Design for What People Do, Not Where They Sit

Squaredot

10 minutes ago

4 min read

Most offices are still planned around one thing: the desk. But people don’t come into the office to sit at a desk. They come to meet, collaborate, focus and connect, and a floor full of identical workstations supports only one of those.

Still planning for a sea of desks

Across Squaredot’s workplace analysis studies, covering 80 UK offices and feedback from more than 30,000 people, desk use has rarely come close to capacity. Before the pandemic, average desk utilisation sat at around 50%. Since then, our results show an average of just 41%.

Yet many floor plates still give over most of their space to rows of desks, leaving little room for the settings people actually need. When we asked, 75% of people said the future workplace should offer a variety of settings to support different activities.

As one stakeholder put it in a Squaredot interview: “We don’t need a vast sea of workstations. Today, it’s more about how we communicate with each other.”

Making room to grow at CBRE IM

When CBRE Investment Management asked Squaredot to rethink its London office at One New Change, the brief came with a challenge. Headcount was set to grow from around 230 to 330 people, and simply adding more desks wasn’t an option. The existing floor had also become dated and uninspiring, hardly a place people wanted to be.

Our analysis showed the answer wasn’t more workstations but a better mix of settings. The new design shares around 120 workstations alongside 80 alternative collaborative positions, so roughly 250 people can be comfortably accommodated across the space at any one time. A critical focus was on quiet, acoustically controlled spaces, giving people somewhere to concentrate as well as somewhere to meet.

The look and feel changed just as much as the layout, with natural materials and a considered use of colour replacing the old, tired landscape. Staff returned to an overwhelming sense of excitement about being back in the office. As John Mulqueen, MD and Head of Offices EMEA at CBRE IM, put it: “I’m glad to see the positive way that everyone has responded to our new environment.”

Why sticking plasters don’t work

When an office stops working, the instinct is often to fix the symptom. Calls are disturbing people, so a phone booth goes in. Meeting rooms are always full, so a corner gets partitioned off. Each change makes sense on its own, but together they rarely add up to a workplace that works.

The CEO of a Premier League football club described this perfectly in a Squaredot interview: “We’re now in a situation where we have a patchwork quilt of upgrades that are not fit for purpose and at a point where another sticking plaster wouldn’t be right.”

These knee-jerk decisions often lead to higher costs, reduced productivity and missed opportunities. Where a break space sits decides which teams bump into each other, and where focus areas sit decides whether they’re actually quiet. Those choices need to be made together, as part of one plan, not one problem at a time.

Start by watching how people work

Before changing anything, spend a week finding out what really happens on your floor. Walk the space at the same times each day, mid-morning and mid-afternoon work well, and note what people are doing and where: heads-down work, calls, small huddles, larger meetings, or nobody there at all. Then compare that picture with what your layout provides.

Most businesses find a mismatch. In our surveys, the settings people most want to see are spaces for informal meetings (71%), meeting pods for Teams and phone calls (69%), collaborative team spaces (68%) and break-out areas (62%). Very few are asking for more desks.

Once you know the activities, the design follows. A few principles we use time and again:

Put large shared tables beside team zones, so they work for collaboration day to day and as touchdown spaces on peak days.
Give calls somewhere to go, with one- and two-person pods or booths away from the desks, so focused workers aren’t disturbed.
Plan the social space deliberately, because where you put the break area decides which teams collide.
Design for the peaks and the troughs, not just the busiest day, so the floor doesn’t feel empty on a Monday or Friday.

It’s not about desks alone. It’s about the right setting for the activity.

Designing the habitat

We are all creatures of habit, and for those habits to shift, we need to create new habitats. A workplace designed around activity, rather than headcount, gives people a reason to come in and the right place to do their best work once they’re there.

Want to see the evidence behind the design? The Dynamic Workplace report draws on Squaredot’s analysis of 80 workplaces and feedback from more than 30,000 people, covering desk utilisation, employee profiles and how to design for what people truly need to do in the office. It also includes the full CBRE IM project analysis.

Explore The Dynamic Workplace report.