Creating the Office of the Future

If you keep on top of trends and even create them yourself, you’ll be more at home in the future than everyone trying to play catch-up. That’s true for art, music, social norms, and also for business.

The offices and workspaces that will thrive in this changing world are those where innovation, collaboration and new technologies are embraced early. To help you get ahead of the game, here are 5 innovative ways your office can prepare for a better world.

Your Desk Is Everywhere

The idea of employees having their own desk is being eroded from multiple angles to create more fluid, collaborative, and creative work environments. The idea is to create the physical and cultural conditions that allow for more vibrant ways of working.

For some companies, that means simply eliminating assigned desks. For others, the solution is easily movable and reconfigurable furniture, desks, and workspaces that allow collaborative teams to naturally change as a project or idea dictates.

The Barbarian Group in New York City took this commitment to collaboration to its logical extreme – their office space features a single, weaving 410 square metre desk that seats 170 people. This is everyone’s desk, from the CEO to the admin staff and it also features undulations that create quiet, cave-like spaces for private discussion or meetings.

Make Your Office Smarter

Introducing automated, intelligent technology into your office can create better working conditions – and boost productivity – as well as making your energy use more economically efficient and eco-friendly.

A great example of this for an office environment is automated blinds that open and close at specified times of day to make the most of natural light, help control temperature, and protect office furniture and employees from UV rays.

Geoexchange Technologies

Geoexchange technologies, or heat pumps, can drastically reduce the amounts of energy required for heating and cooling your office. By drawing heat or cold from outside or underground and pumping it into the workplace environment, a geoexchange upgrade will make your office less expensive to run.

Try Some LED

If you don’t have LED lighting in your office or workspace yet, just make the change. Do it now. LEDs use 80% less energy than halogen globes and 25% less than energy saving CLFs. With that much of an efficiency advantage it’s only so long before they’re mandatory anyway, so why not outrun the EPA?

Plants for Productivity

Add some plants and greenery to your office. This could be simple pot plants, a hanging garden above a conference table, or an indoor orange grove like the one that transformed Google’s Tel Aviv office into an indoor Eden. A green office communicates positive messages to staff, making them feel valued and looked after, and that contributes to greater productivity – up to a 15% increase, according to studies from the Netherlands and the UK.

The team at Somfy is on the forefront of automation technology for homes and offices of the future. To learn more about our range, visit your nearest retailer.