IT FEATURES a workbench that allows you to stand or sit, a seat that filters out background noise and a privacy pod – the office of the future has arrived in Scotland.
The futuristic workspace has been unveiled by Alpha Scotland – part of the Belfast-based Alpha Group – and is aimed at improving the wellbeing of staff as well as productivity.
“One of the huge challenges we face today is getting the job done in a world where constant distractions and interruptions have become the norm,” says Alpha Scotland director Nick Lyons.
“Presenteeism is more than just turning up. You might be there nine-to-five or eight-to-six, but are you actually there? Are you there in body only or are you engaged?
“By designing offices in a way to aid concentration and comfort as well as social interaction, results are going to follow.”
The group describe themselves as workspace engineers and offer a range of solutions to meet the demands of increasingly complex modern office environments.
Their high-tech ideas are based on what their clients are telling them, and on research carried out earlier this year by workplace solutions firm Steelcase, the company they acquired in March.
This suggested that the most engaged and satisfied workers overwhelmingly reported they have access to a variety of spaces, especially focus and concentration areas.
These are now incorporated into Alpha Scotland’s West Regent Street office in Glasgow city centre.
Lyons says their clients are better educated than they’ve ever been, thanks to television interior design programmes. “Everybody is an expert now,” he says. “And that causes us a problem because we are experts in interior space and how space can work to enhance productivity. Our clients are much more educated in making sure they have a duty of care to their staff, that they can perform better in a space that’s designed to support the business objectives.
“We have to be just slightly ahead of the curve in being able to emulate what’s going on in the market, so that when clients come along they can see new trends and try new things.”
The variable-height desk was borne out of medical evidence showing that we are living too sedentary a lifestyle and that movement is seen as a positive in physical and mental terms.
Lyons says noisy, modern office life led to Alpha designing the seat that filters out background noise, while allowing the user to “tune in” to conversations outside their pod.
Alpha Group CEO Paul Black added that employers should look to their future workforce – “Generation Z” – whose education started around the turn of the century, to see what would keep them happy and productive at work.
“If they were born in 2000 they may be coming out of education and into the workplace now,” he says.
“Over the next five years plus, we’re going to see people coming to the work environment who have potentially maybe never sat at a desk since early secondary education. Imagine a guy born in 2002 coming into an office and being presented with a 5ft slab of desktop to sit at. What he’s done for his whole education is sit with a tablet and his feet on the end of a sofa, studying and doing well in his grades.
“So companies are now looking at the new office that has virtually no desks, a ‘work café’ with a few tables and chairs and good Wi-Fi, breakout spaces, meeting areas – but that’s going to be the challenge in the future.”
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