Unison Workspaces lead their clients into the next era of office design

Expectations around workplace design and function have changed dramatically over the last few years. After Covid-19 required businesses to adapt to remote working, many have emerged from lockdown looking to adopt a hybrid working model. As a result, the role of the office has shifted, and many workplaces have now designated the office as a space for collaboration, connection, and culture building.

How has this shift impacted workplace design strategy?

Jane Roulston, Unison Workspaces Director, says, “The biggest shift that's happened in the last few years, post-Covid, is that people are now looking at the utilisation of workspaces in a completely different way. What that means is the ratio of group space is changing significantly. We're moving away from allocated workstations, and we're designing in a way whereby everything's multi-purpose. We’re creating spaces that allow people to carry out a variety of different activities, with the main design focused around collaboration.”

Roulston emphasises that well designed workspaces are an important drawcard to get employees back into the office. “The office has to provide the right environment to support what people need, or they won't come.” Key needs include designated collaboration spaces, focus zones, rooms and tools for virtual meetings, and considerations for employee wellbeing.

“With people coming back into the office, companies are finding one of the biggest problems they have is being able to concentrate. People come into the office, sit at their desk, and do a loud zoom call in front of everybody else.”

Roulston explains that there are a lot of behavioural and design changes that need to happen to accommodate quiet space.

“We're seeing things like the idea of a library mentality happening in some spaces. So rather than just a phone booth, or, you know, a couple of quiet areas in the office, we're seeing areas being dedicated to quiet space.”

“There has also been a significant shift in meeting room design, moving away from your traditional meeting room spaces to rooms that are more multi-purpose. You don't want to build walls, you don't want to build a whole lot of rooms; you want to have furniture solutions that allow you to divide space, but also be able to change it quite easily. So, flexibility and modularity in products is really important, because the latest shift is thinking about workplaces as spaces people can curate themselves.”

Designing with the future in mind

Roulston says sustainability has also become an important factor in furniture design, with brands now taking real accountability for the whole lifecycle of their products. “People are drawn to making sure that the products they put into their fitouts have stories behind them, and that the products have longevity due to quality manufacturing.”

This is particularly important for Unison Workspaces, having a long-standing relationship with product designers Herman Miller.

“Herman Miller is the leader in the world in terms of product design; they’re always leaders, never followers. They're always the ones that are taking an enormous amount of research, and translating it into products that are appropriate.

“They have a sustainability policy that started in the 1950s. It's not something that they've just started doing in recent years, it's been a very long history of making sure that the products they develop are not only leading in terms of why they're being developed, but that they also have a complete lifecycle analysis done to make sure that everything is produced sustainably, with the right materials.”

To help businesses and designers alike to create world class office spaces, Unison Workspaces spend a lot of time educating and advising their clients on workplace design strategies. Backed by research from both Herman Miller and Unison Workspaces own in-house studies, the team are able to provide solutions that are guaranteed to work.

Learn more about Unison Workspaces.