10 Office strategies – design approaches, location and community Different organisations apply different strategies to create an attractive office that supports the various different needs of hybrid working. There is a general desire for the office to be a place that stimulates meetings, community and knowledge transfer. At the same time, companies do not want offices that are too large and left half-empty over large swathes of the week. This is both expensive and not conducive to ensuring everyone is visible and able to contribute when at the office. Not all organisations provide quiet or secluded spaces for concentration at the office as a matter of course. A lack of private or quiet spaces can lead employees to avoid the office, and they may use this as justification for working remotely. A number of organisations place focus on the social role that the office plays in a hybrid set-up, and so they expect focused work to be done externally and for staff to plan their work to reduce the need for privacy at the office. Others opt for a middle-way approach by facilitating both quiet work and meetings/interactions. Open-plan spaces are reduced and smaller spatialities are deployed instead. The reclaimed space is turned into smaller rooms for work requiring concentration and digital meetings, as well as flexible project spaces as a complement to open-plan parts of the office. The location of the office can also affect its attractiveness with more central locations tending to hold greater appeal for several reasons. There is a difference in office location between private and public organisations in our study. Fewer than half of the organisations in our sample (44%) are located in the suburbs or in neighbouring municipalities of Stockholm, with Solna being the most common such location. Of these less central offices, more than half belong to public organisations (56%). The majority of private organisations, on the other hand, are located more centrally – either in the city centre or the immediate suburbs (60% and 66% respectively). Among large companies, particularly those in the IT sector, there is a tendency towards a phenomenon known as Disneyficiation, which first took root in the early 2000s. This involves making the office more enjoyable and attractive by introducing creative, fun and entertaining elements into the office environment, such as pingpong tables or a slide instead of stairs.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=