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Category: Office Designs (page 11 of 12)

An Office With No Walls Or Doors?

How would you like to be sitting in an office where you can see everything the boss is doing? This is the case with US banking giant Citigroup which is not just opening the doors to a new HQ but removing them altogether!

The bank is about to take the open office a stage further with its no-door design according to the Wall Street Journal. While open offices are more in line with what you might expect from the likes of Google and other trendy creative firms, this marks a significant departure for the more sober world of banking (though some might argue that creativity is alive and well in banking for better or for worse).

CEO of Citigroup, Michael Corbat, will swap his current 600-square-foot office for a 360-square-foot office which doesn’t have walls or a door. How is this possible? Well the walls are replaced with 7ft glass panels.

Desks in the office won’t be assigned either which might freak out anyone who likes to make desk space their own.

With the current trend now moving towards a mix of spaces which people can make their own and also areas to collaborate, this extreme open-plan idea is pushing things in the wrong direction but maybe bankers will be happier keeping an eye on each other through the working day.

Why Going To Work Will Never Be Boring In These Offices

December 23, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

An interesting article published in the Guardian newspaper the other day about the world’s coolest offices revealed some of the weird and wonderful ways business owners fit out their offices.

Whether you agree with the Guardian’s coolest offices or not, there are several companies out there whose aim is to turn the idea of the traditional office on its head and create the kind of environments that wouldn’t look out of place in a kids’ play barn.

Jimmy’s Iced Coffee in London for example features trampolines, and even skate ramps and a place to go and drink a cold beer at the end of a hard day. This would more than satisfy the teenager that may be lurking inside each of your staff members but what about Ticket Master with their suspended toy airplanes – and a slide? One thing is for sure, if you ever bring the children to work and work happens to be Ticketmaster’s London offices, then they will feel right at home.

Perhaps not surprisingly Innocent, the natural ingredient smoothie firm has gone back to nature for inspiration with fake grass flooring, wooden picnic benches and fruit baskets for its health conscious employees.

Like them or loathe them, all of these offices are here in the UK and a trend that began in America could become the office of the future in a town near you!

Is Having A Stuffy Office Bad For Your Brain?

November 4, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Research into the effects of bad air quality in offices says so. Poor air quality is said to be responsible not only for poor cognitive performance but also health.

Researchers have reported in Environmental Health Perspectives that working in stuffy offices can halve cognitive scores. The news that half of office staff could be performing at half their normal mental capacity is unlikely to be well received by business owners.

Research found that simply opening a window or two to let in some fresh air can bring positive benefits, however this may not be possible in the depths of winter when staff may complain about the cold instead.

Yet if productivity levels are to reach their maximum it is clear that offices should be designed to expose people to at least some fresh air during the day. A fresh breeze might be all staff need to increase their production levels and brain functioning.

The study was limited to just 24 professionals, but it did include architects, designers and engineers. The study was conducted over 2 weeks in what was laid out as a typical office space. The study examined Co2 a VOC levels and how the gas impacts on performance.

Scores in tests were over 60% higher when conditions were set for these gases to be reduced indoors.

Is Office Furniture As We Know It About To Change Forever?

October 22, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

The introduction of computers into the office as well as tablets, and mobile phones in some cases has helped to change the way everyone works, making work more efficient and easier. What hasn’t changed too much is the traditional office layout but this could soon be transformed as we all get used to not being chained to the desk by the wires that once powered various devices.

Change hasn’t happened yet of course. The average office worker will still be turning up for work at 9am grabbing a coffee and then sitting static at a desk for the best part of eight hours. Yet when you look at how technology has advanced, then it is a mystery why we still stick to the old habits.

The standard office furniture consists of desks, chairs, maybe a sofa or two and a large meeting table. This could however soon be replaced with ‘smart furniture’ which allows you to plug in and charge up mobiles, and tablets or areas that allow us to move around and be more mobile. Furniture for collaborative workspaces is likely to be far more radically designed in the not too distant future.

What will remain however is the office as a place to meet face to face. While technically the need for an office no longer really exists there is still no technological substitute for real human interaction in the workplace.

How eCommerce Growth Will Revolutionise Warehousing And Logistics

July 13, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

The growth in ecommerce has the look and feel of a revolution more awe inspiring and life changing than anything seen since the industrial revolution.

Warehousing and logistics have always been important to retailers of course. This is nothing new but what has changed due to the growth of eCommerce is the speed and ease at which anyone can just go online and order pretty much whatever they want.

From the moment a button is clicked to purchase online, a chain of events is set in motion which can to the delivery of goods in less than 24 hours in some cases. Back in the early days of the Internet, this sort of speed would have been virtually unheard of.

Another step change we are already seeing in eCommerce is the growth in sales made on mobile phones. Google has already responded this new phenomenon by encouraging all website owners to make their websites mobile friendly.

The very idea of ordering something on a mobile phone a few years ago would have been scoffed at. People wanted to look and feel the product they were buying, but there is the feeling that this is slowly going out of fashion.

Photographs are far more crisp and realistic than they used to be and it’s now not such a big deal to order something on the strength of a picture we can zoom into and rotate in 3d if we so choose.

Are Robots About To Replace Humans In The Warehouse

June 30, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

It’s the stuff of nightmares for your average warehouse worker to think that robots might eventually replace them.

After all, robots don’t get ill, they don’t need to be trained in health and safety and they can just keep on working around the clock when us humans are spending 8 hours recharging our batteries every 24 hours.

