Photo credit: WeWork. (WeWork provides shared workspace, community, and services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups, and small businesses.)
At RSG, our goal is to create the best possible product for clients and their communities. We realize that, more often than not, this requires collaboration and the opportunity for ideas to flow between team members.
To achieve greater synergy, we have embarked on a shared workspace initiative. Our goal is to understand how our firm can use our current space to maintain a high level of achievement while fostering collaboration.
Although we are just in the beginning stages, here are two important things we have learned so far:
- We are looking at where we spend the most time. Behavior patterns are critical to work effectiveness. Because a software company learned that its employees used conference rooms more than desks, it created an open central amphitheater in the office.
- When designing work spaces, it is important to preserve privacy while enabling people to work in groups. There is a need to control stimulation as workers switch among the three modes of attention: controlled attention, stimulus-driven attention, and rejuvenation.
RSG is working hard to create just the right balance between the need to be alone to think and the need to collaborate. We know it will make a difference.
Written by Evanne Holloway, a Research Assistant at RSG