Three key elements of hybrid offices

How to provide a comfortable workplace, freedom and flexibility for employees, so that they can choose where to perform their assigned tasks? In business, this issue is always prominent, and to meet the current needs of staff, employers and office design specialists are rethinking workspaces. This rethinking is about aesthetics as well as functionality, and to achieve it the most important thing is to find the exact relationship between the functions of the rooms and their size.

In the last few years, hybrid offices have come to the fore because they provide an ideal combination of two options – sometimes visiting the physical office (when the team has joint activities) and the rest of the time working on individual tasks from home or anywhere else. So the team stays connected, the work is not done entirely remotely, and yet there is distance. Such flexibility provides the necessary work-life balance and is the best possible option. But to make it happen, it is necessary to design new workspaces or reorganize the standard ones. To meet the needs of a dispersed global force, businesses are undertaking a design change, and here are the key elements.

In this type of office, it is important to have space – for movement and for thinking. When the space is not large, spaciousness is achievable with good lighting, namely abundant diffuse (indirect) light.

Let’s not forget that hybrid offices are primarily a place for meetings with the company’s team, partners and customers, and the right lighting is responsible for how the conversations will proceed. Designers advise avoiding sources of irritatingly strong artificial light, providing large windows or glazed atrium-type ceilings, if the room allows; central and focused lighting to be selected skillfully and positioned so as not to obstruct vision; walls to be painted in light airy and radiant tones. All this contributes to the fresh working atmosphere and people’s mood.

For the design of a hybrid office, the designers offer a practical shape of the furniture and movable dividing elements. Through them, every corner can be used as efficiently as possible for different types of activities and meetings.

Sometimes meetings last a long time, and when the chairs are uncomfortable, they seem even longer, so the chosen type of furniture and their placement depends on how the discussion will go. When it comes to video calls, it is important that everyone can clearly see the other members of the conversation, so the furniture and its placement should match the size of the space. Chairs should be ergonomic and tables should be rounded to allow the camera to see more people. If the chairs are lounge chairs and the desks are standing, they would encourage brainstorming meetings as well as informal conversations.

How can close and distant partners interact and get along well at work? If hybrid offices are not equipped with the right technology, this will not be possible. A bad audio connection can ruin even the most well-intentioned meeting. As well as poor video quality, insufficient access to power for devices, problems with their synchronization… A bunch of problems that can be avoided if you think in advance about equipping with the right hardware, tools for connecting shared devices, convenient access to power on the devices, suitable screens, camera, microphone.