Designing an Office for 2024 and Beyond

Office interior layout and design has always been on the change, but never so much as recently following the massive shift towards home working. So what should the ideal office have in 2024 and beyond? How should it look and how should it be used?

The answer is that it varies from business to business and worker to worker who’s needs are determined by the specific role they play in the workplace. But there are some common themes that have established themselves relatively recently and which are probably here to stay – for the foreseeable future at least.

Over the years, offices have changed from predominantly cellular (lots of fixed and enclosed individual private offices and/or meeting rooms) to predominantly open plan. Open-plan has established itself mainly for 3 reasons:-

1. 1. Flexibility: The absence of cellular spaces created from fixed partition walls means that the office can be quickly and cheaply re-configured and re-designed simply by rearranging the furniture layout.
   2. Lower Cost: Fixed partition walls come at a considerable cost. In addition, a greater footprint is required to accommodate the same number people.
   3. Breaking down barriers between all levels of seniority: In the most extreme examples of open plan office design, the CEO sits in the same open space as everyone else.

Much of this has been fueled by the office furniture industry’s never ending need to innovate and create new products to sell, and part has been the view of the office occupying companies that they simply adapt to whatever is considered to be the norm – often going along with whatever push.

But open-plan simply isn’t ideal for all businesses or indeed all office workers. Some recent studies have suggested that we’ve taken it too far. They claim that far from encouraging collaboration, open plan arrangements have the opposite effect and employees often actively resist communication in such environments. Furthermore, many tasks require moderate to intense levels of concentration and for most of us, that means peace and quiet by distancing ourselves from the noise and other distractions of the office. Certain job roles benefit from sound and visual privacy 100% of the time, whereas others require a mix of collaboration and intense concentration. And of course, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that there are also those for whom this sort of open space is perfect – all the time.

So although open-plan is here to stay, simply because it offers flexibility and reduced costs in the main, it is the way that this space is zoned and the types of furniture and furnishings making up those zones that matter. The office of 2023 and beyond needs to offer a mixture of open plan areas, semi-quiet zones and enclosed private spaces. Within each space can be a host of different types of furniture dependent on company specific requirements. 

There is one other very significant factor that has crept in during the past couple of years, and it slightly queers the line between what might be the perfect office design for achieving the greatest possible productivity levels, and what is going to be accepted by the people who work there. Full or part time home working has become the norm but it has become apparent that this is, for many businesses and workers alike, a far from ideal situation. Many companies are experiencing a drop in productivity (for many reasons which are perhaps a topic for another article) but are finding it difficult to reverse the trend back to a majority time spent working at the office. Equally, a vast number of employees are working from home far more than they want and would welcome the opportunity to get back in if only there was an office to go to, or one that is appropriately set up for them work from. We’ve all become used to working from the comfortable surroundings of our homes (albeit not necessarily ideal from an ergonomics perspective) and working at our laptops whilst sipping coffee in a local café and for many of us this is far more pleasant than being in the more traditional, somewhat formal and perhaps intimidating office with row upon row of hot desks, plain blue carpets and white walls.

So if we’re going to reverse this trend, we need to offer something similar yet much more appropriate than what we’ve become used to over the past couple of years. Most offices will need to have a mixture of designated quiet space for high concentration tasks,  zoned space for individual groups and open space for informal meeting, collaboration, drop in and relaxation.  Exactly what goes into these spaces and how they are designed, as mentioned earlier, can be extremely varied and tailored to the needs of the  business.  But that’s just part of it.  No matter how practical and functional it is, absolutely key to the success is offering the workforce somewhere that looks good and offers as far removed from intimidating an environment as we can stretch it.  Fundamentally, that means making the office a welcoming place by giving it a homely touch or making it more like the friendly café we’ve worked from part of the time for the past couple of years. There are many ways this can be achieved through a combination of decor (for example home-style designs of floor coverings in LVT or carpet tiles, exciting wall coverings and non functional furniture such as open book cases with ornaments) and soft seating from which people can work, communicate or relax.  There needs to be a reasonable quantity of the latter, perhaps considerably more than is strictly necessary or that is going to be used at any one time, not least because it is going to be used for a combination of functions and people will want to spread themselves out. But referencing my comment earlier about the potential conflict between ‘what might be the perfect office design for achieving the greatest possible productivity levels, and what is going to be accepted by the people who work there’,  the option of having a nice comfy lounge chair to work from in the office might be one of the hooks to lure people back, even if it isn’t the most practical or ergonomic way of working. In all probability, just in the knowledge that their office offers plenty of working options, people will ultimately migrate back to the most efficient way of working – such as from a desk – and use the other furniture on an as-and-when needed basis.