NSFW (from home)
As we judder out of lockdown into a new gear, many individuals and employers are making decisions about how – and if – they should return to work.
But answers to this question don’t just reflect approaches to health and safety, economics or even the climate emergency. It’s an indicator of how employers think about equality.
Drawing on experience designing out-of-the-ordinary landscapes, joyful clinical environments for young people and offices for tech start-ups, we see this moment as an opportunity for companies to build new ecosystems of flexible, non-desk-based workspaces, designed to promote collaboration, good mental health and equal opportunities.
There are obvious benefits to our new working from home culture. Workers use hours previously spent travelling on leisure or with families. Charities closing city premises can divert funds to worthy causes. Pollution levels in cities have dropped and companies who previously resisted remote working now believe productivity hasn’t fallen: working from home is actually working.
But the value of a communal workplace isn’t really about productivity. It’s more significant than that. It’s about opportunity, inclusion and investing in the next generation of workers. The best employers understand that good workspaces enable good work, and help level an increasingly bumpy playing field.
The office as social leveller
Working from home may be easy if you have a spare room and no caring responsibilities. But this doesn’t reflect the cramped reality for the many young people starting careers from shared flats or childhood bedrooms. The stress and lack of privacy for anyone in overcrowded housing, or – conversely – the isolation and loneliness of those living alone during the pandemic, is having a significant negative effect on the nation’s mental health. User research undertaken while designing social spaces for good mental health emphasised to us the importance of providing opportunities for privacy with those for social interaction; the intrusion of Zoom meetings into domestic interiors erodes workers’ autonomy over how and what they share and upsets the balance of public and private space.
This is why we need offices now more than ever. A well designed shared office, with its space, facilities and amenities, offers all employees the opportunity to work to the best of their abilities, however chaotic their personal spaces at the other end of the commute. When companies downsize, not only are they putting the financial burden of the workspace onto their employees, they are assuming that everyone has the same access to equipment, space and – critically – peace and quiet. With vast disparities in the quality of UK housing, expecting people to perform at the same level while working from very different domestic environments is unrealistic and fundamentally unfair.
Working from home should obviously remain an option – flexibility is of enormous value. But there is still a need for communal workspaces. Now is the time to reimagine those workspaces to support new, more equitable ways of working.
Towards a new workspace typology
Lynda Gratton, Professor at London Business School, suggests that companies have been putting the value on the wrong part of the office. “Quite a lot of decisions in organisations aren’t made in meetings, they’re made in the corridors.” Her belief that chance meetings and serendipity are important is shared by many entrepreneurs. Even Steve Jobs, pioneer of digital communication, believed that it wasn’t as good as the real thing: “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”
These social interactions aren’t just about lightbulb moments. Formative career experiences, working alongside others and learning through osmosis are important, and – if we are lucky – enjoyable. Working from home eradicates chance conversations which lead to new opportunities – especially for those who don’t yet have resilient and established professional networks which can withstand the depersonalising effects of Zoom.
It may become apparent that the home environment lends itself to process-based working: producing words or code or drawings. With a proportion of staff choosing to do this type of work from home, offices will be liberated from endless banks of floor-hungry desks. They can become places for creativity and collaboration, innovation and ideation.
These have always been the bits of the office that people appreciate the most – and as an architecture practice, we’ve long recognised that these are the areas which add most value to a company and their teams.
In a recent fit-out we designed for start-up accuRx (whose inspiring team has been working flat-out throughout the pandemic, building digital communication tools for GPs), half of the available floorspace was dedicated as breakout spaces for informal meetings, intimate conversations and large events. With a full kitchen and a huge, reconfigurable table, the layout promotes collaboration and shared meals. accuRx’s founders recognised that these were the spaces where the most precious moments of the workday can happen – the conversations and creativity that usually come about away from desks. They were willing to invest in the space accordingly, and it’s paying off: the company is going from strength to strength.
With the office typology’s long established traditions of glass ceilings, old boys clubs, sexual harassment and institutional racism, it’s a major plot twist that the office should turn out to be a bastion of equality. But having shaken off outdated and dangerous office tropes, with fewer bums on seats, employers can explore designs for different modes of working that offer enough space to be safe and enough proximity to be productive. Post pandemic, employers can choose to reconfigure rather than downsize; and create joyful, generous spaces where individuals and teams can thrive.
To discuss reimagining your own workspace, get in touch.
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