Designing Collaborative Workspaces

Collaborative working – is this the future of business?

Did you know? 80% of work will be collaborative within the next 10 years *

Collaborative working, also known as co-working, is one of the key business issues of our time. New technologies have transformed working life and a growing number of organisations recognise that successful collaboration enhances performance.

In Google’s case, about half of its 10,000 product development employees work in small co-working teams averaging three workers per team. Yet, many organisations struggle with a poor co working space or collaborative workspace environment.

*Source Jones Lang LaSalle IP, Inc. 2007, ‘Workplace Strategy’, quoting research by Gartner Dataquest

Create your ideal collaborative work space

Space-pod can help your organisation to benefit from collaborative work space by creating work spaces, which not only look great – but which encourage and embrace a ‘High Performance Collaboration’ approach.

Knowledge development is a social activity. While people do work alone, the business of creating, evaluating and disseminating knowledge is in large part a shared enterprise.

Collaborative coworking can speed up productivity an the generation of new ideas.

Physical presence in the work place is important. Repeated studies show that informal interaction in the office is vital to building trust within a team. The tacit knowledge of a company is rarely documented or available on an database and can only be communicated face-to-face.

Up to six people is the optimum collaborative workspace team size.

As the size of a team increases, so does the difficulty in managing communication. Collaboration in pairs and small co-working teams allows for more frequent exchanges in less formal ways, which gets problems solved more quickly.

Technology is a key enabler to success. New technologies boost collaboration by helping individuals and teams to access and share digital information seamlessly.

In a world where communicating and collaborating is vital to success, the role of the workplace is to connect people, information, culture and tools.

Work is becoming more collaborative.

Developing internal networks & effective knowledge sharing within organisations are increasingly important keys to higher productivity. A communication culture is one important key to delivering the strategic objectives of an organisation.

Work has more than one mode.

Space needs to be provided to suit a diversity of activities, be it for social interactions, group learning, focused tasks or collaborative teams. The most effective organisations of the future will provide all of these types of spaces with the balance that suits their workforce and purpose.

Technology is freeing us from the desk.

The rapid development of portable communication and computing has created a new breed of nomadic, knowledge worker. People will increasing be ‘on’ work rather than ‘at’ work as the link to a fixed place diminishes for more and more of us.

Employees value good workspace.

As we all become increasingly design conscious and spend longer periods at work, the quality of our workplace is of greater value to us. An organisation’s ability to attract and retain the very best people will be increasing linked to the environment it is able to provide.

Flexibility and agility are key.

The increasing need to maintain competitiveness is increasing the pressure to reduce the costs of space and operations. Designing the workplace to be flexible and agile can facilitate higher densities of occupation, increase space utilisation and ultimately provide more efficient buildings.

It’s time to reconnect the disconnected workplace with collaborative workspace.

Purchased or leased your premises?

Why not maximise your internal volume by installing a mezzanine floor.

Worried about business disruption?

We offer an ‘out of hours office churn’ service meaning we move, re-fit or relocate occupied offices at a time when they’re not being used.

Collaborative working can speed up productivity and the generation of new ideas.

The right use of space can make as much impact on your business as the right choice of people.

Space-pod accepts our responsibility to work safely, cleanly and in a way which is caring to our staff, our customers, our community and the environment.

We have introduced a number of initiatives designed to continuously improve our quality, health & safety and environmental performance, to ensure that our staff are safe and give our customers confidence and peace-of-mind that we will act responsibly at all times. READ MORE >