non-conference workspaces

circulation space

---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63

---Implementing Innovative Workplaces

---What it Takes to Collaborate

“A recent study of businesses throughout North America and Europe

by Steelcase and CoreNet Global shows that 86 percent of compa-

nies offer alternative work strategies such as home offices, hotelling

and mobile work.”

“Eliminating ownership of a desk, office, or workstation without providing a richer, more varied set of work settings that truly supports

the full range of work activities will generate resentment, dissatisfac-tion, and lower levels of performance.”

“Herman Miller’s research shows that workstations are not occupied

60 percent of the time, across industries, and private offices are

unoccupied 77 percent of the time.”

non-conference workspaces

materials library

sample return

workroom

LAN

storage lockers storage lockers storage lockers storage lockers

stor

age

lock

ers

lunchroom

pack

ages

“Employees who eat together in large groups are 36%more likely to communicate outside lunch hours.”

---The Power of Place, Workcafe Ideabook

“Changing postures is physically energizing and mentally stimulating, and it supports different work modes. Workplace designs that allow

people to vary postures help keep them refreshed and engaged, and support overall wellbeing.”

---Steelcase's Anthropologist On Remaking Offices To Create Happier Workers

"Collaboration is a creative process," she says, "but it is also highly

dependent on the creative thinking of individuals, and much of this happens when people can sit back and reflect, or read or research

adjacent topics, or simply take the time to turn off the tasks and emails

and think deeply about a topic."

---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63

To break down silos, territoriality must give way. To increase space efficiency, inefficiency must give over territory to more effective work

spaces.

What is proposed is a space which allows for a variety of spaces that

can be used by groups and individuals in a free flowing environment that respects a variety of personalities, work styles, and changing

functionalities in needs and support over the course of a work day, a project, and a long term space utilization.

“...by enabling people to unchain themselves from a particular work

schedule or physical space, virtual work gives people more control of

their lives. Research has shown that those who have control over how

and where they work are likely to have higher job satisfaction, better

psychological well-being, and better work-life balance.”

---The Promise and Puzzle of Mobile Work, 2012

“Today’s star performers are looking for the freedom to work anywhere,

anytime. This does not necessarily mean working from home or in

another office. They expect employers to trust them to manage their

time and to decide for themselves the most productive place for them

to work.”---Changing Data Needs for the Changing Workplace, 2015

---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63

---Happiness (Or is it really purpose) at Work

Nancy HickeySteelcase Chief Administrative Officer

“Choice and control is the new status symbol – workers want freedom to choose where and how they work.”

“Using a strategy we call ‘Best Place”, we created a great range of flexible workspaces to meet changing needs. You have the freedom to

move, to collaborate, to put your head down and focus. Freedom to seek the best experience at work, however you choose to define ‘best.’”

“...One of the most profound drivers of people’s feeling about their workplace is allowing for personal choice—in how, when, and where

to work. Giving workers the option to work from home or from an alternate location within the office improves workplace satisfaction,

even for people who don’t take advantage of it. Simply having the

ability to make a personal choice makes workers feel valued and empowered.”

If an adaption is made to a freedom of choice in work environment, and a truly mobile suite of tools--laptops, mobile phones, and the like--we can future proof against future work needs, and respond to

changing work requirements.

As staff adapt to what it means to work independently, and deliber-

ately and consciously reconnect in the physical workspace, we can become a more flexible workforce. This workforce will become more

aware and adept at integrating our remote workers, and prepare for

future work which may take employees temporarily or permanently offsite to address the needs of far flung projects in multiple work sites

across the region, and the country.

open air collaboration/gatheringno acoustic isolation or expectations

enclosed collaboration/gatheringgroup acoustic isolation expectations

enclosed large conferencinggroup acoustic isolation expectations

enclosed small teaminggroup acoustic isolation expectations

enclosed concentrationacoustic isolation expectations

open individual workno acoustic isolation or expectations

all conversation, phone calls, permitted

open individual worklimited acoustic expectations

small (2-3 person) group conversations, calls permitted

open individual worklimited acoustic expectations

interruptions limited to 5-10 minutes, no phone ring-tones

enclosed individual work--”focus room”acoustic isolation expectations

no interruptions, no phones or calls permitted

enclosed individual/private team workacoustic isolation expectations

enclosed privacyindividual acoustic isolation expectations

public facing, clients and outside groups expected

internally focusedemployee only areas

reserved only at designated time

periods to reserve for client meetings; reserved at other times for internal employee use only

“95% of employees say they need spaces for focused work – 40% say

they don’t have them.”---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63

---Reinventing the Workplace - ReWork

“Workers who have the ability to block out distractions at work are

57% more able to collaborate, 88% more able to learn, and 42% more able to socialize in their workplaces. Collaboration and engage-

ment with others stills drives innovation and productivity, but for employees to effectively collaborate, they must first be able to effec-

tively focus.

“Simply put, if you give your employees spaces where they can put their heads down from time to time and focus on individual tasks,

overall performance will increase. Currently, three out of every four

workers in the United States are struggling to work effectively. To increase productivity, we need to bring focus back into balance.””

---Five Principles for Promoting Acoustic Comfort in the Workplace

---Can Better Acoustics Make Open Offices Suck Less?

“Once we satisfy critical adjacencies between workers and work activi-

ties, we should also explore the spatial impact of zoning on acoustical

comfort. An “Interaction Area” where loud, noise generating activities

can be clustered, should be segregated away from a “Focus Area” that

supports individual activities requiring focus and concentration. And

these spaces need to be separate from those that support very private,

confidential or personal work and conversations—a “Privacy Area.””

