As the paper explains, 42 percent of ASID respondents say focusing on employee comfort pays dividends – a more aesthetically pleasing, comforting and inviting office interior design increases workplace efficiency and worker morale. The flipside to the office interior design argument is also apparent – decreased employee comfort results in losses to the enterprise, in person-hours lost and liability costs.

The ASID paper joins the growing volume of scientific literature demonstrating how designing for comfort is an imperative in office interior design, one you ignore at your peril. Look at the matter closely, and you’ll see that there are three general areas within the general concept of “comfort”: (Read more)

Ergonomics. Among the respondents to the ASID survey, 20.6 percent reported improvement in employee productivity a year after ergonomic furniture was installed. Apart from the added comfort provided by better-adjusted office cubicles and seats, improved ergonomics provides employees with the satisfaction of control over their environment.

We’ve discussed the subject on this blog before; common wisdom on ergonomics has evolved, moving away from correct posture toward increasing the range of movement. Also, hiring an ergonomics professional may be preferable to doing the whole thing yourself.

Lighting. Bad task lighting does more than just waste energy; it gets in the way of productivity, too. Bad lighting creates glare that causes eye strain, accelerating the sensation of fatigue and discomfort. And many offices are simply over lit, a result of poor office interior design planning.

Wilson Dau breaks it down – many offices are set up to have 50 footcandles’ illuminance, but “in today’s computer-intensive workplace, 50FC is too much light. Plus, most, office furniture is sold with individual task lighting, which ends up flooding 60 or 70FC over the worksurface.”

Part of the solution to bad lighting lies in the use of more natural light in combination with lower overall illumination levels. In a tip of the hat to ergonomics (i.e. giving employees control over their own environments), many comfortable office environments have taken the trouble to install adjustable, individual task lighting.

Air Quality. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, businesses lose up to 60 million work days annually because of negative air quality concerns. Poor indoor air quality may result from ambient pollution, or from outgassing coming from paint, laminates, and carpeting.

Ergonomics, lighting, and air quality have everything to do with productivity. Many facility managers forget this, because comfort is its own worst enemy, not bringing any attention to itself; nobody attributes their increased sales figures to, say, the new delivery of Aeron chairs.

And yet see how much attention the distraction of discomfort calls to itself!  Which is exactly why discomfort is bad for productivity. Bad office interior design takes up plenty of mental real estate, brain power that can be more productively used tackling work-related problems. But how can one be focused on corporate solutions, when the brain is distracted by that dull and growing ache in your wrist, or the uncomfortable settings of your badly-adjusted office chair?

Is there more to accessibility and office interior design? Sure! Download our white paper, and read more – download “Office Interior Design: Key Factors in Building the Ideal Office Environment” (PDF, 210KB).

When companies create environments that invite collaboration – by providing space for people to interact – companies benefit more, compared to environments that encourage mostly individual focused work. The workplace is increasingly seen as a place where people meet to interact, instead of a place where people hunker down to do isolated work.

Companies are now finding this out for themselves, leading to new office interior designs that bring workers closer to their colleagues and to the common resources they need to get their jobs done.

More on accessibility and interior design after the jump. Read more…

Cisco Systems’ Collaborative Connected Workplace Environment, for example, tore down cubicle walls and created a campus-like office interior design that had space set apart for informal meetings and enclosed quarters for private work. Unmooring employees from assigned desks, Cisco introduced wireless LAN and IP telephony systems to allow their people to stay connected wherever they might be on campus.

Cisco set the bar for a high degree of accessibility to people and resources: while private spaces still exist for staff who need to concentrate on their work, the office interior design is largely composed of spaces for meeting and collaboration, welcoming both large and small groups. Workers even have access to overseas teams and resources, through the use of teleconferencing, interactive white boards, and instant messaging.

Cisco found two key benefits in their more open, access-friendly design.

Faster decision making: the ability to make crucial decisions are devolved to the ranks. Instead of a top-down decision workflow, strategy and action flows from and between the people who are closest to the situation, instead of executives who may be far removed from the problem.

Better group cohesion. “Providing opportunities and spaces for people to interact is important to creating the trust necessary for a collaborative working environment,” writes Doug Zucker in “What does Change Look Like?”, and he couldn’t be more on the money. Shared perspectives and experiences create a bond of trust and camaraderie between colleagues, something that just isn’t possible when the interior office design discourages close collaboration.

