea is that membership of the building is greater than the population working in it,” he says. To emphasis this, the design of the building incorporates a 100 metre-long groundlevel “street” and more than £200,000 has been spent on furniture for this and in the

incorporate public space and invite community participation. These include the Charter Building in Uxbridge, west London. Mr Macgadie has done extensive work with ad agency WPP developing their Ideal Office concept globally. The latest project will redevelop the Rivierstaete building on the banks of the Amstel River in Amsterdam. Other new developments include the soon-to-open White Collar Factory development in London, which specifically features a mix of office, retail and residential space, plus a new public square to be called Old Street Yard. Created by regeneration company, Derwent London, White Collar Factory comprises 237,000sqft of office space, but there will be 56,000sqft of public campus-style areas. Derwent’s director Simon Silver says: “This is about creating a new type of office environment. The public space is literally a place people can go. It’s about the office being untethered and more immersive.” But the concept of the multi-functional, communal office is developing so fast that the very idea of “community” is itself changing too and is now being extended to include much more than the immediate population. “We’re also seeing community being used to talk about the inclusion of a firm’s clients, partners and suppliers,” says Mr Macgadie. “In this sense, we’re talking about their sector-specific ‘extended community’.

building’s atrium area. “There are 50 to 60 ways people can sit down in this public space,” says Mr Macgadie. “We’re very much likening it to a hotel lobby.” Also available in this area will be coffee bars and cafés, which while not competing with the high street will, he argues, “reach out to the public”. “It used to be the case that the business and the public didn’t mix. But today there’s a growing appreciation of how a building needs to be more part of a community. This is definitely a model more office spaces will be following,” he says.

“In 2015, KPMG opened the KPMG Club in Grosvenor Street, London, a free-to-use place to work. Crucially, it’s not just for KPMG staff, but for clients and suppliers too. It’s not a public community space as such, but it’s a destination place for a wider set of people. I think very quickly, the vernacular of ‘the place’ – a space that is a unique place to go to and work at as well as hang out in – will become normal.” The question is, of course, whether the trend for private companies to mix with the public will be a permanent fixture or a temporary fad. “Oh, I definitely don’t think it’s the latter,” argues Hassell’s Mr Blain. “Brands are competing for talent, so they want to be nearer the people they serve. It’s not local councils that are insisting public space is provided, it’s developers and employers believing it’s the right thing to do, to plant themselves more with their locality – and to make the environment more pleasant.” While there will always be the need for parts of buildings to remain off-limits, he says, diversity of purpose is now paramount, concluding: “Buildings were already opening up to suit agile working. Incorporating the public is the natural extension of this, to create a truly strong community that is open to all.”

There is no distinction between work and life anymore, which means buildings need more publiclike amenities

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RACONTEUR

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07 / 12 / 2016

THE FUTURE OFFICE

Studio RHE

BDG architecture + design

CASE STUDY: CHARTER BUILDING

Opening office spaces to the local community Community involvement and access to office spaces are now a priority as employers and developers strive to get closer to local people through inclusive design

trolling around 700 Bourke Street in Melbourne, home to National Australia Bank, and visitors could be forgiven for thinking they’re in a shopping centre not an office. The ground-floor “village” has racks for 600 bicycles, a pedestrian forecourt that funnels into a pyramidal central atrium, there’s a rooftop garden and people can even stop for a coffee, access the free wi-fi and rub shoulders with the bank’s 6,000 staff. Designed by Woods Bagot, the 63,000sqm building heralds what many believe the modern workplaces now needs to be – a place that doesn’t just house staff, but involves the local community. “Australia is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world,” says Anthony Brown, sales and marketing director at BW: Workplace Experts. “But more and more buildings are now incorporating areas they want the community to embrace.” And, according to Mr Brown and other experts, this dual-use is as much being driven by employers as it is by architects and town planners. “The new premise is that a building should be part of the community,” says Matthew Blain, design leader and principal at design practice Hassell. “Not only is this because employers want to attract people as potential employees from

the local area, but there is a growing sense they should give back to the community they occupy too. In particular, the young have different demands about what they expect buildings to do; they see community participation as an important reason for choosing an employer in the first place.” Chris Hiatt, director of London real estate developer Landid, says: “There is no distinction between work and life anymore, which means buildings need more public-like amenities.” But the overwhelming reason is to achieve what architects are increasingly calling “place-making”. According to Colin Macgadie, creative director at building design consultancy BDG: “Employ-

ers are wanting to break down the ‘ivory tower’ view of offices. It’s crazy most workspaces stand empty after 6pm through to 8am the following morning. Giving an office area back to the community after hours, or even during the day, keeps a building vibrant, gives it more of a purpose, keeps the neighbourhood exciting.” Mr Hiatt adds: “Employers no longer know what their day-to-day headcounts are. As buildings are already morphing into places to meet people rather than be home to desks, the view is why shouldn’t the public enjoy this meeting space too?” With his team he is working on buildings designed specifically to incorporate public space and invite

Derwent

COMMUNITY OFFICES PETER CRUSH

community participation. These include the Charter Building in Uxbridge, west London. Mr Macgadie has done extensive work with ad agency WPP developing their Ideal Office concept globally. The latest project will redevelop the Rivierstaete building on the banks of the Amstel River in Amsterdam. Other new developments include the soon-to-open White Collar Factory development in London, which specifically features a mix of office, retail and residential space, plus a new public square to be called Old Street Yard. Created by regeneration company, Derwent London, White Collar Factory comprises 237,000sqft of office space, but there will be 56,000sqft of public campus-style areas. Derwent’s director Simon Silver says: “This is about creating a new type of office environment. The public space is literally a place people can go. It’s about the office being untethered and more immersive.” But the concept of the multi-functional, communal office is developing so fast that the very idea of “community” is itself changing too and is now being extended to include much more than the immediate population. “We’re also seeing community being used to talk about the inclusion of a firm’s clients, partners and suppliers,” says Mr Macgadie. “In this sense, we’re talking about their sector-specific ‘extended community’.

There is no distinction between work and life anymore, which means buildings need more publiclike amenities

Share this article online via raconteur.net

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