Enhancing the Experience of Work in Today's Workplace

What is the purpose of a workplace? Ultimately, it is an environment that helps people get work done. At our core, we all want to do our best and be successful. Providing a workplace experience that fuels this desire is the best way to engage employees.

The way we work has become less routine, and the tasks we need to carry out each day have become more varied. Workplaces need to provide a mix of spaces optimized for several types of work. With the trend moving towards unassigned desks, only 40% of employees report using assigned workstations. This figure continues to decline year over year, indicating that more work is being done in other spaces.

Creating Spaces for Varied Workstyles

A Leesman study shows that people report having a great employee experience in a workplace with unassigned desks and a greater variety of workspaces—more so than a workplace with assigned desks.

How do we approach workplace design with this in mind? The first step is to determine what someone is doing throughout their day. From there, we align space with the activities that require support and create spaces that align with these activities and the amount of time spent on each.

Overall, we are creating a workplace that supports the full experience of work for individuals and teams.

We can categorize activities into three main buckets: Focus, Collaboration, and Connection.

Supporting Focus with Dedicated Areas

Acoustics and the ability to focus are two major complaints employees have about their workspaces today. Increased workstation density and open plans encourage collaboration and connection. However, they can also create bothersome distractions for people trying to focus. We need to understand the levels of insulation and control employees may need over their workspaces to feel most comfortable and effective in accomplishing different activities.

For example, answering emails, writing plans, or entering data might be more routine and not require as much focus. Additionally, these tasks might require input from others, making them best completed at a workstation near the rest of the team.

However, problem-solving, information gathering, or learning tend to be more solitary activities that require more focus. If someone’s main workstation is ins the open or near others, they may need to move to a different space to avoid distraction.

Understanding which activities an employee spends most of their day performing will help determine the type of main workstation they need. Then, plan for additional spaces that support their other activities to be accessible as needed.

Facilitating Teamwork through Collaboration

Collaboration is a big part of our daily work. Typically, we think of it as something done in formal meeting spaces. However, providing a variety of options based on the collaboration type is important.

Is the main purpose of the collaboration to problem-solve? Inform others? Or provide a quick update? Typically, a team will have a default way that they prefer to collaborate and need a primary space that supports that activity.

Some teams are more collaborative overall in the way they work. They need to be able to share, plan, ideate, and learn from each other seamlessly. These teams need a primary space for collaboration, whether at their main workstation or in a dedicated, easily accessible area.

Encouraging Informal Interactions

Connection is a type of informal collaboration that happens in the workplace. We have learned how important informal collaboration is to the creative process, the engagement of employees, and the overall culture of an organization.

Spontaneous and serendipitous interactions build relationships, spark ideas, and facilitate innovation. Creating spaces that allow these conversations to flourish enhances the experience of work. Employees seek spaces that support their activities and collaboration needs. A workplace that can seamlessly provide the types of spaces employees need is a place people desire to work—not just a place they're assigned to work.

Understanding how different teams accomplish their work and supporting that work with the right spaces will bring people into the office.