As Featured in the Edge Magazine

Shaun Baker on Inspiring Offices.

Having an interesting and productive office space doesn’t mean moving to a state of the art building – a few small changes can make a big difference. Laura Johnson discovers how you can make the most of the space you already have.

So your office chairs have seen better days and the whiff coming from the toilets suggests a deep clean is way overdue, but it’s not stopping anyone doing their job. Or is it? Encased in sterile white walls and crammed beneath flickering fluorescent lights, working in a drab office environment can be a drain on your business, complete with disengaged employees and waning morale.

Office design is about more than making things pretty; it’s about creating an environment that gets the most from your employees. But before you max out your company overdraft replacing your lifts with helter-skelter slides and putting a pinball machine on every floor, injecting a little creativity into your office doesn’t have to be so extreme.

Just as constantly working in open plan can upset the sensitivities of those who need their quiet time, working in self consciously ‘wacky’ environments without a breather can be draining for team members who aren’t naturally of a creative disposition. The trick is creating pockets of space to suit the needs of all of your team.

Quiet booths
Open plan is great for sharing ideas, promoting team equality and gaining a finely tuned appreciation of office politics (i.e. overhearing gossip), but the very accessibility that is its shining quality can also be a bugbear.

A retreat

“Whilst you don’t need everyone sat in their own cellular office, there are definitely people who need that function or the ability to go and talk in quiet space, get their head down or have a one-to-one meeting,” says Shaun Baker, head of design at Morgan Lovell. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to be an assigned individual space anymore. It can be a space that’s available to anybody but for just a couple of hours a day. If people need to dig into that space they can do so.”

If the rising stress levels of your team members are a concern, give them a place to escape the commotion.

Recalling a project for NHS Direct, Baker says: “[The employees] were taking phone calls that could be quite traumatic – their staff attrition rate was very high because of this. We created a round room, decorated inside with a digital wall covering of a forest. And this was space for their staff to go and sit quietly after taking a harrowing phone call to compose themselves, to take a bit of time to think through what had gone on and cope with it in a much better way.”

Creating this sanctuary of calm had a massive impact on the numbers of staff they were losing.

Relaxed working areas

Mobile technology and the increased use of alternative work environments (from coffee shops to hotel lounges) means employees want this kind of flexible workspace in the office too. As well as structured space, they seek the feel of a high-end coffee lounge for relaxed internal meetings and interesting and stimulating break-out spaces to ignite their imaginations. This can all be achieved without the budget of a superbrand.

Baker suggests transforming small areas of the office, as he did with one management consultancy that wanted to break the corporate mould.

“They had some rooms painted in blackboard paint with over-sized space hoppers to sit on,” he says. “Elements that are low cost but made a very different environment. It takes them away from their humdrum desks into a space that’s creative in feel. Then they started to work in that way as well.”

Social space

If your team dynamics are starting to fizzle out, communal social areas are an effective way to encourage better communication across teams.

“Banning people from eating and drinking at their desks forces them to go to a communal area,” Baker says. “If that communal area is of a quality people are happy to go to, that encourages staff who in a large organisation wouldn’t necessarily go and mingle with another department, to do so.”

But keep it friendly. “One of the things that tends to work is to have an open space,” Baker advises. “If you have kitchen with a door on it, people who are in it tend to feel like they’re being accused of hiding and people who are entering the space feel uncomfortable because it’s like you’re walking into someone’s personal area.”

If all of the above sounds a bit too out there for your organisation, you could always order in a bulk load of pot plants. New research shows when plants are present in a workplace, workers are more productive and their reaction times 12 per cent faster. But don’t forget to water them.