Before Renovating Your Workplace, Prototype It

Test Your Workspace Before Leasing or Renovating
Testing workplace layouts. (Getty Images)
Testing workplace layouts. (Getty Images)

Leasing new or renovating existing office space can require significant amounts of time and money. But all too often, after months of planning, selecting furniture and determining layouts, many tenants find themselves in new space that does not function the way they thought it would.

To solve for this, Amphibian, a “future-of-work-consultancy,” created “workplace labs” designed to mitigate failed layout and remodeling efforts, by creating spaces for experimentation before major leasing and construction investments are made.

LoopNet spoke with Mark Brown and Christian Markow, the company founders with backgrounds in corporate brand strategy, innovation and workplace transformation. They discussed how Amphibian helps companies clarify their “workplace experience" strategy and then create physical prototypes of their ideal office environment.

The strategy includes understanding the different “work modes” individuals engage in throughout the day — like deep focus and collaboration — along with the processes, tools, technology and physical spaces employees need to support those activities. These workplace lab sessions feature moveable walls, cutting-edge collaboration technology, furniture demos and other flexible workspace elements so users can test various configurations and determine which ones will best support their organization and employees.

Amphibian is located in Richmond, Virginia and is co-located with a range of other startups from the region. But the locations for the workplace labs themselves vary depending on the needs of each company. To date, Amphibian has conducted workplace labs using companies’ existing properties — leveraging vacant space or reconfiguring existing workspaces. Based on lessons learned from working with clients, Amphibian is now developing off-site locations where companies can test and learn without distractions from their current workplaces.

An Idea Sparked by Hybrid Work

During the pandemic, Brown and Markow started thinking about the many companies, both big and small, diving headfirst into workplace transformations. Many considered leasing more or less space or reconfiguring their office layouts, as they contemplated hybrid work arrangements. If, for example, companies required employees in the office just three days versus five days each week, how would that work and what would that look like? Would each employee need a dedicated workspace? Would employees come in simply to collaborate? How would employers ensure that key people were in the office on the same days?

It became clear to them that without some degree of assessment about why people come to the office and what they do while they are there, “in a year, employers would all be shaking their heads to figure out why their [physical space] changes didn't work,” Markow said. Some would find they leased too much, too little or poorly located space, and others would regret costly office renovations because they were mistaken about how they would use their office space.

By pairing their skills in workplace transformation and prototyping, Brown and Markow developed a unique approach that helps companies determine what they need from their physical workplaces to optimize productivity, enhance employee interactions and support a company’s culture.

How it Works: A Day in the Workplace Lab

One of the entities informing Amphibian’s work is the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. The ICHW created a framework that identifies qualities in the work environment that contribute positively to employee health and well-being, such as comfort, connection, predictability, flexibility, security, equity and privacy.

Along with the research from the ICHW, Amphibian integrates a broader body of research centered on architecture and technology trends to create a holistic methodology for assessing and designing workplace experiences. Amphibian uses that methodology, which they refer to as “Adaptive Code,” in the workplace lab to ensure companies are thinking through all the elements at play in a work environment.

After gathering information about an organization, Brown said they conduct sessions, typically with key members of one team or business line, in “a neutral workplace environment that we have configured with cubes, offices, conference rooms, social spaces, etc.” This initial layout is like a first draft that is tailored to meet the needs of an organization based on surveys, conversations and preliminary information that they have gathered.

Groups spend one or more days conducting a variety of exercises in this space. During that time, they hone their workplace strategy and tasks, and also learn what types of workspaces, technology, furniture and layouts work best for their organization. The layout is continuously modified as the session goes on so they can test and try different experiences.

The session includes demonstrations of collaborative spaces versus socialization spaces and how they influence behavior. “We educate clients on how different workspaces can best accommodate different work modes such as deep focus, collaboration, socialization and presentations” so they can maximize the benefits offered by each type of space, Brown said.

“We're always updating this,” Brown continued, so “you don't have to invest all kinds of money designing the space and then shake your head and think, ‘man, we shouldn’t have done that.’ Our job is to stay on the cutting edge of workspace design so that companies can come in and say, ‘oh, here's some new space strategies that we can employ.’ Come check it out before you buy it.”

Space strategies generally include identifying features that optimize well-being and productivity and answer questions like which employees will go in each room, how each space will be configured and what furniture and technology is needed for each area. Aesthetics, biophilia and sound are also part of the discussions.

Office Design Lessons from the Pandemic

Further informing Amphibian’s process are lessons learned from the pandemic. Among them are the concepts that employees will develop new skills when changing circumstances require them to do so, and that changing environments can free us from old habits and enable us to develop new ones.

When talking with a client, “we got on the topic of what did the pandemic actually do? And it did two things, essentially,” Markow said. “The first is that for years we'd had access to collaborative technology like Teams and Zoom, but most people didn't adapt to or adopt them. Everyone still used email to communicate. The pandemic essentially forced individuals to behave differently, to work in a bit of a different way.”

Office workers had no choice but to learn how to operate collaborative platforms like Zoom, Teams, Miro or Mural to work with each other to get things done. The screen-sharing capabilities of many of these tools enabled novices to reach out to colleagues, share their screens and get clarity about menus and features of a platform.

This is one of the critical tools Amphibian explores with its clients. They go over the basics of using certain platforms so clients can determine if and to what degree one or more of these applications makes sense for the type of the work that they do. By experimenting with these in a lab, they can see what types of furnishing, soundproofing, etc., they may require to support those tools.

Digital platforms were not the only business elements mastered quickly during the pandemic; new products and services were also developed more efficiently when colleagues changed environments and work habits. “It's the same thing with prototyping,” said Markow. “Before, it would take a year for a company to come up with a new customer service model [and now] we have colleagues and clients that complete projects in two weeks.”

Brown and Markow believe that kind of speed and agility resulted from employees letting go of ingrained procedures, policies and unspoken behaviors in the service of survival and adaptation. It proved employees can change the way they work, and it can lead to the types of results they were after all along.

Making Changes Stick

Relying on a once-in-a-century pandemic to force change is unrealistic, but enabling people to prototype office environments outside of their own may be a good proxy. It's a bit like going to a wellness retreat where you are taught to eat and exercise for 10 days. The hope is that the habits you develop there will carry over into your daily life.

“Now, we need to help make sure that stuff doesn't disappear when everyone goes back to work as normal,” Markow said. That is why they created a space “where people are forced out of their comfort zone — the workplace — to work in an environment where there are new tools,” new processes and new furnishings. “They have to learn how to use those. They can't just say, ‘no, I'm not sure I really like this’ and go back to their office.”

Markow said that another benefit to his firm’s approach is that they provide a place where teams stay long enough to get past their old habits. “They get past their discomfort of using something new and they adapt and then they adopt.”