Creative Workspace Construction for the Modern Office

Just as commercial stores have specific, branded looks, feels and experiences for their customers, today’s business offices often have their own branded in-office experiences. Think about Google, or even Facebook, notorious for re-inventing the office space. Google has been affiliated with helping to put in place the open format co-working office model. Such businesses request creative workplace construction and depend on construction companies who can provide this. But Google’s own look and feel won’t work exactly for everyone. Today many businesses want to use their branded color palette, and style, for furniture, wall colors, fixtures, signage and overall office experience. However it’s not just colors and style that have changed. While cubicle farms may have worked for the Baby Boomers who sought more privacy, today’s Millenials seek a more open format for collaboration - and increasingly, businesses are sensitive to this fact. Businesses today are realizing that Baby Boomers are retiring, and they want to attract Millenials for the long haul. Creative workplace construction firms are building entirely new office environments. Attributes of today’s more flexible offices include: • Lower cubicle walls (if walls at all) • Pods for multi-person seating • Collaborative stations • Standing desks • Raised café-style chairs and tables • Creative, open, large break rooms with relaxed seating • Cafés instead of traditional closed-off break rooms • Collaborative conference rooms with changeable walls, writing walls and options for standing and sitting • More windows (even interior windows), fewer walls • More tables, fewer confined desks • Ergonomic table options to angle keyboards • Privacy phone booths for calls to decrease loud individual phone disruption • Break activity options such as ping-pong tables or video games • Comfortable lounge chairs or couches • Multi-level flooring to separate areas (as opposed to walls) Many of these office attributes are conceived to cover a couple of goals; one of which being a “fun” work environment. For today’s Millenials, often a fun, relaxed, comfortable work environment is more important than extra income. And companies are realizing this and attempting to satisfy these desires. Another goal is to increase collaboration between departments and the innovation that comes from this. Departments by nature tend to close themselves off from one another, and programmers or other producers may misunderstand or even be resentful of departments such as sales or marketing (who may have their own in-fighting as well). In a more modern open format, these departments are forced to interact more, can run into each other in the larger break or coffee rooms, and discuss and even spark new ideas among each other. Another realization of today’s office model is the importance of sunlight and transparency - which is a major driver for the open format. Large windows - whether exterior or interior - are desirable for this reason. There are common models today where open format employee seating exists around the perimeter windows of a business, while the conference rooms and offices stand in the center. In this way valuable sunlight is fed to the most employees, but also in these non-cubicle environments the light is allowed to permeate the center areas as well. It’s important to remember that Baby Boomers and introverts may still prefer more closed-off, private environments. So it can be valuable to have options that serve several types of workers for maximum productivity. There are a lot of advantages to today’s creative workplaces, and construction companies are increasingly building them. It’s important to find a creative workplace construction firm that can produce such an office even from a design build standpoint – from start to finish. Read more about a creative workspace construction firm - see BuildRite Construction's Design Build Services