What You Needed to Know about the Workplace in 2016

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Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie is a Workplace Consultant at Herman Miller and the former Editor of Work Design Magazine. She’s currently based in Pittsburgh.

To close out the year, we’ve rounded up our ten most popular Expert Insight and Tips & Trends articles published in 2016. The stories cover everything from furniture design trends to what learning differences can teach us about workplace strategy to the future of office space as a service. Take a cruise through and arm yourself with the essential workplace insights you’ll need to get a head start in 2017.

10. NeoCon 2016 in Review

Clocking in at our tenth most popular post of the year: our round up of the furniture design trends we saw at NeoCon 2016. Even with what seemed to be this year’s popular concessions to privacy across increasingly open floor plates — high-backed booths that look suspiciously like, well, restaurant booths, and mobile furniture (marker boards, carts, perches) that you can move around on casters to create “space within a space” — there’s no denying that almost all of the new products we saw have been designed to support work in an open space, and what’s more: impermanently so. Read more >>

9. Try These Space Hacks in Your Office

As humans, we often make modifications to the environments we inhabit to better serve our needs. In some spaces we have more freedom to make changes than others. In our own homes, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the way we customize our living spaces. But what happens when we enter the workplace? This is a space that has historically allowed for very little modification possibilities. In this article, Sasha Ragland shares four easy space hacks to help tailor your office to you. Read more >>

8. Learning Differences and What They Mean for Workplace Strategy

This is the first article in a three part series by Arnold Levin, examining the relationship between one’s learning style, work style, and their importance to the development of meaningful workplace design strategies. Here, he begins by framing the problem, exploring the context, issues, needs, and gaps around the areas of learning differences, along with problems with current attitudes and thinking around learning differences and relationships to workplace strategies. Read more >>

7. 10 Predictions for Coworking in 2017

We know for sure you’ve heard of coworking by now. It’s not just a fad — it’s here to stay. Why? Because coworking brings with it a new chapter of opportunities and innovation. Whether it’s developers looking for a way to add vibrancy to new buildings or the “combo space” becoming the go-to design in smaller markets, more and more people are looking to leverage coworking as the industry continues to grow. In this premium piece, Jamie Russo shares her top ten predictions for coworking in 2017. Read more >>

6. Learning from the Worst Workplaces Ever

At one time or another in our professional lives, we have all found ourselves in a work environment that was so uninspiring that it taught us something. That corner office that was in such a poor state that you felt the uncontrollable urge to rearrange immediately, shifting around filing cabinets and desks to create some sense of community. It can actually be a fabulous and enriching exercise to learn from the bad. The truth is, sometimes the worst workplaces can inspire the best design solutions. In this article, Marie Puybaraud shares her experience. Read more >>

5. Let’s Stop with the Millennial Bashing, Already

Stephanie Douglass tells us that she’s lost count of the number of times she’s heard millennials in the workforce referred to as a foreign species who demand things like “flexibility” and “input” and will only work while wearing headphones and sitting on beanbags. Anytime she hears someone reference “the millennials”, two things pop into her head: one, if you’re using the term, then you’re not one (and likely not speaking to one), and two, haven’t we learned that putting large cohorts of people into stereotypical buckets generally doesn’t end well? Read more >>

4. Designing for the Way We Work Now

When The Frontier Project, a Richmond, Va.-based boutique consulting firm, set out to design a new studio, they saw it as an opportunity to create a place that not only reflects their brand, but also amplifies the performance of employees. In this article, Stevie Toepke shares how they borrowed from the best of traditional office design as well as more creative office concepts to provide a variety of options, places, and configurations their employees could use as they see fit. Read more >>

3. The Future of Office Space as a Service

When we talk about the future of office space as a service, it turns out that the future may not be about the space at all. Take, for example, RocketSpace, a tech campus for startups in San Francisco and London. In this article, we interview RocketSpace founder Duncan Logan about his vision for his growing company: to be a tech ecosystem, where the office space they provide is merely a platform for the “curated community” and other services they offer to members. Read more >>

2. An Office that Moves People

Inspired to re-envision your workplace? At JLL, they’re in the midst of a major headquarters refresh in Chicago’s landmark Aon Center. When complete in spring 2017, the revitalized headquarters will exude connection, choice, and agility. On the occasion of the completion of the first phase of the ambitious project — they unveiled two reimagined floors that put into action all of the workplace strategy advice they provide to clients — Ed Nolan gives us a behind-the-scenes look at what’s been done and what’s to come. Read more >>

1. How Does an Office Dress for Success?

Would you bring an important new client to your workplace to “meet the office”, or is the buzzing cafe down the block your preferred VIP rendezvous spot? Would you invite your best friend or parents to see where you work, or prefer to spare them the detail? The answers to these questions speak volumes about the current state of our workplaces — and the opportunities they offer. In our most popular article of the year, Bernice Boucher explains how the physical manifestation of company culture in workplace design is a critical part of the 3Es of employee engagement: efficiency, effectiveness, and expression. Read more >>

 

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