The workplace is the core feature of any corporate real estate group. Our job is to ensure we have places for people to work, wherever people need to work. It should have the technology and office support needed to keep people productive.
However, when building out workplaces it is easy to build out the place and forget about the work. The only time during the lifecycle of a workplace where there are no people working is during design and construction. During this time, it’s easy to fall in love with look, design, “cool things”, artwork, desk layouts, carpet, paint, graphics, wayfinding, and other little things that may or may not make the workplace actually productive for colleagues.
When you lose sight of how people are going to work in the office, you end up creating an environment that doesn’t enable work to be done effectively. If you don’t put in enough meeting space, people tend to focus day-in, day-out on their struggle to book meetings. If you don’t have enough monitors, people fixate on the struggle to work between programs. If you put in furniture that looks better than it functions, people will avoid it or notice it.
Good design fades into the background. The best office usually won’t be the one that makes you sit up and say wow. The best office will be the one that you find yourself getting lost in the work at, not even realizing anything around you.