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Creating a productive working environment - In a nutshell
Working with colleagues, I have been investigating the impact of office design and management,
since two thousand and three. We understand good and bad practices, and using impartial
published science, have learned how to increase office well-being by up to fifty percent,
and productivity by up to thirty two percent.
Think for a moment. Does your employer have a clean desk policy, or dress down friday,
or feature agile, flexible working? Are there company-centric banners dotted around the
place? Do you have state of the art monitoring? If so the science suggests, that, that business
may be advised to save itself trouble, and instead shred the company cheques, and use
them as rat food. These 'new ways of working', are often underpinned by dystopian skill sets,
with a range of commercially toxic side effects. Research is also pretty conclusive in suggesting,
that enriching a space through design is a good thing ?it makes people feel better -- but
it is far from the best thing. Data point to even the most elaborate workspaces being
easily improved upon, regardless of pool tables, sand pits or slides. The psychological, rather
than the didactic application of design, can save considerable amounts of money, whilst
maximizing satisfaction, productivity, and even ? the research is starting to suggest
?workplace intelligence and creativity.
The secret of a productive, happy office, lies primarily in devolving decisions to the
teams of people at work. If you do not work in a given space, then the final design decisions
affecting that space are not yours, regardless of your position. They belong to the people
whose space it is. Feeling at home, is just as a vital a component of success at work,
as it is at, well, at home. There is a direct link between comfortable autonomous people,
and high productivity. Implementing these changes is not difficult, and yields rapid
results, but it does take managerial guts, scientific insight, and the psychological
application
of consensual design.