KEY POINTS:
We may have to credit Al Gore or possibly the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the latest trend in office design.
Mainstream workplaces are going green, says Andrew Tu'inukuafe, design director of Auckland architects Creative Spaces.
Tu'inukuafe, who specialises in interior architecture, said unlike the green office of the past, which was likely to express its environmentalism in hemp fabric and oiled, rough hewn wood, the new green is deep not loud.
"Now it's just like any other commercial design but more care is taken in the way it's put together, even down to the finishes used. The big things are energy and water use," he said.
Better results could be achieved in new buildings but that was not deterring those with existing offices and his company was working with a firm refurbishing a 1970s building to make it a more environmentally sound and sustainable site.
With the impact of global climate change figuring increasingly high on the agenda of a growing number of people, thanks in part to former US vice-president Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, and reinforced by this month's bleak warnings from the IPCC, the greening of offices is likely to sit well with the people who work in them or are contemplating doing so.
Research has repeatedly shown that office design is a key tool in staff recruitment and retention.
"Some studies have shown it's even more important than the remuneration," Tu'inukuafe said. "Anecdotally, with our clients, we've found it is hugely influential.
"It's not so much about any particular design but it's having something that expresses the culture and brand of the company in a wider sense. It's not just having the 2D [two-dimensional] stuff but having the 3D consistent with what they are telling you - that inside the company the internal brand is consistent with the external brand. It's about consistency with the values, branding and culture expressed by the company. You want to see that when you go there, that it would be a nice place for you to work."
Around 15 years ago, businesses were more interested in efficiency of space rather than the environment and how it affected staff, said Tu'inukuafe.
"For at least the last five years, managers have realised they have to provide the best possible environment for staff and are much more receptive to the argument that the environment can affect the way in which people work and their productivity."
Some of the key issues for managers and designers are workplaces that help to attract and retain staff, and are comfortable and supportive working environments.
"Wherever you look, whether to HR or the bottom line or the trend toward more work-life balance, it all tends to influence the workplace and making it a much friendlier environment," Tu'inukuafe said.
Research into office design by US workplace analysts Bosti Associates underscores Tu'inukuafe's view. It examined the open plan office, which emerged in the 1960s and quickly became popular with employers for its apparent space-saving and hence cost-saving benefits.
The Bosti report, entitled "Disproving widespread myths about workplace design", suggested a new way to look at these costs, calculating that staff was the highest cost of operating a business comprising 82 per cent of expenditure, facility costs were just 5 per cent, technology costs 10 per cent, and operations 3 per cent.
The workplace qualities with the strongest effects on job performance and satisfaction were those supporting both distraction-free work and interaction with co-workers, Bosti found. It suggested that the right workplace design affected the performance and retention of employees, the largest cost factor for a company.
"The dollar value of the benefits of appropriately designed offices is substantial, as are the costs of poorly designed ones," the analysts concluded.
Business goals of "needing a more open organisation" with more and better communication have often been translated into physical openness. Bosti tested whether open offices did increase the frequency and quality of communication and found the reverse.
Ease and quality of communication were highest for those in private offices and lowest for those in open spaces. Those with open offices were found to have fewer and shorter impromptu meetings, less candid discussions, and frequent distractions caused by others' conversations. Only 20 per cent found overhearing others' conversations useful.
"With acoustic privacy, people can speak frankly, without fear of being overheard, and can more effectively avoid interruption and disruption of the discussion," Bosti said. "A high degree of enclosure, such as that found in a small private office, can support both concentration and good communication."
Tu'inukuafe said there was now a greater understanding about how to make work environments function best, "whether by having a great staff café and break-out spaces or having adjacent quiet workrooms or meeting rooms where you can concentrate.
"There's been a trend away from being so hard-line on space efficiency and almost a flip back to more enclosed office environments."
The shift was not a condemnation of open plan but a response to poor design, he said.
"The failing of the design is often part of the larger failing. Because in order to upgrade the organisation you not only upgrade the fit-out but you've got to do everything else."
Other factors to take into account included technology, computers, types of software, business processes, the training of staff to work in certain ways, and support for them.
The latest workplace designs are "very much focused on the types of task and processes that are unique to that organisation, Tu'inukuafe said. "It may be open, it may be closed - it's generally providing a diversity of settings for work, choices for people, support in terms of both enabling technology whether that be video-conferencing or smart boards, or AVs. It's being able to work most productively at your choice and within many places within the office."
Two projects done recently by Creative Spaces reflected the different requirements of two of the company's Auckland clients, American Express and IBM.
The American Express office is open plan and the company has a flexible work strategy which enables staff to choose whether they work at home, at a client's site or in the Amex office. In the office they can choose where they would like to work, too, from a zone of work desks, in the cafe space, the library or a meeting room complete with technology that allows them to connect with colleagues worldwide.
IBM's requirements were different. "IBM is a very large, quite diverse and dispersed organisation," said Tu'inukuafe. "It was creating a client facility where IBM staff could get together. So its office is a meeting point and a social hub so that physically and socially people could get together but they could also move into rooms where they have all the technology at their fingertips."
The design was based around a reception, large café and social area complimented by meeting and product demonstration rooms.
At the core of all office design was the need to foster interaction, Tu'inukuafe said.
"People are realising that face-to-face is still very important and in that way the offices are much more about social strategy," he said. "You want people to come in and connect with staff, connect with the culture and brand of the company. These offices are built around the idea that you do bump into people and talk to them and that ad hoc communication is really a huge part of sharing information in an organisation, building up relationships and knowledge in order to work together on projects and innovate."
