With most employees double vaccinated, companies are asking staff to return to office work. But, how can your office layout and design entice them?
Tap into 30+ years of expertise from Burovision, workplace strategists and furniture specialists, to get practical advice on how your office can evolve into a destination where your team wants to be.
This is an edited transcript of a discussion between Burovision’s Gillian Oxley-Harper and OBJ publisher Michael Curran. To hear the full interview, please watch the video above.
CURRAN: The first thing people experience at an office is the reception area. Tell us about your ideas to transform this area.
OXLEY-HARPER: When you think about a post-pandemic reception area, don’t think about it as a desk where the courier drops things off. What we want to do is create a multi-purpose space, similar to a hotel lobby. It can be a place to work, to collaborate and to host. We want to be thinking beyond that conservative approach, and more about creating a guest zone, or an office within an office that both employees and visitors can utilize.
CURRAN: Moving past the reception area, there is something called a resident zone, for those who want to fully return to the office. What is your vision for that space?
OXLEY-HARPER: We need to treat these areas similar to a neighbourhood. There should be workstations, privacy panels and division between these workable areas. People working in this area can have an assigned workstation that is theirs, but they should also have immediate access to private meeting rooms and touch down points for informal meetings.
