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Last month, I went to the office for the first time in more than a year. It was great to see our co-workers and a strange not to make myself lunch. But after a while I wanted to go home – because I had to work.
Office buildings were designed for people to use. Our specially built “offices” (mine and a small desk in the corner of the bedroom) were not. However, I do not think that I am the only one who can find that I can do some of my work from home – which tells us something important about the design of the 21st century office.
I am not rejected in office. Instead, I am a lover. There is a file on more evidence demonstrating the need for your peers to gather face-to-face. Without an office, we don’t meet friends we haven’t seen for a while drinking a cup of tea, or hear conversations that spark ideas or plans to work together. I realized I missed friends with whom I had never worked directly.
Research shows There are advantages to these “weak relationships” – relationships between people who do not work together but know each other for a long time. Difficult testing to restart minutes like this during closing (one work sends queries to Slack to encourage “meaningless” conversations (such as, “Which video would you mention the most?”) just to show how impossible it is to force it.
Over the past few decades, offices have been redesigned with the need for emotional integration. The walls of the water containers came down slowly. In the end, they disappeared altogether instead of large areas. The program of idea it was a reflection of good looks, creativity and communication. It was also a great way to save money by working hard for the people. More from the British Council of Offices shows that the number of vacancies has declined since 2008.
But in our search for connections, we forgot how the human brain works. Research demonstrations that noise in open offices can cause an increase in epinephrine, a hormone that helps us fight, run or cool, rather than just focus on our work. Hearing “negotiations”, When your friends are on the phone, they can sit down distractions because our brain tries to fill the other half.
The lack of confidential space in many offices makes us cringe difficult too. Lena Nyholm and Mia Ohrn, Swedish interior design experts those who want to incorporate neuroscience into office design, can even say decorative. Our brains respond well to blue and green color, says Nyholm, because it refers to a fertile area with abundant food. But most offices have white walls, dark seats, solid sides, and a few grains. “When we look at them with their eyes at work, it looks like winter – the brain is stressed, there is no food, there is no heat.”
Instead, the difficulties of open offices can undermine the good that they are supposed to offer. Ethan Bernstein, a fellow professor at Harvard Business School, studied two major US companies that began designing. They used visual cues and emails to determine how employee communication has changed. In both cases, there was a dramatic decline in face-to-face contact, with e-mail and instant messaging increasing.
“Rather than impressing the face-to-face relationship, the open structures seem to be stimulating the interest of the individual to leave the group,” he concluded. In another learning, found that intermediate interventions in the community lead to interactions between people who are trying to solve problems together.
The plague gives us the opportunity to start over again. We need to meet, help each other, blow the whistle and enjoy the noise, but most of us also need to get to a quiet corner to do our best. It will take some tests to find the right size.
Matthew Davis, an associate professor at Leeds University studying the design of the post-Covid office, says employers are turning their offices into a “co-operative” space with the idea of people working at a desk at home. He also said that employers ask themselves: “How do we find a place to promote our experiences by accident, more fun?”
It is only too early to tell if this will work properly. Would it be strange to put notes of “office talk” in your notebook? Davis also warns that the new offices may “unwittingly” exclude “some employees if they do not have a place to work at home.
However, fellow employers are worth a try. The office is still empty. If we acknowledge his weaknesses and play on his strengths, we can live a new life.
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