Our need for space, territory and control
Workplace design and our need for space, territory and control
I’ve just watched a video where a CEO excitedly described the ‘vibrancy’ that was created when he moved people’s desks around every few days. He didn’t want people to settle. He wanted to keep the energy of disruption because he firmly believes that it adds value to his business.
What do you believe?
I believe that we all need a sense of control to feel comfortable and without that we become too stressed to be creative or productive.
I believe that we are all different. We have different needs, motivations, personalities and preferred ways of working. When our environment is designed to suit our preferences we really perform well. A few studies have tried to prove that a tidy desk is a productive one.
But instead they proved that allowing people to work in their own preferred way is the way to maximise productivity! If you love a tidy desk, good for you! Please don’t impose your preference on everyone else.
I believe that most of us need territory at work. Somewhere to mark out as ours. Somewhere to put our personal stuff and our work stuff. Somewhere that no-one moves or tidies. Somewhere that we can express ourselves through a little decoration; maybe a little plant, or a picture of a family member or a toy gonk or a motivational poster. This need is biological and primitive. It helped us stay safe on the Savannas and in the Jungle. We bring this ancestral drive to our office jungles today.
Work place design:
Top frustrations and complaints that regularly come up in workplace studies of office environments is lack of space and/or privacy. And this is because it makes it harder for people to do their work.
These days many people get excited about innovative office design and want things like play areas, study areas, agile working space, fancy coffee machines, funky colours and shapes, hot desks, standing desks and home working. It’s a smorgasbord of work design and people job design possibility. But is it a true pick and mix? Can you just decide what you fancy?
When I start designing office space for a company, I start with people needs and then I design. I first evaluate the Company product/service, culture and brand. Also, their customer demographics, job design and employee professional groupings. I look at patterns of behaviour, habits at work. Would you give a sales company the same design, look and feel as an engineering company? I hope not!
I worked on a project where the engineers were mostly working in a giant workshop and rarely came up to the ‘office’. It was proposed that they might share desk space to reduce the number of empty desks and no one liked it. Not even the idea of a team table. One engineer said to me “Michelle I don’t care if it’s a 600mm tiny desk. I just want my own space.” Control. Territory. Space.
If you care about your employees’ performance, you’ll care about solving these kinds of problems. You’ll work to create the optimum work space around individuals and teams rather than from a blanket assumption that everyone will adapt to one style or way of working.
Some designs might save money on square meter office space only to squander it on reduced employee performance and satisfaction. Or even worse, turnover of talented people.
Surely workplace design needs to start with the idea “how can I help my employees do a great job? What do they need in their work environment to succeed? To thrive?”
I believe that it’s time to realise just how important our environment is; to our health, our well-being, our creativity and our performance output.