Cisco isn’t alone in gravitating towards office environments that tear down physical barriers. The open office design now getting more common in the workplace is most suited to an open-access, collaborative environment, although other office innovations are also encouraging collaboration on their own.

Zucker comments how law offices are changing to incorporate collaboration and socialization into their structure: “New types of spaces are being created to enhance either planned or chance interactions, incorporating an attorney lounge into the constantly shrinking library, providing interactive café spaces with amenities like cappuccino machines and spot lounges for chance encounters.”

Perhaps it’s because decision makers are wising up – changing business conditions and the need for greater corporate competitiveness leads them to resort to effective office interior design, with the need for collaboration becoming a big part of the mix. Their employees are following suit – according to the ASID survey, 90% of respondents believe improvements in office design can increase employee productivity. Wherever you look in the organization – from the corner office to the warehouse – accessibility wins!

Is there more to accessibility and office interior design? Sure! Download our white paper, and read more – download “Office Interior Design: Key Factors in Building the Ideal Office Environment” (PDF, 210KB).

Productivity results when four key benefits are delivered by effective office interior design: Improved accessibility, increased employee comfort, limiting noise and distractions, and flexibility & customization. In this white paper, we devote a little more time and effort going into each benefit. By the time you’re done, you should have the knowledge and insight you need to know how you can apply them to your office.

Download our white paper, and read more – download “Designing for Productivity: Key Factors in Building the Ideal Office Environment” (PDF, 210KB).

“Asking programmers or network administrators to do their jobs in an open space where noise, distractions and interruptions abound can be akin, for some of them at least, to departmental decimation,” writes Computerworld’s Cara Garretson.

This presents a conundrum for the facility manager, who must weigh team interdependence and the intensiveness of the work when creating an office layout for an IT department. To use Bell and Kozlowski’s model of task dependencies, IT engineers represent an excellent example of an intensive workflow.

More on what IT engineers look for in their office interior design, after the jump. Read more…

Collaboration and Privacy. Intensive workflow demands a high degree of collaboration, as each worker depends on another for the completion of one’s overall task. But this collaboration needs to be balanced against the need to concentrate in a private area. Research by Cornell professors Frank Becker and William Sims suggest that fully-optimized knowledge workers make use of both spaces: closed offices that allow them to concentrate, and open offices that allow them to build trust and interact with fellow team members.

“Our research […] indicates that the more open the ‘open’ plan office environment, the more conducive it is to overall work effectiveness, when communication and interaction are critical elements of the work process,” explain Becker and Sims.

On the other hand, IT workers require an environment where they can concentrate on certain tasks. “The need to concentrate at work… requires a quiet setting with relatively few distractions,” explains Thomas Davenport of Harvard Business School. “Some studies have found that programmers spend only 20 to 30 percent of their time doing solo programming, but others have found workers devoting up to 64 percent in ‘quiet work.’ Whatever the fraction of time, it’s important for the production of final knowledge work outputs.”

Close distance matters. Despite the advance of remote communication technologies, distance still matters, as Gary and Judith Olson demonstrated in their paper (download PDF). Workers separated by distances greater than 30 meters saw their interactions drop precipitously. Under the magic 30-meter boundary, though, awareness of co-workers increases collaboration, allowing informal interactions to take place.

All these factors affect the kind of office that IT workers require to get their jobs done. “At a minimum, there need to be meeting spaces and conference rooms,” explains Davenport. “Maximum facilitation would be to create a variety of collaborative spaces, technologies, and facilitation approaches for an array of collaborative purposes. Technologies for collaboration—from videoconferences to webcasting to shared networks—are increasingly making a big difference in collaboration.” All this, of course, must be balanced out with the need for privacy – a space that facilitates information sharing with a minimum of outside distraction.

Is there more to workflow and space planning? You bet there is. Download our white paper, and read more about space planning and workflow in your office interior design – download “Space Planning for Your Office: Designing for Optimum Workflow” (PDF, 75KB).

Leo Burnett keeps it simple, with raw brick and timber; Moove Media incorporates plenty of “found” elements in their office interior design. Hemels van der Hart’s office interior design is modernity personified.

Still, the rules are not totally flexible, as the example of ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day shows. Agency head Jay Chiat decided to remove all personal spaces within the ad agency, putting virtual offices in their stead. People would check out laptops and phones at the front office, then plug into any available space.

