Cinemas, gyms and rooftop forests: designing the future office

Once the employ­ees of Samuel & Co Trad­ing return to their base in Wat­ford, they will be greet­ed by an array of new well­ness ben­e­fits. They’ll be able to check their emails while work­ing out in the refur­bished gym, spend lunchtime relax­ing in the steam room and round off their day with a film screen­ing in the company’s own cin­e­ma.

The stock trad­ing and train­ing firm has spent £200,000 on the redesign, which also incor­po­rates a med­i­ta­tion space, a pool table and games con­soles. Its found­ing direc­tor, Samuel Leach, says that the lock­downs gave him the chance to com­plete­ly rethink the office space. 

“The pan­dem­ic pro­vid­ed a good oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to get a new base sort­ed and to make it an enjoy­able work­place,” he says. “We’ve been try­ing to work out how we can help our staff ben­e­fit from going back to the office, encour­ag­ing peo­ple to return to an envi­ron­ment they haven’t been in for well over a year.”

You’ve got to pro­mote a new mind­set and cul­ture because if you don’t, you’re not going to make the most of the space

Now that lock­down restric­tions are eas­ing again, it’s an issue that many busi­ness­es are con­sid­er­ing. When the Uni­ver­si­ty of Strath­clyde sur­veyed more than 3,000 peo­ple who’d been oblig­ed to work remote­ly dur­ing the Covid cri­sis, it found that few­er than 10% want­ed to be back work­ing at HQ on a full-time basis, while 31% would hap­pi­ly nev­er set foot in the office again.

Such atti­tudes present a prob­lem for the many busi­ness lead­ers who are keen to bring their teams togeth­er and recap­ture the sense of col­lab­o­ra­tion that video meet­ings strug­gle to engen­der.

Land­lords and com­mer­cial prop­er­ty devel­op­ers are also flex­ing their cre­ative mus­cle in a bid to attract new ten­ants. For instance, prop­er­ty firm Brunt­wood Works has installed sleep pods, yoga stu­dios and a pod­cast room at its Black­fri­ars House offices in Man­ches­ter.

The company’s CEO, Cia­ra Keel­ing, believes that by bring­ing some of the home com­forts into the office it will “help busi­ness­es to pow­er up cre­ativ­i­ty, enhance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gen­er­ate ideas”.

The tran­si­tion to a hybrid mod­el of work­ing, where employ­ees are required to come to HQ only a few times a week, has put less demand on desk space. This has giv­en design­ers more room to play with, lead­ing to what Keel­ing calls the “evo­lu­tion of work­spaces into more cre­ative and less struc­tured spaces”.

Online authen­ti­ca­tion plat­form Okta is also re-eval­u­at­ing its approach, with plans to pro­vide a series of “expe­ri­ence cen­tres” to com­ple­ment its head office. Its recent­ly appoint­ed head of dynam­ic work, Saman­tha Fish­er, explains that these small­er offices will “func­tion sim­i­lar­ly to Apple stores”, enabling cus­tomers and employ­ees to “immerse them­selves in com­pa­ny cul­ture, receive prod­uct demos, have meet­ings and work when they need to”.

Bringing nature into the office

Not all offices are rely­ing on tech-dri­ven entice­ments. For instance, prop­er­ty investor Fab­rix hopes that a 0.5ha rooftop for­est will be the unique sell­ing point that attracts ten­ants to its new office devel­op­ment. 

Based on the site of the old Black­fri­ars Crown Court in Lon­don, the com­plex will fea­ture more than 100 trees, 10,000 plants and a glass-bot­tomed swim­ming pool. 

The company’s CEO, Clive Nichol, believes that these sur­round­ings will be able to lift the occu­pants’ moods. “Peo­ple have become more con­nect­ed to nature over lock­down and we’re more aware of the val­ue it can have for indi­vid­u­als,” he says. “Yet this is some­thing that’s rarely thought about in the work­place.”

Nichol observes that “incor­po­rat­ing nature in the design helps to soft­en the work­ing envi­ron­ment. If you are work­ing in a tall glass tow­er, you’re focused on cor­po­rate out­comes. If you are in a build­ing that has more of these sen­si­tiv­i­ties, you’re able to act in a more human and bal­anced way.”

