Despite the rising popularity of remote and hybrid roles, it’s clear that office spaces are here to stay, office interior design just needs a slight tech upgrade. From facilitating greater mobility and accessibility to protecting employee wellbeing, tech-integrated office design is the future.
If you’re looking to update your office interior design but you’re not sure where to start, read on for some inspiration.
Office interior design to boost productivity
One of the benefits of hybrid and remote work is the increased flexibility it allows your team. People can find a better work/life balance without sacrificing the quality of their work.
One of the challenges of this, however, is that modern office spaces are often not well designed to accommodate hybrid teams. Tech-integrated office design can help.
Soundproof booths
It can be hard to concentrate when members of your team are taking different Zoom meetings around you. Combat this by providing comfortable and private sound-proof booths with power outlets, high-quality webcams and microphones, or large scale displays that people can step into when they have a virtual meeting.
Mobile options
A desktop PC and a landline are no longer enough equipment to allow your team to do their jobs well. Facilitate more productive remote or hybrid working setups by ensuring team members have adequate mobile technology to do their job from anywhere and ensure that you have strong connectivity throughout your office space to allow employees to make full use of hotdesking, meeting rooms, and formal and informal working areas.
Some office spaces have decided to do away with PCs entirely as modern laptops are generally powerful enough to support the software necessary for work. If you decide to take this route, you should provide sufficient desktop accessories to make using a laptop in the office comfortable. For example, a screen monitor and/or laptop stand, a USB keyboard and mouse, and comfortable ergonomic office chairs.
Tech for better communication
In the modern workplace, there is a trend toward offices as sites of collaboration, creativity, and communication. The days of individual cubicles and isolated workspaces are long gone, hot-desking, informal breakout spaces and tech-enabled coworking are in.
Interactive screens and touch tables
Make the most of meetings with large-scale displays that function as aesthetic art features, digital whiteboards and presentation screens all in one.
Or fit meeting rooms with an even more futuristic solution: touch-tables. These interactive conference tables allow team members to easily move content around screens, work on documents together in real-time and even use object recognition technology to work with physical objects and digital content at once.
Bench desks and break out spaces with integrated power points
According to PWC, for a third of the workforce (34%), ‘the motivation to use technology comes from curiosity and the promise of better efficiency and teamwork’. Offices need to provide tech solutions that encourage collaboration and help employees think outside of the box.
Providing unusual working areas like break-out spaces and bench desks with plenty of integrated power points disrupts the boxed-in thinking that standard desk setups promote and allows team members to work together in new ways.
Tech integrated office design for wellbeing
Did you know that stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 50% of all work-related ill health cases in 2021? It’s never been more critical to create a healthy and accommodating working environment for your team. Here are some ideas:
Daylight reactive lighting
Studies have shown that exposure to natural light helps people to maintain healthy sleeping patterns and generally feel better and brighter.
Where possible, your office interior design should allow for the flow of natural light through windows. But when this simply isn’t possible, daylight reactive lighting which mimics and simulates changing natural light throughout the day is a good solution.
Relaxing well-being spaces
After a few years of increased isolation, many people can find stepping back into crowded offices a little overwhelming. It’s a good idea to provide quiet, private spaces where people can take a moment for themselves if needed during the work day.
These spaces should be discreetly located so that people don’t feel judged on how often or how long they spend there. They should simulate a calming environment with comfortable seating and indirect lamp lighting. Take this further by insulating the space from outside noise and offering a choice of calming audio tracks through discreet speakers if the user wishes.
Design for accessibility
It’s important to recognise that approximately 70% of disabilities are not visible, so designing for accessibility means a lot more than simply making a space wheelchair-friendly.
Variety of working spaces
Both neurodivergent and neurotypical employees have a range of needs and working styles so accommodate as many working preferences as you can in your office design.
Audio distractions are one of the most common causes of dissatisfaction in a workplace with unpredictable, intermittent noise being the biggest offender. However, the issue is often not that places are too loud but that they are too quiet as modern technology tends to reduce the usual hum of activity such as noisy keyboards or ringing landlines.
Acoustic engineers can help you create a variety of different environments throughout your office space, allowing people to work in the space they need for maximum comfort and productivity.
Adaptable furniture
Ensure your office spaces and technology are accessible to everyone by making small changes such as adopting touch-operated lighting rather than toggle switches, using accessible pull handles on all doors not just those into the disabled bathrooms and using signage that accommodates visual impairments throughout your space.
You should also consider height adjusting desks to allow people to either stand or sit at various heights and will accommodate wheelchair users comfortably as well as installing multi-sensory alarms in case of emergency evacuations.
In all instances, your accessible office furniture, alarms, and signage should be consistent with the interior design throughout your office so that disabled employees do not feel singled out when using them.
Talk to our team
Ready to invest in your team’s well-being and productivity with tech-integrated office interior design? Our team can help you figure out what’s right for your business and find the best solutions on the market for your needs.
We’re integration experts - if the tech exists, we can help your business use it. Talk to a member of the team today.