Purposeful Workspace Design & The Future of Work

Purposeful workspace design creates well-planned environments that will ultimately thrive ahead of any economic change. Implementing a more agile, purpose-driven approach to your office design empowers your team with highly functional workspaces that focus on how they want to work. Combining this strategy with a multi-generational workforce design defies industry standards for productivity, innovative thinking and design resilience moving into the future of work.

Global design firm HOK set out to prove this theory by gathering opinions from open dialog feedback, personal experience, client experiences, demands, and trends and distilling that information into a definitive strategy for creating a purpose-driven work environment staged to improve work lives, client needs, and sustainable design.

From Workplace to Work How

By 2025, two-thirds of the workforce will consist of millennials. Millennial leadership and full technology integration will radically affect not only the workforce’s composition but also how operations work. Millenials are agile, digital natives who value engagement and creativity. They thrive in a primarily Activity-Based Workspace (ABW)

Setting the stage for a workplace culture that adapts to change and surpasses preconceived notions collaboration is a multi-tiered design ‘how’ moment and a huge opportunity to create an innovative design approach where all generations can flourish into the future of work. Continuing to improve employee satisfaction involves utilizing these core methodologies within your office design strategy :

• Activity-Based Workplaces (ABW) offer task-driven solutions that encourage movement and empower location choice for what they need to do.
• Neighborhood-Based Choice Environments (NCE) create a home for teams, balancing a base with the flexibility of diverse work settings.
• Maker Environments & Mobile Occupants (MEMO) amplify creativity and accelerate innovation.
• Hub-Home-Spoke Ecosystem:
  • Hub provides a convergence point for employees and clients, functioning as an engagement center and innovation nexus.
  • Home provides options for dedicated remote work or optimal focused work.
  • Spoke provides a relaxed setting for employees to engage with colleagues and clients.
• Immersive Environments pull from the best workplace lessons and tailor them to a company’s specific needs by creating compelling, branded places.

Purpose-Driven Design

Re-evaluating core values as they apply to how your multi-generational team works is the first step toward reconciling these changes. With the workforce becoming increasingly more mobile, reconceptualizing the purpose of the workplace is important. Unlocking employee potential through effective use of space creates an environment that is not just a place to work, it’s a destination that has the necessary tools and resources to get work done:

• Combined open work areas, closed focus rooms, and quiet zones for enhanced concentration
• On-demand workstations positioned to optimize team interaction, learning, and training
• Large open collaborative areas to foster teamwork and ideation
• Flexible work zones to right-size your workplace footprint

The Future of Work

Today’s workforce is more multi-generational than any before it with an almost even distribution of expertise and age ranges. According to Forbes magazine, having a multi-gen workforce offers a distinct advantage for companies seeking to future-proof their business across a range of industries.

A 2023 Gallup poll revealed that 66% of US employees feel disengaged at work. An updated office design with a well-defined sense of place plays a huge role in altering ineffective cookie-cutter workplaces that no longer support productivity and satisfaction.

Implementing a next-level design strategy that takes into account a wide range of ideas and knowledge from a broad group of workstyles serves as a proving ground for any company focused on employee wellbeing and excelling within their industry. The implications are also significant to the multigenerational end-user base. Providing a scope of knowledge and solutions across a broad, enlightened, range of users.

A collaboration of ideas, furnishings, and design upgrades will play an important role in the synergy of purpose-driven workspaces. Our design team can help you decide how you can work with what you have to begin this design transition. Our project management team has solutions to help you visualize your design updates, upcycle your existing furniture for more advanced performance, and help you develop a staged plan for your future-proof workspace. Become inspired with ideas from our Inspired Workspaces boards. Our blog provides an ongoing dialog to engage you with these changes as they become relevant to the future of work.

Photo from HOK