Design details

Although not all com­pa­nies will be able to cul­ti­vate their own forests, of course, there are some sim­ple, yet cru­cial, alter­ations that they and com­mer­cial land­lords can make to future-proof their work­places. So says Dominic Dugan, direc­tor at Oktra, an office design com­pa­ny whose clients have includ­ed M&C Saatchi, Gymshark and Adi­das. 

“For the first time, employ­ees are pick­ing up on the intri­cate details that allow them to get into the office more eas­i­ly and work there in a safe, pos­i­tive and inter­ac­tive man­ner,” he says. “I’ve seen an office with a golf course in the mid­dle of it that doesn’t get used. Such things are great for attract­ing tal­ent, but they do noth­ing for reten­tion. When you’re look­ing to per­suade peo­ple to return, they sim­ply want an office that per­forms.”

For Dugan, this means mak­ing adjust­ments to improve air qual­i­ty and acoustic per­for­mance, cre­at­ing flex­i­ble meet­ing rooms and pro­vid­ing well-equipped chang­ing facil­i­ties for peo­ple who want to cycle or run to work. “It’s about hav­ing all those step­ping stones to bring you com­fort­ably to your work­place, get your­self set­tled quick­ly and embed your­self in the company’s cul­ture,” he says.

Health and safe­ty is also a key con­sid­er­a­tion when cre­at­ing office spaces for a post-Covid world. Many busi­ness­es have noticed a height­ened lev­el of con­cern among employ­ees about hygiene. A sur­vey of work­ers by wire­less sen­sor devel­op­er Dis­rup­tive Tech­nolo­gies in April found that more than half of respon­dents were afraid to return to their offices because they were wor­ried about the lev­el of clean­li­ness.

These anx­i­eties are being reflect­ed in office design, accord­ing to Dugan, who says: “Leav­ing the pan­dem­ic to one side, the office was a real­ly unhy­gien­ic place. Aspects such as air qual­i­ty are being picked up and invest­ed in for the first time. Some com­pa­nies are spend­ing a lot of mon­ey on touch­less doors.”

Flexibility as important as design

As many com­pa­nies move to a hybrid work­ing mod­el, enabling a smooth tran­si­tion from remote work­ing to the office will also be impor­tant. British cloth­ing brand Joules became acute­ly aware of this when design­ing its new HQ, known by staff as The Barn. 

Con­struc­tion of the firm’s pur­pose-built office on the out­skirts of Mar­ket Har­bor­ough in rur­al Leices­ter­shire began before the pan­dem­ic. But it soon became clear that the space need­ed alter­ations to suit the more flex­i­ble work­ing meth­ods adopt­ed by the busi­ness since the Covid cri­sis start­ed.

The Barn was orig­i­nal­ly meant to accom­mo­date more than 500 employ­ees. But the company’s CEO, Nick Jones, antic­i­pates that only about about half of that num­ber will be using the office at any one time.

“For­tu­nate­ly, we had the advan­tage of start­ing with a blank can­vas,” he says. “We haven’t had to repur­pose an old build­ing; we’ve been able to reshape or adjust the space with flex­i­ble and remote work­ing in mind.”

I’ve seen offices with a golf course in the mid­dle of the room and it doesn’t get used. Things like that are great for attract­ing tal­ent but it does noth­ing for reten­tion

These changes have enabled Joules to expand the cen­tral atri­um and cre­ate more room between desks. Each meet­ing room is equipped with audio­vi­su­al tech enabling remote work­ers to call in, while out­door fea­tures, includ­ing a bug hotel, help to con­nect the space to the company’s coun­try­side her­itage.

Despite the many alter­ations to the mul­ti-mil­lion-pound build­ing, a change in com­pa­ny cul­ture will be equal­ly impor­tant for the Jones in deter­min­ing the suc­cess of the new HQ. “Rethink­ing the prac­ti­cal ways of work­ing is as impor­tant as cre­at­ing a con­ducive space,” he says. “You have to pro­mote a new mind­set and cul­ture. If you don’t, you’re not going to make the most of the space.”

The next few months will there­fore be a cru­cial peri­od for Joules’s new home. “None of us will have got these changes com­plete­ly cor­rect,” Jones admits. “We’ll def­i­nite­ly need to learn and adjust to con­tin­u­al­ly improve the space and our ways of work­ing.”

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