Consultants dedicate careers to the idea of cultivating a “flow state” for corporate environments. Specialists, thought-leaders, gurus and shamans sell seminars and courses dedicated to the topic but frequently fall short of anything more than breathing and cheesy playlists. However, UK government sponsored research now illuminates that one of the chief contributions to workplace productivity is office layout. The physical space in which one works has an overwhelmingly strong influence on final work product.
Picture a beige and fluorescent white sea of sterile office grid. Picture this bleak prism prison for months, years, and decades. Welcome to the unfortunate plight of the office worker post 1980. Fast forward to the Google coffee bar work lounge delivering world-warping code with giddily happy employees. What happened the acoustic dampening panels and clean grid lines? Human conversation and big data happened. Tech startups and forward-thinking market leaders realized that their employees could perform better (ironically designing robots) so long as they weren’t treated as robots. The invention of the open floor-plan broke the grid system and refused to reassemble the pieces.
Standing at work? Someone call the warden. The prisoners -err- employees must be crazy. These standing desks aren’t anything like cubicles of the past.
So the paradigm shifted and even small businesses today operate on open floorplans and office layouts that cater to creative flow. Liquidating used cubicles in lieu of new adjustable sit-to-stand desks and polygonal workstations began to coax out more creativity juice from the minds of young professionals than grey mouse-mazes could ever pound from them. Today companies look to move their old cubicles and purchase new workstations from industry leaders like Creative Office Design. Office Furniture is no longer a boring afternoon meeting with the Operations and HR departments, it’s part interior design strategist, part feng shui shaman, part skeletal physiological ninja.
New collaborative table plans, contemporary desk arrangements and ergo-seating pairings make for a head-spinning number of choices that make genuine, trackable impact in the productivity of the workforce they elegantly yet sturdily support. And think how just a few years ago, ‘hang in there’ cat posters were considered acceptable corporate art and not vomit-inducing, sarcastic memes. Today offices compete to craft truly artistic flow spaces from the most contemporary office furniture distributors.
Lo and behold these investments in the human capital of commercial space pays dividends several orders of magnitude larger than the furniture investment days of office past. Fortunate for the spinal, social, and psychological health of the workers, collaborate flow spaces and half-caf, non-fat, upsidedown, marble mocha macchiatos come as standard perks of the job. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back the other direction and ‘bring your aardvark to work’ days will thin down a bit but until that day office managers are clamoring over the local office furniture dealers with modern showrooms and fast shipping. This week’s featured business is leading the charge to the highest retention office layouts in the market with their Orange County showroom available by appointment only.
Creative Office Design
Address: 15440 Laguna Canyon Rd Suite 120, Irvine, CA 92618
Hours: Closed ⋅ Opens 9AM Wed
Phone: (714) 328-7627
creativeofficedesign.net