Out of office

Chesterman by i4Mariani.

Intelligent, cost-effective space utilisation has become the order of the day – and work practices and office design are evolving radically as a result

Even in this region, the correlation between thoughtful office design and staff wellbeing is rarely questioned. Effective interiors are accepted as playing a fundamental role in cultivating a healthy, happy, loyal and productive workforce.

“A company’s greatest asset is its staff, and employee engagement is the key to staff retention. An ergonomic approach to space planning that encourages health and well-being is a good start,” said Nick Burnett, design manager at CitySpace.

“A well planned and designed office is also a measure of the company’s ethics and success, and can send a strong message to its clients and prospects.”

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

The way employees relate to their office environment has changed significantly in recent years. Shifting patterns in work-life balance, the unrelenting globalisation of work practices, and an increasingly mobile workforce are all having an impact on the way employees interact with their workspace and, consequently, how offices are designed.

“We are moving away from the confines of our desks, chairs and meeting rooms towards a more holistic approach in the way we interact with the workspace and each other,” Burnett pointed out.

In this region, far more tangible forces have been driving the evolution of office design. According to some estimates, commercial property rental rates in Dubai rose by 30% in the 18 months prior to December 2008, making the emirate costlier than New York City.

To varying degrees, this growth path has been mimicked across the region, placing a massive premium on office space and forcing designers and their clients to become increasingly imaginative in the way that space is inhabited.

As a result, explained Cathy Ingram, senior design manager at Dubai-based Bluehaus, companies are examining their work practices and evaluating whether a change in those practices would lead to more effective utilisation of space. “With times getting tough and with the financial crisis, the desire to be a little more space efficient and spend a little less money on real estate is something that we’ve noticed with a lot of our projects,” she said.

Bluehaus is currently working on a number of projects with the Nokia Siemens Network, and is employing what it terms as ‘modern office concepts’ that promote intelligent utilisation of space. “We have adopted a new way of designing which doesn’t just say, for example, we’ve got 100 staff so we need 100 desks,” Ingram said.

“We’re seeing a shift away from people being assigned an individual desk, to a lot more of a hot-desking situation. What we’ve found is that a lot of people aren’t in the office a lot of the time – there’s people travelling, for example.

In addition, a lot of the people who have the most space, such as the directors, are in the office the least amount of time, which is very expensive. People are starting to look at how they can reduce that with different ways of working,” Ingram detailed.

The result is employees that arrive at the office, settle on any available desk within a designated area, plug in their laptops and start working. And while employees no longer have a desk all to themselves, they gain a whole host of alternative spaces in exchange, Ingram explained – phone rooms, small meeting rooms, hot desking spaces and break out areas.