What Makes an Office a Better Place to Work?

By
Santiago
2016-07-11
What Makes an Office a Better Place to Work?

After seeing how our office shapes our behaviours and promotes our culture, my curious mind wanted to know what was behind all this. Now here I am, about to share it with you lucky people ;)I promise I’ll avoid expressions like, “it’s not an office, it’s an experience,” that will make you want to run a mile.

From Skepticism to Complete Conviction

We’ve all heard of the amazing office spaces some tech companies and startups have. When I was getting to know the startup world I was skeptical. Of course, I could appreciate the aesthetics of those places and their fun atmospheres—how about the slide they have at Google headquarters in Switzerland? Nice, eh?

Google Office in Zurich

However, I couldn’t avoid thinking: “It’s nice, but is it really promoting their culture or shaping the way employees work?” My apologies for having failed to grasp the deeper role of all this. Now I am a convert.

The Office Design Shapes How You Work

You’ll be happy to know that you don’t need a slide in the middle of the office to get there. It’s not about splashing money around, but more about understanding what behaviours you want to encourage and what aspects of your culture you want to reflect.The design of our office encourages certain behaviours and reflects important aspects of our culture, such as collaborative work and social interactions.Let me tell you a little about it. Our main space consists of an open-plan arrangement where we each have our own individual workstation— here you can see the office in a 360º image.There are dividing shelves that don’t block the open-plan feeling but allow you to have your own cocoon if you need it. So, we have the best of both worlds, and if you really want to find a proper quiet space, there are plenty around the office. Since they say that pictures speak louder than words:[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="2" gal_title="ShuttleCloud Office"]There are different areas which allow for different types of work. For example, we have spaces that encourage a more collaborative type of work with higher tables that a team can gather around and whiteboards to write down code or ideas.

Engineering team meeting - ShuttleCloud

There Are not Predetermined Rules for How the Different Spaces Should Be Used

Yes, we each have our own desk, but we tell employees to feel free to sit anywhere in the office that they feel suits them based on their mood or the work they are doing. The office is an ever changing environment where some spaces are used more for one purpose than others, but there is plenty of flexibility. I’ll tell you more about this later on.

Office-ShuttleCloud

Why Come to the Office When You Can Work in Your Pyjamas?

If you can work remotely, why would you bother to jump out of bed, have a shower, get dressed, and commute to work when you can roll out of bed, stay in your pjs, and work from home listening to your favourite tunes?1. This space is cozyI believe one important reason we keep coming to work is how comfortable this place feels. Around the office, we have:

  • Loads of plants.
  • Several sofas with plenty of pillows.
  • A kitchen full of healthy (and maybe-not-so healthy, but yummy) snacks.
  • A patio area.
  • And we can decorate and bring as many personal objects as we want.

We feel so comfortable here that you might see one of us having a rest on one of the sofas. This doesn’t happen often, but if you’ve stayed up late answering emails or dealing with an alarm, there’s nothing wrong with a 5-minute power nap. The only drawback is that you will probably find a photo of yourself in the arms of Morpheus posted to Slack with the caption “Hard at Work”—a small price to pay, if you ask me. ;P

Resting in the office after a hard day

2. A place where the team socialisesShuttleCloud culture acknowledges the importance of social interactions and the spaces around the office encourage them. Do you remember how I mentioned the “ever changing” aspect of this office? Here is where it plays an important role. When we’re not holding meetups in the event area, it doubles as meeting space or an improvised cinema.

FreeZone

We can have all-hands meetings in the sofa area or just hang around there with a coffee. The meeting room with two TV screens can become the perfect sports bar when there are two matches taking place at the same time. The office’s design encourages social interactions and makes people feel cozy, comfortable, and even playful, which brings me to my next point.3. Embrace your inner childIn our society, work and play are treated as mutually exclusive. And sometimes, playing is considered an activity reserved for children. But does it have to be that way? We don’t believe so. I’ve seen colleagues working for hours — sometimes everyone's so focused that you could hear a pin drop. And I've seen them work into the wee hours of the day, attending critical matters, or handling system alerts even at Christmas parties.But I have also seen them playing around our office and having a good time, too. Our office, with our big "bouncing balls", abundance of nerf guns, sofa corners, lazy bags and cozy spaces, is also a great place to hang out with your colleagues: go deep into an insightful, play table games after lunch, or just have an icecream while discussing important work matters with a colleague — in horizontal mode.Our society usually misses the benefits of play—research shows that it nourishes trust and stimulates creativity. If this is a little too hocus-pocus for your liking, I’m sure you can agree that playfulness makes happier employees, and that is good for business. So don’t leave your fun side at the door when you come to the office; you may surprise yourself and see that everybody is ready to tag along.

Startup Interior Design for Dummies

I’m no interior designer, so everything I am going to say below is based on observation and the experiences we have here at ShuttleCloud. If I was to design an office, I wouldn’t hesitate to include:

  • Open-plan is a good idea as long as you have other areas for more quiet work. Be in tune with your coworkers’ moods and needs. If someone needs quiet time, quiet time it is.
  • Different zones that employees can move between and use freely boost concentration and help people not to feel restless in their seats.
  • Areas where people can gather, work, and share ideas.
  • A space where work and social interactions can occur seamlessly.
  • A playful space where employees can let off some steam and build trust, you’ll have happier employees and a tighter team.
  • At the end of the day, a creative, flexible space will reflect in your employees’ frame of mind.

So that is why our office space works for us and the reasoning behind it. Mystery solved. Curiosity satisfied. Ana out.I don’t know about you, but after writing this post I am even more convinced of the benefits of play—so let’s start thinking about where that slide goes, team!Until next time :)

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P.S. Thanks to the architects Daniel Monja and Lillian Rodriguez, as well as ShuttleCloud cofounder Carlos Cabañero, who managed the project.

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