Getting along in the office too

Talking of love. Creating offices where people are going to get along is also important. We are not necessarily talking about having a romance over the water-cooler, but so people feel comfortable in a space to do their best work and also collaborate easily with their team and others. COVID-19 has thrown office designers into a tizzy.  Looking at the research, since the pandemic started and the mountains of studies from before the pandemic that are still relevant (people in 2022 have the same basic motivations in 2022 they did in 2019 and our sensory systems still work the same way), indicates that there are nine key factors to consider when design workplaces where people will work to their full potential—whether those people are working at home, onsite, or somewhere else entirely.

For people to do their best work and live a pleasant life, workplaces need to:

• Help people excel at working alone, as described in this article.  Even in this era of collaboration, collaboration, and more collaboration, much group work is done alone as people prepare for team sessions, for example.
• Support people as they meet, in person or via video calls, via sensory and other experiences, as discussed in this article.
• Give people options for where they work so that they can select a space that aligns with whatever they’re trying to get done, whether that’s concentrating on solving a thorny problem, meeting with teammates, or answering routine e-mails.People thrive when they have some control over their physical work environments and there is no more fundamental sort of control than being able to choose that work area.  In onsite offices, providing people with this sort of choice is known as “activity-based working.”  Choosing among options that align with tasks to be done helps keep burnout in check.
• Refresh!After people have been focusing, on their own or with others, their brains become exhausted and they need to refresh mentally.  That happens best in places with nature (views or art), nature soundtracks, water features, and other features described in this article.
• Since the beginning of the pandemic there’s been lots of talk about ventilation and it really does matter in lots of ways—effective ventilation can help prevent the spread of disease and it also boosts cognitive performance. For most of us, the best way to increase ventilate our homes is to open our windows (weather, etc., permitting).  If you want to learn more about tuning your HVAC system itself so that it does its moistest for physical and mental wellbeing, take a look at the Healthy Buildings website from Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health.
• Encourage activity. Our brains work best when we move some.  Try to work sitting down sometimes and standing up other times.  Also, take the long route to the coffee or tea whenever you can.
• Reflect pandemic concerns. We live in an era of pandemics. Homes need to become workplaces and schools on very short notice for extended periods of time (not to mention gyms, food storage centres, etc.). When you are thinking about the design of your home think about how you’ll be able to adapt it in the future to be all the places in your life.
• Developed FOR the users. Workplace design trends may not work for you—consider how you’ll use a space, how you’ll need to use it when you’re planning.
• Respect users. A space that’s developed with users in mind is probably signaling that users are valued and their contributions are respected;  this point reiterates the importance of really supporting whatever people are up to, psychologically, cognitively, and physically.  If users believe that they need a sort of tech tool to do their job well (that it is even remotely possible to provide), making sure they have it will rev up their performance, even if that tool’s effects on performance have not been fully measured.

As you’re working in these 9 workplace must-haves, remember that whatever we’re doing always goes best in a biophilicly designed space.  Spaces that refresh, described above, will feature biophilic design elements.  Potted plants, natural light, natural materials, the biophilic sorts of “stuff” mentioned in this article  LINK, make every day and every workday better.