Amazon which is one of the world’s biggest employers of warehouse staff held a competition recently to find out if robots really could do the work of its 50,000 US warehouse staff. Robots were put to the test packing anything from toasters to thin paperbacks.

Unfortunately while robots hold advantages over human workers, the competition proved that robots are still no match for humans when it comes to using a bit of initiative. Warehouse picking and packing is a much more intellectually demanding job than most people think and the robots involved soon showed that they were nowhere near up to the task.

The robots were not only slow and cumbersome compared to human workers, they also failed to identify objects as well as humans. Ironically for a company that began life distributing books, the robots had more trouble with paperback books than anything else.

Ways Good Office Design Makes Employees Feel Better And Work Harder

June 12, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

A global study on the influence of office design on employees well-being has produced some important findings that all business owners should be aware of.

The study led by psychologist Sir Cary Cooper looked at biophilic design and the workplace and examined subjects on how they felt about it. The results were significant but really not surprising given that it is merely drawing attention to what we already know – human beings like to work in natural environments and that includes when they are working in an office in front of a computer all day.

Employees who were lucky enough to find themselves working in a more ‘natural’ office space reported that their overall sense of well-being was 15% higher, they were 6% more productive and 15% more creative.

Despite how advanced civilisation has become there is still the need to connect with nature in some way and this is what biophilic design is all about – reconnecting with nature by including natural elements in the design of an office space.

Modifications can be as simple as letting in more natural light. Yet nearly half (47%) of all employees had no natural light in the study.

What Will The Office Of The Future Look Like?

May 16, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Office design and even furniture has changed a lot in recent years to accommodate changes in technology. We’ve also become a lot more knowledgeable about what makes a pleasant and healthy place to work.

Some of what we can expect to see happening in office design of the future can be seen already. Sustainability in office design has led many architects to experiment with creating office spaces with anything from shipping containers to wooden pallets.

Alongside sustainability it is a sure bet that how we get to and from work will affect how office spaces are designed. Like it or not offices even today are built around the needs of car owners. In the future we might see offices designed more with people in mind. People will probably be cycling to work more and if they do have cars they may well be put on charge through the working day.

Because sitting down is supposed to be bad for us, we are likely to see less of the humble chair in the future, or at least those attached to desks. Staff may well be encouraged to work at stand up desks even though some might take convincing after a full 8 hour shift.

Who know even the conventional nine to five might disappear and be replaced by mobile workers who often work from home to reduce pollution or avoid what are likely to be gridlocked commuter routes.

Trends Influencing Office Design In 2015

May 4, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Workforces are becoming more mobile, the production process is speeding up and the demand for employees to think creatively to help companies survive has never been greater. To keep pace in all these areas requires thinking about the latest trends in office design.

The talent pool is shrinking
Demand for talent in some business sectors may reach crisis point in the years to come as the current generation reaches retirement. IT, sales and marketing and management are set to face the biggest skills shortage and people working in these areas will expect to work in environments that satisfy their needs. Collaborative office design will be a key area to focus on to create the kind of company top talent will be happy to work for.

Employee motivation
Keeping employees motivated not only helps staff retention it can also boost a company’s bottom line by 20% according to some studies. Negativity and hostility meanwhile only spreads to other members of staff threatening the business in some cases. The answer is to design the office as a communication tool that helps broadcast the goals of the company and the achievements of the team.

Remote working requires different thinking about the way offices are used
Working from home was virtually unheard of 20 years ago. Now more and more office workers are feeling the benefits of working from home. However this is never a permanent solution when team collaboration remains important. This requires flexible work spaces and areas of the office being designed to make room for technology and business processes to work even when staff are not present.
The one thing you can rely on in 2015 is that the top people will be more choosy about where they decide to work. A booming economy is set to make this the case for the foreseeable future.

5 Common Office Design Mistakes

April 27, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Most of us spend years getting our homes to look right even if a large percentage of us spend only a small proportion of our time in them. With the majority of people employed in some kind of office job it’s sad to see so many mistakes made in office design when spending a bit of time with planning could make all the difference to those who work there.

With this in mind, here are 5 office design mistakes and how they can be avoided.

Not spending enough money
Let’s face it, making an office look pretty is often the last thing on the minds of stressed out business owners. Money is often allocated to more profitable areas. But there is in argument that says spending a bit of time on the office environment can help make staff more productive which can boost profits and ease those business worries in the long term.

Buying the wrong size furniture
It’s a common error to buy furniture that is not the right size for a room. It can be either too big and restrict your space or so small the office becomes a space of overwhelming emptiness.

Not bothering to plan the office layout
Another mistake is to not plan the layout of an office. With a new office it is important to find out where to put things like the photocopier or printer and find proper spaces for desks. Nobody will appreciate sitting in front of a baking hot window all day even if they are showered with natural light.

Not asking the opinion of your employees
There is nothing more demotivating than not being informed of important business decisions when you are a member of staff. Office design is one of those decisions, so it is worth asking their opnion before you go ahead, particularly if staff are the ones spending most of their time in the office.

Going ahead and choosing a design without talking to your staff can be a costly mistake. If you want a happy and productive workforce, your space needs to reflect your business needs. For example, open plan offices are a popular choice for creative industries that require a lot of collaboration, but they could be disastrous for jobs that need more privacy. With this in mind, make sure that you ask your employees about their preferred work style before you finalise your design.

Spending too much money on design
You’ll see lots of advice from office designers out there but really designing an office well me designing it so that it feels natural. Only the people who work there will know what works best for them so it is possible to get everyone together and come up with the best solution for your space without breaking the bank.