But good spaces were hard to come by, and people became hard to locate. Productivity took a hit. TBWA’s open office became a byword of what not to do with ad agency office interior design.

At its core, ad agency work boils down to teamwork; agencies are made up of teams with a certain degree of interdependence. To use Bell and Kozlowski’s model of task dependencies, advertising creatives represent an intensive combination of reciprocal and sequential workflow: an ad agency’s work and activities flow unidirectionally from one member to another. But not entirely in one direction: feedback from clients and suppliers can send a project moving back down the line for revision, and then back in the right direction again.

The “open office” plan may not work completely for the modern ad agency’s workflow – privacy-enhancing spaces, such as conference rooms, private offices, and high-walled cubicles, ought to be in place alongside conference rooms and open collaborative spaces.

More on creative office interior design after the jump. Read more…

So under those super-creative veneers, good ad agencies also focus on an office interior design that permits this workflow to flourish. For Gervais Tompkin, a VP for design firm Gensler, formal studies like Gensler’s “activity portrait” help clarify the optimum design for ad agency offices. The following factors are considered:

Space Layout: Jay Chiat may have been way ahead of his time, but the open office simply prevented employees from getting work done. An optimal layout permits agency creatives to collaborate and brainstorm, but makes a clear delineation between creative departments and account servicing; the former’s work often gets disrupted by the latter.

Space Usage: How are agency employees using existing space? Do agency creatives use the conference rooms too often for brainstorming, crowding out account executives or media people from meeting in them?

Workarounds: How does the office layout help workers get their job done? Ad agencies require both collaborative and thinking spaces, and any agency worth their salt ought to be able to provide such spaces without workers resorting to uncomfortable workarounds. In Chiat/Day’s case, many workers simply left the office to meet… and sometimes never returned for the rest of the day!

So don’t be too dazzled by those incredible ad agency office interior design galleries; there’s a serious bit of business under all that fun, and if the office design isn’t geared around helping the office workflow run smoothly, then all that dazzle will be all for naught.

Is there more to workflow and space planning? You bet there is. Download our white paper, and read more about space planning and workflow in your office interior design – download “Space Planning for Your Office: Designing for Optimum Workflow” (PDF, 75KB).

The Internet has given rise to the telecommuter – though nominally part of a team, such workers are separated by time and space from a regular office, often working individually to contribute to the overall group effort.

“In a virtual team, members are dispersed geographically or organizationally. Their primary interaction is through some combination of electronic communication systems,” explains Wayne F. Cascio in his paper Managing a Virtual Workplace. “They may never meet in the traditional sense. Further, team membership is often fluid, evolving according to changing task requirements.”

More on office space planning for pooled workflow after the jump. (Read more)

Dynamics of Pooled Workflow

To use Bell and Kozlowski’s model of task dependencies, telecommuting represents a great example of a pooled workflow: as opposed to other workflow models where work cascades sequentially from one step to another, pooled workflow involves individuals working alone, adding to one overall group effort. In pooled workflow, group interaction can be optional or wholly unnecessary.

Pooled workflow is marked by a number of common characteristics:

Independence of tasks. Workers in a pooled workflow system manage to accomplish tasks independently of other workers, without timing or technical dependencies on other components in the workflow.

This frees up managers to organize teams as they like, focusing purely on the desired outcome, office space planning be damned – “teams can be organized whether or not members are in proximity to one another,” says Cascio, and “firms can use outside consultants without incurring expenses for travel, lodging, and downtime.”

Participants work independently. With largely independent goals, participants in a pooled workflow can be grouped in different combinations for different activities. “Dynamic team membership allows people to move from one project to another,” explains Cascio. “Employees can be assigned to multiple, concurrent teams.”

Centralized authority. Pooled workflow participants are never wholly independent; they generally depend on a central authority that oversees output, making sure problems are dealt with and work proceeds smoothly.

This is where technology steps in, allowing a single manager to oversee a disparate team: “Team communications and work reports are available online to facilitate swift responses to the demands of a global market,” says Cascio.

Pooled Workflow and Office Space Planning

So who works under a pooled workflow model – and what implications does this kind of workflow have for office space planning? Telecommuters aren’t the only workers who use a pooled workflow model; teachers, for instance, also depend on a individual efforts leading towards an overall push.

