Office job is evolving due to the changing scope of duties, development of technologies, the needs of employees, or the change of management style. Office as the environment of its performance is attempting to follow these transformations. Rows of desks in grey rooms go out with the window right now, whereas office space is arranged in such a way to provide comfortable conditions for performance of tasks and to meet the requirements set forth by the employees. How do offices actually change? Ewelina Adamus, Senior Consultant in the Department of Research and Development of Space, Nowy Styl Group, points out: In a simplified version, the process of this evolution can be presented within 3 dimensions of transition: from stationary work to mobile work, from routine work to conceptional work, from individual work to team work. Let’s discuss all of them.
From stationary to mobile
According to the analyses conducted by Nowy Styl Group, the level of desk occupancy in organizations amounts to 55 per cent on average. What does it mean in practice? It is related to the fact that employees perform their tasks not at their desks but in other places for almost half of their time. It is because of a more and more popular mobile style of work. Considering mobility in terms of internal aspect, work is performed on various areas in the office, whereas the increasingly popular external mobility is based on remote work from home, café, during business trip, or from other departments. The transition from stationary work at the desk to work from different places in the office or outside the workplace is related to the introduction of facilities within office space, which can allow for smooth performance of tasks by employees.
From routine to conceptional
There are more and more duties which are treated as conceptional mental work and which used to be based on routine and repetitive tasks. Among activities in the office environment, the ones which are gaining increasing importance are: analyses, creative work, conceptual thinking or self-development. Do offices provide adequate circumstances for their comfortable performance? As Ewelina Adamus points out: At present, open space often does not provide proper conditions for performing such tasks. The participants of our survey believe noise and no opportunities for work in silence to be one of the major disadvantages in the workplace. While thinking about office space, it is worth taking a crucial factor into consideration, that is concentration and places dedicated for it.
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