How to create an office people want to return to

The COVID-19 pandemic flipped our work lives upside down, especially the lives of office workers. As offices sat empty at the height of the pandemic, it created an opportunity to rethink the traditional conventions of the office space – from the role it plays in boosting bringing the company’s culture to life and increasing business efficiency to collaboration and overall employee experience.

After over two years of remote and hybrid working, and the advent of increased flexibility, the question arose – how do you create an agile office space that fits the new remote-hybrid working reality whilst also reflecting company values?

Workers today want a workspace that enables transparency, a management style that cares for their mental health, and a company culture that focuses on impact and less on the rigidness of traditional nine-to-five office work.

Based on my experience of helping to open new offices in Israel, UK, and Australia during the pandemic, here are six essential tips on how to create a modern office space that employees love.

Reflect your core values in your office space

It’s time to say it out loud: you don’t need a company logo in your office.

A logo is not the heart of your company – its people are. Many people are tired and overwhelmed by hundreds of logos surrounding them every day, trying to steal their attention wherever they look, whether offline or online.

In this loaded-with-logos reality, employers have the unique opportunity to grant logo silence to their employees in the office, allowing them to experience the company values instead of just seeing the logo wherever they look. Transfer your company’s culture into the aesthetic and design of its workspace, so it truly feels like a place where your employees want to be.

Your company values should become part of the real day-to-day experience for people to truly share and reinforce them. Office space can play a crucial role in creating that experience.

Think about the core values that shape your company’s culture and how they could be transferred through your office space.

Here are a few examples:

• Transparency: putting dashboards on the walls to showcase what different teams are working on at any given time gives a sense of true inclusion for everyone in the space. Increasing visibility is a way to create a culture of empowerment, and a more empowered team is a more productive team.
• Collaboration: create set-ups that resemble that of a home while also allowing people to collaborate safely. Think about ways to promote social interactions, such as having a central staircase that connects all the floors or creating more cozy spaces for informal meetings.
• Empowering ownership and impact: not having any personal offices even for leadership helps rethink employee hierarchy and foster a connection between teams. Create a flexible workspace that fits different work styles and helps everyone to be more productive instead.
• Making everyone feel safe and at home: create open spaces for six to eight people to facilitate communication in smaller teams while maintaining a sense of openness and transparency for a larger team. To make people feel welcome, design every entrance on every floor with a kitchen and room for guests instead of a reception or security desk.

Create a universal experience for hybrid teams

As we go hybrid, it’s important to keep everyone included and ensure people working remotely always feel part of the team.

It’s easy to feel excluded when you join a meeting remotely while the rest of the team is in the meeting room in the office. It happens too often that those who work remotely are overlooked, the conversation becomes confusing, and only those who are physically in the office get their voice heard.

To avoid that, you should install very good cameras and audio systems in all the meeting rooms. Alternatively, introduce a rule that if there is at least one person working remotely, the meeting should be held on Zoom.

Introduce variety to your office space

We are now accustomed to hybrid work. Therefore, we need to create more workspaces that feel like home and can flex to fit different needs depending on how people work best.

For example, instead of having just one type of desk, incorporate other options like standing desks, sofas, benches, reclining seats, or even massage chairs. You can also create different types of spaces, like open plan areas or smaller rooms, for focused work.

Additionally, you could design a living room style space so each team can brainstorm in a cozy and relaxing atmosphere.

The shift to hybrid working also means that some people are now coming into the office on an ad-hoc basis for team meetings and social events. Therefore, you should create more spaces for larger team and group meetings and brainstorming.

Improve your mental health support initiatives

According to the Mental Health Foundation, mental health problems are the leading cause of sickness absence. In the UK, 70 million workdays are lost each year due to mental health problems, costing employers approximately £2.4 billion per year.

The pandemic didn’t make this situation any easier. In response to this mental health crisis, it is important that companies align themselves with a mental health support program.

To effectively help prevent burnout and fatigue, these programs should cover the different aspects of business, from investing in manager training to switching to collaborative tools that make team communication more transparent and effective.

Using office space smartly can also be part of the solution. This goes beyond putting up sleeping pods, having free yoga classes (which are also beneficial), and creating a meditation room for employees to take a breather when they need to.

Many companies make counselling part of their benefit package for the employees. Other companies, including Google, are introducing psychological counselling in the office. This makes counselling as accessible for employees as possible.

A psychological counselling program should be run by clinical psychologists, available during the workday, and completely confidential. The service should be provided in an isolated area on an empty floor to ensure privacy.

Regularly collect feedback and never stop evolving

Just like the tech industry and people who work in it, offices should be flexible and ever-evolving.

The need to adapt and change has become particularly obvious in the last two years. You may have created a perfect office environment for today, but you may need to adjust it to meet new needs next quarter. You should always be learning what works and where you can improve.

To find the right direction for change, let the people in your company play a major role in shaping your company and, by extension, its offices. You can achieve this by gathering feedback through public and anonymous surveys, one-on-one meetings, focus groups, and open forums for Q&A’s.

Moreover, you can involve people in planning and designing their floor in the office – and allocate a dedicated budget to ensure it comes to life. This way, you can be sure the office space reflects employees’ needs and preferences.

Foster creativity in the office

The magic of human connection happens when we grab a coffee with a colleague, exchange ideas after a meeting, or just walk to the office together. However, it may be challenging to bring together people during (and after) a pandemic that requires them to distance from each other.

Including everyone in the conversation, always asking for feedback, thinking of new ways to support people, and reflecting core values in the office space, are key to creating a new collaborative workspace environment for your team.

Using these tips, you will be well on your way to creating a modern office space that people want to return to.