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walls
table tops

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- writable wall surface
- do staff own these spaces?

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research & writing

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places to talk with out disturbing others/ privately

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places to talk with out disturbing others/ privately

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(many staff walking around in the sun outside on mobile phones)

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Professional shared resource collection (LIBRARY / RESOURCE CENTRE)

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Professional shared resource collection (LIBRARY / RESOURCE CENTRE)

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Boost concentration/ focus

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7min

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Innovative Office Spaces - Google Search

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current lighting is inadequate

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diversity of furniture - stand up / sit down

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diversity of furniture - stand up / sit down

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this office is 15yrs old
need to look at 10 -15 yr window

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what other agencies may be affected

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dont want to reduce capacity of working styles personality types

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North Lakes (Janine)

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Office space News, Research and Analysis - The Conversation

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Browse Office space news, research and analysis from The Conversation

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Once the darling of corporate designers, the open-plan office is falling out of favour. The removal of physical barriers from the workplace was thought to increase the ease of interaction and encourage teamwork. However, more recent studies suggest the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

In the largest study to date, Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear at the University of Sydney surveyed 40,000 workers in 300 offices. Employees working in open-plan offices felt more stressed, distracted and unproductive than those in more traditional work settings. Increased noise levels and lack of privacy were the main complaints.

Research suggests employees working in open-plan offices feel more stressed, distracted and unproductive than those in more traditional work settings.
Photo: Louise Kennerley

Researchers at the University of Stockholm's Stress Research Institute found employees working on focused, complex tasks felt the most stressed when in open-plan settings. In a survey of over 1800 employees, they found that workers in open-plan settings took significantly more sick leave.

Employees who move from a single-occupancy office to an open-plan setting seem to have particular difficulty adjusting to the change. Aoife Brennan and colleagues at Dublin City University followed 21 such employees. She interviewed them before their move, then four weeks and six months later. The workers reported less satisfaction on all measures - their physical environment, personal stress levels, perceived job performance and relations with co-workers - not only four weeks later, but even after six months had elapsed.

Workers of the future will still want access to shared office space so they can socialise, and brainstorm.

So what's the way ahead? If we hope to please the workforce of the future, it's important to consider what millennials - those born in the '80s to the early '90s - value most.

Heidi Rasila and Peggie Rothe at Aalto University in Finland asked 20 millennials to evaluate the open-plan office where they worked. They felt the ability to collaborate and socialise easily with colleagues was worth the cost of increased noise and less privacy. It may be that this generation, who have grown up surrounded by multiple information streams, can screen out distractions more easily.

Dr Nicole Millard, expert in emerging technology at BT, said that despite being able to work remotely, workers of the future will still want access to shared office space so they can socialise, and brainstorm.

Flexibility is key. Offices will need to reflect this by providing some desks for individual work, soundproof spaces for confidential calls and discussions, meeting rooms where colleagues can exchange ideas - and, of course, an excellent coffee shop for more relaxed collaboration and individual work.
Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist and author of Siblings: How to Handle Rivalry and Create Lifelong Loving Bonds/ Telegraph, London

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Hate your open-plan, hot-desk office life? You're not alone

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Once the darling of corporate designers, the open-plan office is falling out of favour. The removal of physical barriers from the workplace was thought to increase the ease of interaction and encourage teamwork. However, more recent studies suggest the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

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In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage

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In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage

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Executive Summary

Technology has undoubtedly ushered in progress in a myriad of ways. But this same force has also led to work environments that inundate people with a relentless stream of emails, meetings, and distractions. A significant volume of research has outlined the problem with this onslaught of information: Studies show that when we're constantly distracted, performance decreases. Having the discipline to step back from the noise of the world is essential. To stay focused at work, build periods of solitude into your schedule, as you would for a meeting or an appointment. Use some of that time to reflect on your top priorities. Don't fill your schedule with so many commitments that you consistently prioritize urgent tasks over important ones. Starve your distractions by logging out of social media accounts and blocking certain websites during work hours. Finally, create a "stop doing" list to help provide clarity on what you need to start saying no to.