Both teachers and telecommuters can work isolated from one another – the teacher in his or her classroom, apart from fellow teachers; the telecommuter, at home or on the road, apart from colleagues on the virtual team.

Offices can now afford to create “hoteling” systems in their offices for their teleworkers, even impersonal ones – telecommuters don’t miss having personalized space in their main office, if they already have a space to call their own at home. Any time spent in the office will be focused on the few group tasks needed in pooled workflows, like client visits or group meetings.

In a pooled workflow, the office has become almost superfluous, and the design of the office follows from its changing function.

Is there more to workflow and space planning? You bet there is. Download our white paper, and read more about space planning and workflow in your office interior design – download “Space Planning for Your Office: Designing for Optimum Workflow” (PDF, 75KB).

The same study, published by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), finds that most cubicles have shrunk from 8×10 to about 5×5. (Check out this graphic of office cubicle sizes from the Chicago Tribune to see exactly how much space has been trimmed out from under us!)

The Score: Cost Cutting 1, Office Cubicle Space 0

Where’d our spacious office cubicles go? Part of the blame for their disappearance goes to our tottering economy – soaring rents, among other rising overhead costs, are behind the push to cram more workers into smaller spaces. After all, real estate costs are known to be amongst the largest cost for businesses, after the payroll.

“In recent years, we’ve seen how companies are trying to shed real estate cost,” says Shari Epstein, director of research at the IFMA. “When you have less space to work, you will try to cram as many people into one space.”

“Knowing the rents with the spaces they have, they’ve got to cram people in,” said Don Wehr of Office Furniture World in Santa Rosa, California. “Mathematically, it makes sense.”

More on shrinking office cubicles after the jump. Read more…

The New York Times reports that “in the last three years, companies have given up 137.8 million square feet nationwide, according to the real estate research firm Reis, and would most likely put more on the market if they could.” The need to redefine the space they can afford has forced even the most tradition-bound companies to innovate:

Many companies are redesigning the workplaces that remain, opening them up to make them flexible for multiple uses. Even tradition-bound firms in accounting and banking are embracing open-plan offices and other changes. They have shut sections of floors to save money on utilities, squeezed remaining employees closer together, torn down walls and downsized cubicles or gotten rid of them entirely.

When Your Office Cubicle Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

Some of these changes are all for the better: with the office cubicle paradigm falling victim to cost-cutting, more workplaces are looking towards more collaborative office designs that also accommodate more workers per square foot. Open office systems, for example, allow colleagues to collaborate more, increasing productivity.

The Vancouver Sun reports that some former office cubicle workers welcome the open office trend with open arms – they see themselves coming out on top in the tradeoff. “My last cubicle was tucked back in a corner, and you were lucky if you could find a window,” remembers Terry Stegman of PSA Financial, whose workplace replaced cubicles with an open workspace with better lighting and furniture.

Today, Stegman reports, “We’re surrounded by windows on three sides – we have huge conference rooms with drop-down computer screens and more access to them than we had before. And our kitchen looks like a Starbucks.”

“It makes sense,” remarks Angie Earlywine, senior workplace strategist for architectural firm HOK, noting that employers are “allocating space less to the individual and more to the team…. Managers are realizing if they give employees more space to get together and solve problems, solutions come faster.”

Facility managers need to recognize that there is no such thing as a generic, one-size-fits-all office. What’s right for an accounting firm might not be right for an advertising firm. Even different departments in the same company may have diametrically different requirements – just try moving an advertising art director down the hall to an account executive’s cubicle, and you’ll see what we mean.

In this white paper, we will describe design issues that may crop up when another variable is introduced into the mix, one that varies from office to office – that of workflow.

• Download “Space Planning for Your Office: Designing for Optimum Workflow” (PDF, 75KB)

Change has been a long time coming: office space planning has historically been programmed around corner offices and cubicles ever since the invention of the latter, and only recent developments (the recession, the Internet) have made office managers consider alternatives like never before.

Reformulating the Working Space

Take office cubicles. The death of cubicles has often been predicted, and sometimes actively sought (without much success). Kushner still thinks those predictions aren’t wide off the mark.

“I think what people are experimenting with is getting that privacy without sequestering people into that defined space,” explains Kushner. “Specifically, you see a clear trend towards casual gathering spaces being a place to not just congregate, but also to actually do work.”

