Designing an Office for High Productivity
Many work environments are designed with minimal collaboration areas. It has led to decreased productivity as employees are restricted to one area of the office, usually their desk or cubicle. There is often no shared workspace where everyone can be present and collaborate on projects. To have an environment that fosters creativity and efficiency, it is essential to have team members nearby while still allowing privacy. This paper explores how designing an open office with collaborative spaces increases productivity by enhancing collaboration among team members. Dr. Jordan Sudberg will present “Designing an open office with collaborative spaces increases productivity by enhancing collaboration.”
Designing an open office with collaborative spaces increases productivity by enhancing collaboration among team members. As shown in Figure 1, employees working in a traditional office are separated. It means that employees must travel further to get to their coworkers, and therefore the word “collaborate.” Also, individuals have less privacy, which inhibits creativity, as teams can no longer operate without the input of all team members. Dr. Jordan Sudberg also mentioned that there are wide varieties of offices. However, they all have in common the idea that they are designed to create a sterile space where employees feel isolated from their coworkers and their thoughts. The same feeling of isolation is felt if an individual is in a meeting with a colleague and cannot see the rest of the team while talking. This isolation from peers and teamwork leads to low productivity. For these reasons, Dr. Sudberg believes that designing an open office with collaborative spaces will increase productivity by enhancing collaboration among team members.
Designing an Office for High Productivity
The first step in designing an open office is understanding the number of team members working in the office at once. There are two types of teams; project and support/service teams. Project teams are divided based on specialty. Most offices have four project teams: engineering, support services, sales, and design. Support/service teams are separated by department or location, such as accounting, human resources, customer service, etc.
The second step in designing an office is planning the areas where people may interact while working in their offices. Collaboration spaces aim to increase productivity by enhancing collaboration among team members. Collaboration spaces are located near the team members who need them. They are temporary areas that are not permanent but contain items such as desks and chairs, tables, and other equipment. Cloud computing groups such as collaboration spaces to use while they are still in use by other teams in their office. It increases productivity by allowing employees to work together without traveling between their desks or cubicles. Cloud computing collaboration spaces typically have a large table to seat all the people associated with the project. They have small rooms for meeting a group of people when they need this type of space. They also have open meeting areas for brainstorming and planning projects.
Dr. Jordan Sudberg shares that the third step in designing an office is to create an open office space. Open office spaces are large areas where many employees can work together at once. Usually, open offices are located at the center of the building to maximize visibility and minimize noise and distraction. Open offices are also situated by entrances where visitors can enter quickly from the parking lot instead of having outsiders enter their department before entering the main office area. There should be a secure entrance for visitors and employees who must come in and out of their offices throughout the day.