_Personality based workplaces, future staff engagement trends and the return of the work cubicle

When our clients are confronted with rethinking their workplace, they are motivated by a mosaic of factors, which commonly include job satisfaction, staff retention and recruitment, collaboration and knowledge-sharing, competitive edge, brand awareness, business performance, operational efficiency and effective use of real estate. 

This means that workplace is not “one static thing” but a constant juggle of different moving parts in a fragile equilibrium. Priorities will depend on the cultural and operational make-up of each and every business.

For a majority of businesses, increasing pressure on the attraction and retention of talented staff calls for a more effective and cohesive workplace that nurtures company culture, aligns with brand and fosters a stronger sense of pride and belonging.

For some, like Google or Macquarie Bank, this manifests itself in the investment in spaces such as the cafeteria, reception and other social shared spaces. In such context, functions that are integral parts of the work process such as coffee, printing and mail are made visible and accessible.

For more brand-conscious companies like Coca-Cola or Mother this is more than just about togetherness and community spirit. Their workplace needs to have urban appeal, a certain unpolished rawness that strikes a chord with their perceived non-corporate ethos.

It must be authentic, lived in, not too finished to allow for individual input and personalities, but above all to project the edginess of the brand.

But work exists beyond the boundaries of the office and will only thrive when supported and connected with vibrant surroundings. It is about networks on a city, regional and global scale.

There will be a demand from an increasingly discriminating consumer society for more bespoke workplace. Offices will be selected on the same basis as hotels. 

In the competitive global economy, cities are providing urban spaces, such as that at Somerset House, which cater not only for large international organisations but also for emerging start-ups, bringing together synergies between the corporate and the academic.

These 'always on' city spaces are becoming the norm with amenities and places of work intermingled to form a blurred experiential continuum, such as at Soho House's Pool disco.

We need to adapt our environments to the networked workstyles of knowledge workers. This also includes the technology-enabled extreme mobility that is now commonplace; working on the go has become a necessity and work areas are now offered ‘en route’, such as the Regus Express business lounge at Gatwick.

Meanwhile, in amongst all the “noise” and party atmosphere or perhaps in response to it, some of us are longing for a return to space with a view to re-affirm status and mark our territory.

Furniture suppliers have launched upholstered semi-enclosed pods, where 'workers can remove themselves from the distraction associated with the general office, whenever they require a space for concentration'

Other companies seek confidentiality and discretion and aim to create sanctuaries deep inside their workplace; for Hermes in Paris, access to external roof gardens and green terraces means taking the work conversation outside as well as creating an oasis. 

A positive, even healthy and mindful, sensorial experience of space is fast becoming an essential requirement of offices.

In response to the fact that a good workplace employee experience is the outcome of a balance between physiological and emotional factors, there has been a gradual shift towards recognition of individual preferences at work. In this respect one could imagine the creation of a personality based workplace whose attributes align with employees’ individual psychometric profiles.

In the consumer society we inhabit where choice is almost always available, it is not hard to imagine workspace as a commodity. There will be a demand from an increasingly discriminating consumer society for more bespoke workplace. Offices will be selected on the same basis as hotels. 

Or perhaps our experience of workplace will not be rooted in an experience of reality at all but, with the advent of digital technology, will be entirely virtual. We shall inhabit a workspace, which is immensurable and limitless, in which we will operate without any regard for physicality.

In summary, we understand that the synergies and tensions between the different drivers of workplace are unique to each organisation and in varying proportions depending on company culture and values.

Our aim is to highlight, describe and balance the cultural, commercial, physical and technological attributes that are the fingerprint of your organisation in order to develop a strategy that forms the backbone of a fluid, symbiotic relationship between space, infrastructure and people.