How To Maximize Employee Happiness And Office Efficiency

The major caveats of modern office design trends

Every year there are tons of articles released about the latest office design trends, each promising to boost employee productivity, performance and happiness. Nevertheless, only about one-third of all employees in the United States are engaged at work – a number which has remained mostly flat over recent years.

 

It makes sense that companies are beginning to pay more attention to the environments they create for their employees, considering that the organizations with the most engaged employees can experience far higher productivity, sales and profitability. But despite all of the office design trends that come and go, modern businesses must recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
 
With that in mind, let’s look at a some common conceptions about office design trends, as well as when and where each is best suited for an organization. Because despite what you may read, no one trend is absolutely better than another – each has its time and place.

Open Offices Are Way Better Than Cubicles

Cubicles gained popularity back in the 1960s as a way to create a “private office” in a much smaller space, for a much more cost-effective price. But starting around 2008, organizations began to opt for other, less standardized office designs – like open offices – as a way of better serving their employees and promoting collaboration.
 
For many organizations, like Facebook, which boasts the largest open office floor plan in the world, open offices have worked wonderfully. Other times, they’ve been called a “disaster,” and even been said to be “destroying the workplace.” At the same time, cubicles have gotten a bad rap for making employees feel like animals trapped in cages. So what’s the truth?

It Actually Depends on the Industry, Company and Department

On an industry level, open offices work far better for low-end services than higher-end consulting. In call centers, for example, background noise isn’t as bothersome as it would be when trying to talk with an executive or manager. Background chatter can seriously cheapen the experience for clients if they’re expecting a quiet place to feel heard. Thus, businesses should always ensure they have cubicles, private offices or conference rooms to take calls or meetings.
 
Also, it might seem obvious, but open offices simply don’t work for jobs functions that require a high level of silence or privacy. In these roles, it’s better to have higher walls or a hybrid setup that provides monitor privacy from other co-workers, as well as some sound dampening to cut background noise.
 
Employees in the accounting or human resources departments, for example, tend to struggle in open offices, as the noise level isn’t conducive to their work. Accountants might need silence when crunching numbers, or when speaking with vendors to collect past-due bills. HR employees, on the other hand, need privacy to deal with private employee matters and privileged information like social security numbers and home addresses.
 
And while some form of cubicles might work better for accounting and HR roles, marketers or graphic designers can survive with some background noise, and can actually benefit from the extra collaboration opportunity brought about by open offices.
 
With this in mind, companies must always be sure to separate departments. Many organizations take pride in the fact that an accountant might be working next to a developer, an executive next to a customer service representative, and so on. In theory, the thought that this will lead to the cross-pollination of ideas is great. However, the reality is that people are most productive when they have close proximity to the others they work with.
 
Ultimately, since the atmosphere must be good for each individual’s function, companies should cater to them each individually. Then, to overcome the issue of communication between departments, companies can use collaborative spaces – lounge areas, foosball tables, bean bags, etc. – to meet and work together.

Office ‘Perks’ Don’t Matter

These days, there’s a lot of conversation around the idea of employee “perks,” especially in terms of office design. Should the office be full of massage chairs, sleep pods and ping-pong tables? That is what the big tech companies and all of the start-ups seem to be doing, anyway...
 
Some believe that these benefits ultimately do “more harm than good,” citing statistics that employee concentration has gotten worse over the years. Others claim that the increasing attention to employee perks come “with good reason,” noting that these benefits have now become a common consideration before taking a new job. Again, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Every Office Needs Some Flexible Space

At the end of the day, it’s not the company founders seeking these perks, better-functioning working environment, increased productivity and morale – it’s the next generation of workers that are demanding these qualities, over additional salary.
 
As such, it’s important for every company to have some flexible space that offers some of the perks their employees desire. But the key to doing so effectively is not overdoing it. In other words, there’s no need to put beer taps in every kitchen. Nor would it make sense to put games on every floor, or in every corner of the office.
 
The flexible space in the modern office – and its corresponding perks – should not be scattered throughout the office, but neatly designated to a certain area. This space should be equally accessible to employees from each department to use to meet with members of other departments, or even just take a break from work at some point during the day.
 
Modern employees might use four to five different types of environments in a single day, which is why it’s so important to provide this flexible space, in addition to cubicles, open spaces and conference rooms, among others.

The Modern Office is Disappearing with Remote Work

Remote work is becoming increasingly popular. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely in 2016. But not just are more people beginning to work remotely, the survey found that they are beginning to work remotely more frequently, too. It’s also worth noting that those who spent three to four days working off-site reported feeling the most engaged at work.
 
With the trend of remote working catching on fast, businesses might be tempted to think office design matters less, since fewer workers are actually in the office. At the same time, other businesses have begun canceling their long-standing work-from-home policies, in favor of their employees working from the office, despite the trend moving the opposite direction. Either way, there are a number of reasons office design still matters.

Certain Roles Require a Traditional Office Space

No matter what technological innovations may come, the office environment is never going to be fully replaced or eliminated. There are many job functions that absolutely require in-person collaboration and teamwork, which no type of videoconferencing could replicate. Marketing and sales, in particular, are important roles to have working from the office, as their success depends on their ability to communicate effectively between departments and execute together.
 
Other roles, particularly those of developers, can generally be performed from anywhere, as they don’t require as much communication – just a focused environment and a laptop to write code. But even in this case, software development trends are beginning to require a greater level of cooperation and communication that could give them a better reason to work from an office.
 
There are also other factors that companies must consider, such as the proprietary information or technological secrets that they wouldn’t want to wander from their properties. Additionally, there are team meetings, budget meetings and client meetings that will always require in-person collaboration and conference spaces.
 
Ultimately, businesses will become obsolete if they don’t transform their workplaces. However, transforming the workplace doesn’t mean jumping from one trend to the next and back again. Companies should instead keep certain elements of each trend, and iterate to find what best fits their needs. This is crucial not only for attracting the next generation of talent, but also for keeping them happy and productive to ensure their future competitiveness.
 

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