A well-designed workplace benefits almost everyone involved —employees come to work feeling more valued and willing to contribute, employers are able to maximize productivity and efficiency among departments, and facility managers have fewer maintenance-related headaches to deal with. This seems obvious at first pass, but the difficulty for facility managers is finding the ideal design solution for the specific type of company occupying a given space. A simple online image search will yield hundreds of photos of shiny, futuristic office interiors from large, successful companies, but what are the underlying principles that cause these spaces to be designed the way they are? How does the built environment position that individual company for growth and help achieve its business goals?
Fortunately, there are three basic design trends underlying almost every modern office environment, regardless of the industry or particular business model of the company. In no particular order, these trends are:
• Encouraging creativity among employees.
• Integrating useful technology into the built environment.
• Placing a greater emphasis on employee wellness.