Everyone has different work styles, preferences, and requirements to help them love the physical space they work in each day.
When you’re considering creating or searching for a new workspace, there are a number of important design and usability elements to consider for your team and their productivity.
Open plan offices require consideration
Research from the University of Sydney Centre for Built Environment has concluded that in general, enclosed offices perform better than open-plan in satisfaction metrics.
Common negative impacts of open-plan spaces, such as a lack of individual privacy and heightened noise levels, can have significant impacts on productivity without the right planning and office design to help them adapt.
Diversity of spaces
One way to overcome these open-plan-office issues is to incorporate breakout areas, meeting spaces, and more social spaces into your design.
This helps create an office culture that acknowledges the desk area as a productive, quiet zone and encourages team members to move to different areas when it’s time to collaborate, socialise, or hold a meeting with their team.
Coworking and shared office spaces, long heralded as the leaders in workplace design, offer a range of open-plan areas, which facilitate and encourage connectivity between team members as well as connecting them to a wider business community.
Experience-focussed design
Creating a truly effective and enjoyable space is about much more than just having a Wifi connection and ergonomic chairs (although they’re essentials!). It’s about your design encouraging positive experiences, with affecting factors including and influencing space, community, and culture.
It can be complicated to take every aspect of the workplace experience into consideration, and for many, it’s beneficial to bring in professionals. Whether you’re constructing your own space or evaluating ready-to-move-in office space, it’s important to take so many factors into consideration.
Consider:
- How can your design encourage collaboration and communication
- What facilities and features do your team need, want, and expect?
- What is the value of additional features? Is it worth paying more for something like an internal office space or meeting room, or is this a nice-to-have?
Creating a connected team
Research from the Rotterdam School of Management determined that 1 in 8 coworking space users found a new job or temporary assignment, and 1 in 4 coworkers started professional partnerships or collaborations with other members.
By ensuring your chosen workspace has the required spaces for socialising, connecting, and collaborating, you can help your team connect and work more efficiently in a space they enjoy being part of.
Managed workspaces like Hub Australia also offer a ready-made culture that your business can connect to, with regular events (such as our fortnightly Wine Down), professional development webinars, and other community-building events throughout the year, all included in each membership.
Hub Australia offers architecturally designed workspaces with areas to relax, collaborate, and concentrate.
With locations in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Adelaide, Hub Australia brings premium coworking to Australia’s growing businesses, offering tailored workspaces, curated community, and member services.
Book your tour to learn more about Hub Australia and how we can help your business and team thrive.