Huber & Starke/Getty Images

"Always remember: Your focus determines your reality." Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn shares this advice with Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, but in our hyper-distracted work world, it's advice that we all need to hear.

Technology has undoubtedly ushered in progress in a myriad of ways. But this same force has also led to work environments that inundate people with a relentless stream of emails, meetings, and distractions. In 2010, Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, shared a concern with the world: "Every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening soon." Are we able to process the volume of information, stimuli, and various distractions coming at us each and every day?

A significant volume of research has outlined the problem with this onslaught of information. Research by the University of London reveals that our IQ drops by five to 15 points when we are multitasking. In his book, Your Brain at Work, David Rock explains that performance can decrease by up to 50% when a person focuses on two mental tasks at once. And research led by legendary Stanford University professor Clifford Nass concluded that distractions reduce the brain's ability to filter out irrelevancy in its working memory.

You and Your Team Series

Staying Focused

There is no silver bullet to solving the complex problems ushered in by the information age. But there are some good places to start, and one of them is counterintuitive: solitude. Having the discipline to step back from the noise of the world is essential to staying focused. This is even more important in a highly politicized society that constantly incites our emotions, causing the cognitive effects of distractions to linger. In our book, Lead Yourself First, Ray Kethledge and I define solitude as a state of mind, a space in which to focus one's own thoughts without distraction - and where the mind can work through a problem on its own.

The ability to focus is a competitive advantage in the world today. Here are some thoughts on how to stay focused at work:

Build periods of solitude into your schedule. Treat it as you would any meeting or an appointment. If you don't schedule and commit to solitude, something else will fill the space. One need not be Henry David Thoreau here; 15-minute pockets of solitude are very effective. If we spend our entire workday sitting in meetings and answering emails, it leaves little space in our minds to do the hard thinking that is essential to good decision making and leadership.

Analyze where your time is best spent. Most of us have meetings that we can afford to miss, and most of us underutilize our energy because we have not allocated time to reflect and be rigorous about our priorities.

Starve your distractions. Social media, YouTube, and the limitless possibilities of the internet hang over our heads. They tempt us to click links that take us to another five-minute video or article. Acknowledge the ways that the internet lures you in, and then intervene by logging out of your social media accounts and blocking certain websites during work hours - especially the ones you use for a quick distraction "when you have 10 minutes to kill."

Don't be too busy to learn how to be less busy. One of the biggest reasons we struggle to focus is because we fill our schedules with too many commitments and we consistently prioritize urgent tasks over important ones. Leadership development and training opportunities exist to enhance your ability to understand yourself better, to reflect, and to grow. Don't let the tempo of work get in the way of good development opportunities (once in a while).

Create a "stop doing" list. There are only so many hours in a day. As your to-do list grows, you cannot keep accumulating more tasks. Solitude gives you the space to reflect on where your time is best spent, which provides you with the clarity to decide which meetings you should stop attending, which committees you should step down from, and which invitations you should politely decline. This is something that Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has been advising people to do for many years.

The volume of our communication, and our unfettered access to information and other people, have made it more difficult than ever to focus. Despite this reality, there is another truth: Opportunities to focus are still all around us. But we must recognize them and believe that the benefit of focus, for yourself and the people you lead, is worth making it a priority in your life. In other words, before you can lead others, the first person you must lead is yourself.

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In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage

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Executive Summary Technology has undoubtedly ushered in progress in a myriad of ways. But this same force has also led to work environments that inundate people with a relentless stream of emails, meetings, and distractions. A significant volume of research has outlined the problem with this onslaught of information: Studies show that when we're constantly distracted, performance decreases.

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TV screens in each meeting room - using the same system

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TV screens in each meeting room - using the same system

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Learn how the modern workplace
is impacting today's organization

By Ian Morley

The modern workplace is transforming the way people think about their office space. Leading enterprises are leveraging their workplace to benefit their business and their people. We recently hosted a webinar to address the best practices for the modern workplace. Our panel of industry experts Jill Zunshine, Former Global Head of Real Estate at HP, Tom Zampini, CEO of Beco, and Luc Kamperman, Partner of Veldhoen Company, shared their insights and lessons learned from working with workplace strategies and activity based working. Below we walk through some of the major highlights from each of our presenter's presentations, read on to learn more.

