The common workplace area per worker has been a transferring goal for years. It has been shrinking over the previous decade as workplace design developments have known as for fewer personal workplaces and cubicles in favor of extra open, collaborative areas.
Though the pandemic is not on the forefront, employers nonetheless deal with sustaining an applicable bodily distance between workspaces. Whereas there are some pointers you may observe, the choice of how a lot workplace area to allocate relies on your organization and the wants of your workforce.
Adam Stoltz, firmwide Director of Consulting for HOK, believes there are 5 components each office expertise chief ought to contemplate as they plan their future workplace.
What’s the common quantity of workplace area per worker?
Workers use workplace area in a different way relying on the work they’re doing. As an example, attorneys at a legislation agency sometimes work independently or host conferences with important purchasers within the workplace. They might want extra sq. footage per particular person.
Salespeople and consultants journey extra ceaselessly, requiring much less workplace area. Workers who do numerous inventive work might spend extra time collaborating on initiatives, needing extra assembly area than devoted desk area.
Nevertheless, since most organizations have a mixture of folks in several roles, it will be smart to supply several types of areas.
Throughout the pandemic, JLL reported the typical quantity of area per worker was 196 sq. toes. At the moment, office design research concluded that the typical workplace area per worker is 150 to 175 sq. toes. This contains devoted desk area and the encompassing area and also needs to consider the quantity of area in assembly rooms and customary areas.
For extra detailed suggestions, leverage an workplace area calculator for numerous areas, akin to convention rooms, ready areas, quiet rooms, govt workplaces, and many others.
How can we allocate workplace area with bodily distancing in thoughts?
To maintain staff secure within the workplace, your workspaces will more than likely want extra distance between them. JLL recommends planning to extend the dimensions of your common workspace per particular person by about 50%.
Fortuitously, our new workplace area planning software program could make this straightforward.
You’ll be able to set your distancing parameters, and the algorithm will create “circles of security” round every workstation. This helps you instantly determine which areas are doubtlessly unsafe and want reconfiguring. You’ll be able to even generate new ground plans routinely inside the software program.
Moreover, you may map new seating eventualities or assign staff to alternate shifts to allow them to preserve the identical desks and use them part-time.
And for those who’re involved about too many individuals gathering in widespread areas like stairways or hallways, you need to use the software program to measure the space between two factors. This helps you establish tips on how to modify the circulation of site visitors. In case your foyer is just too small to accommodate a crowd, you need to use indicators to stagger folks and restrict strains to only a few folks.
See how a touchless customer administration system helps you keep away from strains.
What different workplace area necessities are vital to think about?
Along with contemplating well being and security as you determine how a lot workplace area you want per worker, you’ll additionally want to concentrate to different present developments.
That features a rise within the variety of folks working remotely, the aim of your workplace, and environmental, governance, and social points.
The necessity for flexibility
As Stoltz has urged, returning to the workplace of yesterday is just not the reply. As an alternative, we now have a brand new system changing the workplace with an “ecosystem of areas.”
Your organization’s headquarters ought to stay the hub for collaborative actions, however many staff will proceed working from house. They want versatile workplace area to work effectively at each locations, however some may want areas in between. Workers who’ve an extended commute however discover it exhausting to focus at house might favor to work at a close-by coworking area or satellite tv for pc workplace. Should you lease a number of smaller areas, it might be simpler to handle prices as your organization’s wants change.
Or, for those who’re internet hosting bigger firm conferences or coaching classes and are involved your workplace area gained’t be giant sufficient to accommodate a rising staff, contemplate renting a convention room at a close-by lodge as an alternative.
Stoltz places it greatest, “Entry is the brand new possession. Should you don’t have to personal it, then don’t. Take into account leveraging the neighborhood, shared economic system, or rising membership fashions to satisfy your wants.”
The present objective of your workplace area
To make this new mannequin efficient, office leaders want to think about how typically staff use the areas out there to them and the first objective of these areas. This can probably evolve as extra staff return to the workplace in 2023.
“We all know that the hub must be a spot that delivers tradition and helps innovation,” Stoltz famous. “I feel one of many vital concerns for the way forward for the hub has to do with an expectation that when folks present up, the best chances are high that if yesterday 9 out of 10 or 19 out of 20 folks concerned in an exercise have been bodily current for that second — face-to-face in that room or in that constructing — there’s a superb probability that in a 12 months’s time, not more than half of persons are collaborating in that very same exercise in that very same place at that very same time.”
As an example, a convention room the place 10 folks used to satisfy weekly might solely have 5 folks bodily current whereas the opposite 5 staff members are calling in.
In consequence, you could not want extra workplace area to your rising firm, however you may have to improve your convention room expertise.
Worker expertise
You additionally want to consider what staff need and want after they come to the workplace. Whereas some staff imagine they’ve develop into extra productive whereas working from house, not everybody agrees. Surveys present most need to spend at the very least a part of their week within the workplace.
Within the PwC survey, 50% of staff reported that they needed to go to the workplace to collaborate with others. 38% stated they wrestle to stability work with their duties at house, together with childcare. Others stated they went to the workplace to make use of tools like printers or entry paper recordsdata as a result of their work hadn’t been totally digitized.
Because of extra staff working remotely, one-third of executives stated they anticipate needing much less workplace area within the upcoming years. Nevertheless, over half estimate, the quantity of area they want will enhance. 26% stated they deliberate to extend their workplace area per worker by 5-15%. One other 15% stated they might enhance it by as much as 25%, whereas 9% stated they might enhance their area by greater than 25%.
To benefit from your workplace area, ensure it’s designed to assist staff’ wants for collaborative and quiet work. It needs to be an area that evokes creativity, with entry to pure gentle and even outside areas if doable. Moreover, the area ought to embody user-friendly expertise that helps staff shortly discover and reserve the areas they should do their greatest work.
How Eptura helps along with your workplace area planning
Be taught extra about how we may help you intend for and handle your return in a extra scalable and strategic manner than conventional area planning.