One of the biggest challenges of modern office design is providing both quiet spaces free of interruption and collaborative spaces. In addition to the use of modular furniture, implementing collaboration technology is one way to help meet the needs of all workers and work styles.

Dive Brief:

• As in-office attendance climbs, space configuration, noise, interruption and other challenges persist, according to a report released Thursday by Unispace. 
• Face-to-face collaboration remains the top incentive for employees to be in the office, but employees say they spend 64% of their time at their desks on focus work, according to Unispace, which surveyed 8,000 employees and 2,700 business leaders in May. 
• To mitigate these challenges, employers must consider designating quiet spaces for rejuvenation as well as dynamic areas for connection, teamwork and innovation, the report says.

Dive Insight:

Hybrid workplace strategies dominate the global office market, but return-to office momentum continues to build in the U.S. as some large employers increase their in-office requirements, according to a U.S. office market dynamics report from JLL. Simultaneously, many large office tenants are still trimming space or relocating to more efficient buildings as they face expirations in their portfolio. 

Eighty-three percent of employees ages 18 to 34 said they would be happier to spend more time in the office, if it provided separate spaces for both collaborative and quiet work, compared with 78% of employees ages 35 to 54 and 67% of those over the age of 55, per the survey.

“In the overall open-office world, quiet spaces are not something we have done generally very well. We like the place to take a phone call, to just think for a minute,” Alana Dunoff, strategic facility planning consultant and adjunct professor at Temple University, said while speaking at IFMA’s World Workplace conference in October. “It’s almost as if that’s not allowed, but we think it’s really important because there are some people who come into the office because home is awful. Home is a distracting point.”

“There’s great new technology and different ways to think about spaces, so we can create something more intimate. We want to use some of the offices to create more, smaller team spaces,” Dunoff said. 

By creating smarter spaces that cater to a hybrid workforce, businesses can foster connection and concentration with versatile, multi-purpose areas that increase productivity and reduce real estate expenses, Unispace says in the report. Providing a diverse mix of modular furniture solutions that cater to various tasks and accommodate modern working styles — such as for individual work, collaboration, social or support activities— can enable employees to select their workspace based on desired experience and specific tasks, Unispace says. 

In addition, these spaces should be outfitted with the appropriate infrastructure and technology to make it easier for mobile employees to “plug and play,” the report notes. The top three office essentials for employees include technology infrastructure such as Wi-Fi and printers, adequate lighting with access to natural light and quiet areas. Employers also named technology infrastructure and quiet areas for focused work or privacy as necessities but added private meeting rooms for virtual and in-person connections, per the report. 

“The main purpose of any meeting is what’s happening in the meeting, not the technology. Technology should never win the Oscar for the main actor. It should win the Oscar for the supporting actor,” Snorre Kjesbu, senior vice president and general manager of collaboration devices at Cisco, said in an interview. 

Eighty-percent of employees and 87% of employers in the Unispace survey said workplace technology adequately facilitates their productivity. Flexible work schedules, such as compressed workweeks and flex time, topped the list of workplace improvements employees said they would like to see in the next five years, followed by tech-enabled workspaces that offer advanced collaboration tools and smart features. Sustainability initiatives, like green energy and recycling programs, and workplace design that reflects organizational values also ranked among the top five in improvement requests, per the report. 

CBRE’s 2024 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment survey found that 38% of commercial real estate executives want connected technologies and building applications, 35% want touchless technologies and 28% want flexible office space options. That survey had findings from 225 corporate real estate executives overseeing office portfolios across the U.S., Canada and Latin America. 

As employees seek flexibility, businesses must tailor their workplace designs and strategies to accommodate flexible scheduling and invest in workplace technology and customization options that can meet the needs of different workstyles and allow workers to customize their day-to-day experience and offices, according to the report.

This article was written by Joe Burns from Facilities Dive and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.