How to Take a Workplace from Lifeless to Lively
Presented by: Jill Zunshine, Former Global Head of Real Estate, HP
When beginning a workplace transformation, you must gather data to understand how your company and how employees work. There are many ways to collect data, but there are 3 steps that cannot be forgotten.

Business Strategies: Understand each business line and function areas of your business. Talk to them about their strategy and goals for their department.

Employee Feedback: Gather and analyze engagement scores and satisfaction surveys to understand what employees think about the current workspace.

Utilization Percentages: Collect how space is being used and what spaces are being used for what type of activity. Having the right utilization collection technologies can accelerate your process.

"The best workplace strategies are designed around the people and their work," says Jill Zunshine. When designing an activity based workplace, workstyles and work settings need to be considered. Jill uses five work styles and five work settings to understand how employees work. Here's a few examples:
Work Style:

Agile: Often means flexible, frequent changes between collaborating and concentrating (ex. System software engineer).

Innovator: Refers to constantly developing or creating something new (ex. Research engineer).

Work Setting:

Entry Zone: Typically a reception area or business lounge. These types of settings are best for the traveler work style.

Quiet Zone: Little to no talking takes place in this area. This work setting is suitable for agile, concentrator, or innovator working styles.

*Design Tip: creating spaces that flow from an active buzz to a quieter noise level has shown to be most effective.
Watch the webinar to learn more about creating a lively workplace strategy >>
Technology in the Modern Workplace
Presented by: Tom Zampini, CEO of Beco
From experience, Tom Zampini sees three problems that have arisen regarding the modern workplace:

Over Spending: Large and inflexible portfolios are heavily underused.

Failure to Embrace Digital: There's a failure to embrace digital and thinking that mobility undermines productivity.

Working Environment: Companies are either working in new ways in old spaces, or working in new spaces that impede real work.

To combat these issues, today's dynamic workplaces need real-time data. "There's a need for real-time monitoring of space utilization across the entire portfolio. It's not just a space study, it's a perpetual measurement of all space, all the time, at scale," says Tom.

Once you gather the real-time data, it unlocks the ability to see true success. Such as:

Saving on real estate: repurpose space, delay expansion, and consolidate buildings.

Better management of workplace: optimize design, find a free space in real-time, and bring amenities online.

Watch the webinar to learn more about enabling the employee experience through mobile >>
Industry Trends & Consulting Experiences
Presented by: Luc Kamperman, Partner at Veldhoen Company
How leadership and employees engage with one another is changing right alongside the workplace. Once you have an activity based work environment, how do you support the employee's productivity and innovation? Luc follows 3 factors to lead to better performance and personal satisfaction.

Autonomy: people want to explore, learn, and foster their inner drive. This can be supported by giving people control in their environment.

Mastery: employees should strive to get better at doing things, and encourage improvements and growth.

Purpose: what is connecting them to their work and workplace?

*Engagement Tip: If you want engagement, a self-directed approach is ideal.

When optimizing your workplace, an integrated approach is the most effective. An integrated approach consists of the physical, virtual, and behavior environment. What that means is:

Physical: the workspace

Virtual: mobilization of information

Behavioral: change and communication

Watch the webinar to learn more about the opportunities activity based working creates >>
The modern workplace means something different for every company. To learn more about how the modern workplace is impacting today's organization watch our full webinar here.

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Workplace Strategies Revolutionizing Office Space - Serraview

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Learn how the modern workplace is impacting today's organization By Ian Morley The modern workplace is transforming the way people think about their office space. Leading enterprises are leveraging their workplace to benefit their business and their people. We recently hosted a webinar to address the best practices for the modern workplace.

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Allowing for storage and keeping open views to a degree

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Use of partitions for flexible arrangement of desks

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A meeting area but not necessarily a meeting room

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Area for discussion that reduce impact of noise in open plan office

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Combination of glass offices, low works stations and informal seating areas