The design of flexible workspaces and the choice of suitable technologies require a human-centric approach that puts employees and collaborators at the center of decisions. Flexibility and agility have become key competencies for organizations that want to adapt to market changes and employee expectations, and they involve spaces designed and equipped with new technologies.
Together with the AGMultivision team, we design and implement the digital transformation of many companies, interpreting needs with tailored solutions.
In this article:
- Changing work culture through design and technology
- Digital transformation: where to start
- Technologies to improve in-person work as well
- Collaborative technologies: when form is also content
- Choose the solution that truly transforms work in your company
Changing work culture through design and technology
In recent years, the pandemic has changed our work habits, but for formal transformations to become a cultural change, it is necessary to rethink the culture and design of workspaces from a new perspective.
Employee experience has indeed become a key factor for the success of corporate digital transformation, also to ensure the best conditions for employees and collaborators, thereby retaining talent within the company.
The choice between in-person work and remote working is impacted by the choice of technologies a company decides to adopt: the chosen solutions must not only be the most effective for productivity but must also maximize the flexibility and freedom of those who work.
For this reason, the choice of technology in the company today requires a human-centric approach.
Despite this clear direction, most work environments, both at home and in the office, are still poorly suited to offering the ergonomics necessary to operate with collaboration technologies, which are now indispensable.
Rethinking the culture and design of workspaces is an important and necessary step for all companies that want to look to the future with optimism.
Digital transformation: where to start
Technological solutions are the starting point, but also the end point of a process of dialogue, study, and design.
The design of flexible workspaces and the choice of suitable technologies require great experience and flexibility to ensure performance and modularity over time, while maintaining a human-centric approach at the center: flexibility and agility have become key competencies for organizations that want to adapt to market changes and employee expectations.
Choosing the right technological solutions is a means to increase employee engagement and satisfaction. Video conferencing and group chats are now the norm. 65% of organizations say they use video conferencing regularly, while 56% rely regularly on group chats or messaging apps. (*).
Technologies to improve in-person work as well
One of the difficulties companies are facing during this period is related to the return to in-person work, as many employees no longer believe that the benefits of working in a shared office space outweigh the challenges of long commutes, travel issues, and loss of work-life balance, leaving thousands of square meters of workspace deserted. Despite this, full-time remote work is not without its difficulties, so much so that many employees suffer from meeting fatigue when working remotely and feel disadvantaged when participating in remote meetings compared to in-person mode.
Challenges range from the technical sphere, such as lack of bandwidth and internet connection issues, to social or professional ones. For example, weakened relationships with colleagues and the loss of corporate culture/mentoring opportunities due to remote work.
How to find the right balance?
Here too, technology comes to our aid.
Investments in modern offices offer new energy to employees and foster teamwork, creativity, and the creation of corporate social networks. Every aspect of the physical office, from the lobby to the meeting room, must be digitized; meeting rooms, in particular, are increasingly a fundamental space for business development. Furthermore, new types of meeting spaces are emerging to facilitate, for example, individual privacy or digital workspaces.
There is a growing focus on transforming meeting rooms into collaboration hubs, equipping them with modern technologies that allow employees to achieve maximum productivity. This includes the integration of AI into audio-video, high-quality displays, and digital whiteboards.
Intelligent software makes an important contribution to new technologies, improving usability and increasing usage. We are talking about software for booking workspaces, parking spaces, scheduling panels that show the availability of meeting rooms and individual workstations, digital in-room meeting controllers to quickly join meetings with a single click, and room sensors that not only ensure optimal occupancy but also free up space if the meeting ends early or if participants do not show up.
Collaborative technologies: when form is also content
Equally important is the growing need to create inclusive video meetings for everyone, adopting new furnishings (for example, V-shaped tables instead of round or rectangular ones) and optimal camera positioning, including the use of multi-camera technologies. It follows that the design of spaces and their technological equipment changes according to user needs, the type of workspace, the type of collaborative activity carried out in that specific space, the size of the space, the frequency with which that space is used, and finally the number of available environments. It would be impossible to equip and set up a meeting room and a training room with the same technologies, or a phone booth (a term used for private individual workstations) and a huddle room (a collaborative workspace for up to 3-4 people), or the home workspace and the booked desk in the office.
Choose the solution that truly transforms work in your company
There is no single solution to invest in, and companies are becoming aware of this. Today, there is a wide range of options that, if chosen and implemented correctly, bring benefits to the company such as cost reduction and greater freedom of choice for employees on not only where to work, but also how to work.
Regarding meeting rooms, for example, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) offers users greater flexibility to collaborate with their preferred meeting platform on their preferred device. In this way, users do not have to learn additional technologies present in the rooms. Furthermore, BYOD allows users to access their important data and applications. This option is also more cost-effective, allowing companies to create collaborative spaces using flexible components of different types and price ranges.
Every workspace, whether in the office or at home, has different needs. Technology must support them all. To achieve this goal together, our extensive experience, which combines design capabilities with consultancy to choose the best solution, makes us reliable and solid partners. Together, we can tackle digital transformation with tailored solutions for your needs and for the satisfaction of clients, employees, and collaborators.
* Survey recently conducted by Frost & Sullivan among approximately 1,200 IT managers worldwide to understand the main priorities of work environments
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