Share
min read
-
Your office is at the heart of your business and what you do, therefore it needs to support the day-to-day demands from your industry.
Whilst every company is unique, the sector that your business falls under can leave some clues as to what kind of environment could enhance your workspace. Using our array of experience from working across different sectors and providing successful office designs, we have comprised a few ideas you may find useful when considering the design of your new office.
-
Financial & Legal
Office design has moved away from the boxes and cubicles that appeared throughout financial and legal firms before the noughties. Open plan has taken over the workplace, breaking down the proverbial walls that can divide different departments and levels of seniority.
-
-
Now even shared desk spaces are becoming more accessible to larger numbers with the influx of agile working. Desk booking systems are becoming increasingly popular for providing variation to the day-to-day work cycle, allowing employees to choose where they sit to work. This also encourages cross-pollination between different departments and can improve company cultures with greater socialising.
Financial and legal firms are centred around their clients and thus need to have a space that can represent the business and make a resounding first impression. This means that having striking client-facing areas is paramount to attracting new business. Reception areas, meeting rooms and waiting spaces need to be impactful and worthy of the professionalism of your company. Often appropriate signage and branding can be an advantage in making the visitor experience unique to your company.
-
Technology
As a tech company, you already know that first-rate software and hardware are a must in the office but how can the arrangement of your office help with overall performance?
Like other industries, tech companies can benefit from agile work areas for collaboration but the need for independent work may be higher than other practices.
-
-
By offering private booths, pods or benches with shared computers, employees can manage their time independently and quietly. These spaces can juxtapose perfectly with the bustling hub of the office, including breakout areas and teapoints.
A lot of tech companies are focused on their employee experience as a priority due to high competition for the industry’s best talent. For this reason, it is important to include up-to-date, quirky breakouts and relaxation areas. Make room in your office design for a ping pong or pool table with a large teapoint and you might just win over the Millennial and Generation Z population that is entering the workplace.
-
Creative & Coworking
The plan and layout of creative and coworking offices can often be very similar in their requirements. With the only difference being that coworking spaces need to be adaptable to accommodate any business type, both industries need to express their individuality through their space. A certain level of flexibility to work areas needs to be maintained to allow for different working styles.
-
-
“The office needs to allow individuals to create their own work style and promote a sense of freedom. For example, spaces that satisfy an extrovert, who gains energy from interaction, or an introvert who retreats from people to focus. This requires a mix of different spaces providing acoustic privacy, visual privacy and different sort of furniture, ranging from softer domestic type spaces to the workstation.” – Dominic Dugan, Creative Director
The overarching need to create sensory spaces is paramount to these industries, ensuring the right combination and variety of natural light, colour and biophilia are present in both work and relaxation areas.