Dutch facility YourMeet offers an example of workplace space planning that takes Kushner’s insight to heart: They’ve ditched office cubicles for an open floorplan that can be commandeered for meetings or brainstorming sessions. As Fast Company Co.Design reports:

Loosely divvied up into zones (for brainstorming, speaking formally, and so on), it’s conceptualized to give workers a free-flowing atmosphere for hatching their cleverest ideas.

Changing Attitudes Influence Office Space Planning

Changing mindsets about working space have enabled office space planning to take another innovative turn – as millennial workers now have less qualms about sharing workspaces, former fringe ideas like “hot desking” are now gaining wide acceptance.

Hot desking refers to the practice of having no assigned desks per worker – instead, desks are available to the first worker who uses or reserves it for use. This space planning concept allows offices to reduce property costs without a corresponding decrease in labor.

British computer services company ICL has seen the light – one-fourth of their 20,000-strong workforce now hot-desk. “We opened a building in Staines which has 320 desks but supports 600 people,” ICL’S Richard Reed told the Daily Telegraph. “We see this building as a model for the future.”

Offices like Dutch consulting firm YNNO have redesigned their office around this concept. YNNO can rock this type of office space planning, as most of their employees are highly mobile with their work.

“Workers should have a place to check in and plug in, but don’t need designated desks, especially since they travel so much as consultants,” explains Suzanne LaBarre. “Think of it as less of an office than a homebase.”

LaBarre figures that YNNO can go a lot further than previous attempts at abolishing the cubicle, largely since the technology and the mindset has now dovetailed with acceptance of this space planning concept.

“We’re more comfortable as mobile employees now than we were then, in large part because we depend on mobile technology,” speculates LaBarre. “The technology will only continue loosening the corsetry of traditional office work…. expect YNNO’s office to become the norm, rather than the exception.”

Whether office space planning experts keep office cubicles or move on to open creative spaces or hot desking, it’s all one to Marc Kushner as long as they keep one thing in mind: the workplace should enable fun.

Good offices consider the joy of work. As an employer, you want to create an experience that is positive and proactive in the workplace. And we’ve seen much experimentation over the years—open offices, closed offices, eco design, and so on. But what it all comes down to is that a workplace is part of the human experience, and a nicer office can help you to have happier, more productive workers.

Give some thought to the impression your office furniture makes on clients. A firm of accountants needs different styles of cubicle furniture from an ad agency; a call center shouldn’t have the same kind of cubicle furniture as a law firm! The impression you make depends largely on what your clients need from you. A design firm wants its cubicle furniture to look adventurous and creative; an accounting firm needs cubicle furniture that helps it look solid and dependable.

You should also be mindful if the style of cubicle furniture you’re selecting is timeless, or is bound to go out of style in the next few years. Sure, your cubicle furniture looks great now – but in five years, will the new employees be as squeamish in their office furniture as they would be wearing 1970s-era leisure suits?

Ergonomics: Form or Comfort? Ergonomic cubicle furniture and cubicle accessories – chairs, keyboards drawers, monitor stands and mounts – help increase productivity and employee morale. Ergonomic chairs allow employees to adjust their armrests and other chair parts;  the height of their keyboards and work surfaces should be adjustable as well.

Ergonomics can be less of a priority if your employees spend most of their working day out in the field; but if they spend most of their day seated at the same cubicle, then do invest in ergonomic cubicle furniture, it’s an investment that pays off in spades over time.

Future-proofing – static or expandable? Ask yourself how easy it would be to expand the office layout with the cubicle furniture you have in mind. If your enterprise is the kind that would experience workforce fluctuations or constant technology upgrades, then you’ll need cubicle furniture that can accommodate constant change.

Will your employees be able to move their desks and other cubicle furniture around themselves? Or will you need professional help to dismantle and rebuild cubicle furniture to any future specifications?

Toughness: Disposable or Durable? You want cubicle furniture that’s worth the money you pay for it, and the best way to ensure the best bang for your buck is to check if the cubicle furniture under consideration meets ANSI-BIFMA performance standards.

The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association releases ANSI/BIFMA Safety and Performance Standards every five years, using guidelines set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). These standards can tell you how well your cubicle furniture performs where safety, durability, and structural adequacy are concerned.

You can also ensure great value on your cubicle furniture by only sourcing office furniture that comes with a warranty or promise of after-sales service. Even used cubicle furniture these days (from select furniture dealers) come with these guarantees!