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Health & Fitness

A Recap of 2013 Office Design Trends

As a consumer we often find ourselves looking for words of wisdom regarding the big trends whether they are related to fashion, automobiles, or technology. Likewise, there have been many office design trends over the course of the last few years that are here to stay, which hopefully will include the continued start-ups and company growth of businesses we have seen recently. Statistically, it is small businesses that have helped rejuvenate the economy over the past year.

For larger companies that grow in size but not in space this ultimately leads to smaller workstation and private office sizes. This has been a common trend occurring that has also been influenced by technological updates. For example, many companies are now providing their employees with cell phones and laptops that provide them with instant access to their e-mails and work. With employees having this mobility to essentially “work anywhere”, employers are beginning to understand that working more collaboratively and in different areas of an office instead of at one desk at all hours of the day is an important trend to recognize.

These changes in technology have led to less required work space for an individual because most work is all computer related. People are not printing and saving physical documents as often because our computers let us view and save them. Therefore, we are able to increase capacity of a business because employees do not need the space. With mobility comes a desire to work more collaboratively. Haworth has a great example of a product that allows an open area meeting space with their WorkWare product that embraces latest laptop uses by allowing multiple people to plug in their laptops to a module and have their work displayed on one TV screen.

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There have also been an increasing amount of “hoteling workstations” used in office design to allow workers to come in the office for an hour and fire up there laptops if they normally do a lot of travelling for the business. Employers in today’s world acknowledge the ever changing way people work, and we enjoy working with less privacy if it allows an increasing amount of daylight and ambiance into our workspace.

Photo Credit: http://www.haworth.com/home/resources/design-tools/image-search?searchQuery=workware

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