Collaboration

For organizations that thrive on new ideas through collaboration, making sure to provide work spaces that not only allow, but encourage collaboration is a must! Download our white papers below for expert advice on encouraging collaboration in the office.

21st Century Work Habitats:
A Conversation with Gensler

Knowledge work environments—or “white collar” workplaces, as we used to say—have been around since offices grew out of the factories of the Industrial Revolution. In the past 50 years, these work environments have become more purposeful and sophisticated, geared to the various kinds of knowledge workers (almost 80 percent of all workers in North America) that populate them.

Adaptable Spaces and Their Impact on Learning

Research reveals the divide between what is known about the learning experience and the spaces built to support them. This has prompted exploration of new types of spaces. The goal is to understand the role of adaptable spaces in supporting the learning experience. Just as important is an examination of the impact technologies, pedagogies, and, yes, furniture has on these spaces.

Appropriate Flexibility

In 1968, Bob Propst and his team of researchers and designers at the Herman Miller Research Corporation published a remarkable book—The Office: A Facility Based on Change. This book served as the software designed to run the first systems furniture, Action Office, introduced by Herman Miller in the same year, and invented by Propst and his team. There were no computers in offices. No fax machines. No e-mail. No cell phones. No search engines. No printers.

Beyond Four Walls and a Door

If you ask people who work in offices whether they need privacy to do their jobs, most of them will say yes. Ask them whether they currently have enough privacy, and many of them will say no. In a study of people working in both fixed-wall offices and open plan environments, about 50 percent said their space “provides all the privacy I need to get my work done.” But when people feel they must have privacy to do their work and don’t get it, they report significantly lower productivity and job satisfaction than those who say they have the privacy they require.

Engaging Students: Using Space as a Tool to Connect with Millennials

Though there is more demographic diversity than ever before in the makeup of college students, Millennials represent the majority at over 60 percent. They will be part of the higher education landscape for the next decade. Their unique characteristics are causing them to collide with how learning is implemented in the classroom.

Forward Thinking: Why the Ideas from the Man Who Invented Cubicles Still Make Sense

If rules are made to be broken, it would explain what happened to those that Bob Propst, inventor of Action Office®, the first open-plan panel system, proposed in The Office: A Facility Based on Change. Published in 1968, the book is Propst’s thoughts on what the office should and could be.

It’s a Matter of Balance – Acoustics in the Open Plan

Most office workers—in developed and developing countries alike—worked in bullpens until the advent of systems furniture in 1968. The transition to open plan brought more visual privacy and a better acoustical environment. It wasn’t long, however, before these workers became accustomed to these improvements and wanted more.

Making Room for Collaboration

In a constantly and rapidly changing business environment, organizations increasingly look to collaborative work processes to stimulate practices that will generate market value and gain competitive advantage. But while everyone seems to agree that collaboration is a good thing, business leaders and consultants often have differing ideas on what collaboration is and how—or even if—it can be managed and supported.

Measures of Success – The Facility’s Role in Effectiveness

Measure it, or you can’t manage it. The maxim has been a tenet of business life since well before the “balanced scorecard” came along. Until recently, however, the concept of measurement as applied to real estate and facilities focused on the cost of operating and maintaining space, as opposed to measuring the impact of space on human and business performance.

The Private-to-Open Spectrum

Since the advent of open plan in the 1960s, there’s been a healthy conversation about open versus private offices. The long-running discussion has been fueled, in part, by semantics. Even seemingly clear terms such as “enclosed” and “open” can have a range of meanings.

Why and How We Meet

In many business circles, the word meeting has bad connotations, including “unnecessary” and “unproductive.” One researcher has asked more than 200 groups around the world what activities are their top three time-wasters. “In every case but three,” he writes, “more than three-quarters of each group indicated that half their time spent in meetings is wasted.” Still, little would get done without getting together in the same space, real or virtual.