“When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of

working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they

know they will lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with

interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experi-enced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time

pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a price.”

I”t turns out that background noise messes with our minds--especially when that noise is a person's voice, and especially when that noise is a

person's voice on the phone. These so-called "halfalogues," in which

we only overhear one side of a conversation, are so infuriatingly

unpredictable that our brains can't focus on much else. And in an open office, phone calls in nearby cubicles happen all the time.”

---The Cost of Interrupted Work - More Speed and Stress

In this workplace, clear communication regarding behavioral expecta-

tions and aimed to reduce distractions is critical to enable productive work of all kinds, and reduce conflict between those varying types.

In this workspace, each soft seating group, workstation cluster, or

collaboration space shall be of a completely different product, by a

variety of manufacturers.

By using this strategy, employees can directly experience a variety of

the types and characters of varying workplace products directly.

Employees could even rate the varying products--either through

direct feedback solicitation by facilities or by the furniture manufactur-

er, through anonymous surveys, or simply by monitoring, through the

reservation system, what workspaces are utilized the most often.

If products are found to be unpopular or ineffective, a record of such

could be commonly kept so that all employees can have a record of

what products to recommend or steer clients clear of.

Additionally, as new furniture concepts and products are developed, new product can be cycled into the workplace. As no workplaces are permanently assigned, the designated grouping or space could be blocked off as “unavailable” for the time period required to remove one set of product and install another.

To facilitate easy integration of new product, the overall aesthetic should be eclectic, accommodating and displaying a range of design types from modern to traditional, sleek to rustic.

To enable all the other functions proposed for this workspace, and to

future-proof as much as possible against changing new technologies, the power and data infrastructure of the space should be divorced from as many of the connections to hard construction as possible.

Low profile raised floor systems, under-carpet power distribution with

elevated power outlets, should remove the infrastructure from the surrounding permanent structure. Furniture types or accessory systems which integrate easy access and reconfiguration of power and

data through open wiring access and accessory structures which carry

power and data in easy access independent configurations will also assist in making easy future reconfiguration or removal.

Wireless access should be available throughout, and collaboration spaces should integrate a variety of display types and sizes. Some

touchscreen enabled devices could be of assistance for electronic

review of designs and drawings, and collaboration spaces replete with multiple displays to enable easy collaboration with off-site clients and

non co-located employees across the country will increase the effec-tiveness of remote communication.

---IIDA Industry Roundtable on Workplace Well Being

“Employees need to feel like they’re connected – to other people and to the organiza-

tion. They also need quiet times when they can focus, reflect or recharge. When they are

in the workplace they sometimes want the energy and buzz of working near people;

other times they need a space for heads-down work. We call this “amping up or amping

down,” and every workspace should signal the kind of work it supports to help people

determine the best place to work. Providing sensory control is a key element of wellbe-

ing in the holistic view, which includes the psychological and sociological aspects of

work as well as the physical.”

“Nomadic workers need spaces that anticipate what they need when they arrive: easy

access to power for recharging devices, a choice of spaces with varying degrees of

privacy they can control, and a range of I and we spaces near each other so it’s easy to

transition between individual and collaborative work.”

“Trust is built by allowing a team to determine how they work on a project or how they communicate. And it’s also trusting your staff to help determine the place where they work and how to use it,” he notes. “You can’t say ‘you can work anywhere you want, just as long as you sit right here where I can see you.’ You have to allow people to speculate about what their work could be, where the organization is going, how the culture functions best, and they’ll create the most extraordinary places.”

“Orthogonal floor plates often equate to an over reliance on cubicles and benching systems…which can make employees feel like rats in a maze. “Benching is not a work-place strategy,” said Wellwood. “It is a furniture solution with connotations of being able to save space. It does not respond to the way people work.”

---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64

Finding balance for individual work in a sea of collaboration

---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64Space shapes behavior — behavior over time is culture

“Environments can also support collaboration by

providing more vertical display space for people

to tack up schedules, sketches, mind maps, lists,

and other work-related artifacts so they can easily

share and refer to them...

Although information can be stored on comput-

ers, people still desire physical artifacts of work. “

---What it Takes to Collaborate

“More than half of the companies in the

CoreNet/Steelcase study say they’re reconfiguring

individual workspaces to make more room for

team spaces. Because innovation requires

collective ‘we’ work, it’s critical to design spaces

that not only support collaboration, but augment

it. Teams need places designed around their social,

spatial and informational needs, where they can

bring their individual work to the group to evaluate it, make decisions or co-create new solutions.”

---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64

"“Our mission is to bring human health to the forefront of building practices and reinvent buildings so they are not only better for the environment, but also for the

people in them,” said IWBI Senior Vice President Michelle Moore. “It’s an important point of inflection for our market and our movement. Historically, sustainability has

focused on the impact that buildings have on our climate and environment. Bringing

wellness into the conversation adds a new emphasis on the individual, and opens up the field for research and development.”

---The International WELL Building Institute Launches the WELL Building Standard® Version 1.0

---Measuring the Economics of Engaged Workplaces

"The benefits of sound-masking systems have

been studied extensively. Independent research

has documented productivity gains of 8 to 38

percent, job satisfaction increases of 125 to 174

percent, and reductions in stress up to 27

percent."

---The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace

"Our analysis has shown that perceptions of

well-being can increase by up to 15% when

people work in surroundings that incorporate natural elements, ...for those working in environ-

ments that incorporate these natural elements, such as daylight and live plants, reported levels of creativity are 15% higher than the levels reported

by those who work in environments devoid of nature...following exposure to a stressor, nature

sounds can accelerate psychological restoration by up to 37%."