The modern workplace is in a state of transformation. Companies realize that talented, engaged employees are key to success. For their part, employees have work and home responsibilities, as well as personal passions vying for their attention. Many progressive companies are physically and philosophically structuring their businesses to produce greater levels of transparency, collaboration, independence and personal fulfillment. Innovations to the workplace experience are taking many forms, from sleeping pods to new business structures.
“Since its beginnings in 1996, all the staff at Britain’s top-rated ad agency, Mother, worked around a table. As the company grew, the table grew. For their new offices in a 42,000SF warehouse in Shoreditch, Clive Wilkinson Architects proposed constructing a table with a capacity of 200 people.” More here.
Gone, at least for the fortunate, are the organizational silos and Dilbert-style cubicles. Now the emphasis is on casual, spontaneous exchanges — the kinds of interactions that might usually happen at the water cooler or over a cubicle wall. Called Gather, the 11-piece line, which won Silver at this year’s NeoCon, accommodates a range of working styles and body postures, with the majority performing dual functions. Via Co Design.
More after the jump!
Results-Only Work Environment is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence. In a ROWE, people focus on results and only results – increasing the organization’s performance while creating the right climate for people to manage all the demands in their lives . . . including work. More here.
Design itself is the problem because it is being used to solve the wrong ones — despite its best intentions. The designer’s “toolkit,” to throw in a term much overused in the industry, has to expand beyond noodling with the cubicle.So, apart from furniture and skylights, how might designers (and the companies who hire them) think about work differently? More here.
Most collaborative work spaces today support leader-led presentations where information is controlled and shared by one person at a time. media:scape removes these barriers and democratizes how people access and share information by allowing all participants to contribute their ideas – equally, quickly and seamlessly. More here.
To quote Allison Arieff, “Creativity springs from unexpected places and sources — from a walk in the park to the rare block of uninterrupted time — so thinking more broadly about the intrinsic motivations (autonomy, learning, etc.) that facilitate good work is likely to have a far happier outcome than the “latest” innovation in cubicles.”