Designing Flexible Workspaces for a New Generation of Offices

If you’re tired of reading “predicting the future of the office” articles almost two years into the pandemic, you’re not alone. Hannah Hackathorn — the design principal at Unispace, a global workplace design and strategy firm — is tired of that narrative too.

“There is so much conversation around the office right now. Headlines like ‘open offices are dead;’ ‘how to design for social distancing;’ or ‘what even is the purpose of the office?’ Those are very one-sided approaches to the conversation,” Hackathorn told LoopNet in an interview. “If there's any statement I want to make, it’s that people need to recognize that office design is so different per organization, and I can’t stress that enough.”

What Hackathorn wants everyone to understand, she said, is that what drives people to want to be part of an organization is a belief in the brand and its culture. “That’s the core ethos of talent acquisition and retention,” she explained. “In order for people to embrace that, you need a home base for [employees] to gather, engage and get that experience. But that has to be customized. There is no design professional who will tell you they have a perfect answer. We [as designers] need to be open-minded, focus on our clients and listen to their needs, and then it’s our job as professionals to guide them through those conversations. But it’s not our job to make a general prediction.”

“Office design is no longer about ‘me’ or individual space, but it’s about the behavior of how people actually work.”

Hannah Hackathorn, design principal at Unispace

But that doesn’t mean Hackathorn doesn’t have expert insights into how the office can best serve employees as we move forward into 2022 and beyond. The answer, she said, is flexible design that creates a dynamic experience for everyone in the space. LoopNet spoke with Hackathorn for a Q&A about how Unispace is implementing this strategy into its projects and focusing on elements that create the most productive and enticing environments for office workers.

We are about to enter year three of this pandemic, which is something that no one had expected. The workspace has almost come full circle in that time. Way back when, offices felt like cubicle farms — empty floor plans with a lot of individual desks. And then we switched to the other extreme of fully open benching layouts. I think that thus far, the workplace has had a very formulaic approach to design focused on density. And no matter who you talk to, whether they’re from a more traditional workplace or a really progressive workplace, companies really only focused on individual desk space prior to the pandemic. They weren’t taking into consideration what would create the best productivity among their teams.

After the pandemic proving that remote work can be productive, what we’re seeing is that office design is no longer about “me” or individual space, but it’s about the behavior of how people actually work. People are coming into work to collaborate. You can collaborate using technology, but the ad hoc collaboration, being able to get ideas up on the board and brainstorm, and walk away with tangible answers, is one of the biggest things to suffer. The other is socialization and building that sense of camaraderie and workplace culture. It’s just not the same over Zoom as being face to face.

Keep in mind, we’re not just saying you should have a sea of meeting spaces either. We are still being cognizant of having a space where people can do individual work. But when we do create those individual spaces, we are now looking at a “kit of parts” concept, or having a variety of workspace types within the space.

So, for example, if I’m an introvert, it’s not productive for me to sit out in an open benching layout. I might want a more private space. On the other hand, there are a lot of employees who like sitting out in the middle of the café with all the activity.

It's focusing on that kit of parts to make one space that is flexible and provides something for everyone. It's not one-size-fits-all, and you have to be very mindful of creating an equitable experience for everyone.

Secondly, we are looking at meeting spaces with a different lens. People collaborate differently now, and you can no longer just include a conference room and call it a day. You need to provide technology that’s easy to use; it’s a huge component that needs to be baked into the design from the beginning. You don’t want to be reading a manual in order to call into a meeting. You could also be collaborating with teams in person or virtually at the same time, and it goes back to making that experience equitable for all employees. Think about meetings where you are doing something more analog like writing ideas on a board; how do you make that inclusive for virtual employees without just sending them a picture of it afterwards?

We also can’t forget about having a place where people can come together to socialize and celebrate achievements. The feeling of being connected to your company culture and brand isn’t about seeing the logo on the wall. It’s about coming together, interacting and seeing all the activity that happens. That’s an example of one of the behavioral components we are starting to focus more on as we design workspaces.

These behavioral changes also play in to how we think about wellbeing, which we are focusing a lot more on now. That used to mean things like access to daylight and biophilia, but wellbeing now is really about mental focus and being sensitive to how people react to different textures, lighting and sounds. We should design spaces where people can go to unwind after a stressful meeting or during a busy day.

Sensory experiences within the office are also important — we have to design spaces where people know it’s okay to be loud and talkative, and ones that are for quiet work for more introverted employees. It’s about considering the full sensory experience, and diverse experiences that people have in the workplace to support their wellbeing, rather than just having plants in your office or not.

So, even the kit of parts idea isn’t standard. Each organization is going to have a different kit of parts because they’re going to need the elements in different ratios or makeups. A huge bulk of our work is engaging our clients from the beginning to do an upfront study on their needs, and gain an in-depth understanding from their leadership, and especially their employees, about how they really work. We can then determine specific elements based on what they say drives their company, and begin to test those.

We build in flexibility, because we’re not so bold as to say that the ideas we came up with will be perfect for the organization on the first try. We are constantly looking at ways to build that in so that the design can evolve — if six months in the client realizes a specific area isn’t successful, we can easily modify it to support different behavior.

Our strategy is focused on the journey and the experience of someone coming to work. If I am an executive, what’s my journey through the office as I come in and interact with my team and build a bond with them? If I am working in admin support, do I have all the functional things I need to support my colleagues? How do employees make sure they are known, seen by their peers and managers and truly engaging with and embracing the culture of their company?

I think the common pain point we’re seeing is “adapting to change.” It’s human nature for us not to like change. The office was once a place that people equated with identity and social status. If you had a corner office, you’d made it. In some industries like tech and entertainment, the office is seen as a place to network. But now, especially for more traditional companies, people are upset that they don’t have a dedicated desk or that they now have to share an office with someone else. People don’t understand how they will do their jobs with new arrangements, so change management is something that is becoming a very important topic for companies.