Office Design Trends 2024: Creating Healthy, Adaptable Workspaces
The office has been undergoing a significant evolution in the last few years, transforming from a place employees must be into one where they want to be.
Office spaces are integral for innovation, socialisation, onboarding, and company culture activation. If offices focus on experience – promoting movement, collaboration, health, sustainability, and accessibility – they provide value to organisations and professionals alike, making fit-out services a worthwhile investment.
As we enter 2024, several key trends will aim to boost worker well-being, collaboration, and adaptability. We provide more colour below.
Fighting burnout with amenities
Employee burnout has climbed to alarming levels. To combat this, offices are offering more amenities that allow staff to relax and recharge.
We’re seeing spaces like fitness zones for movement breaks, tranquil rooms with massage chairs and aromatherapy for quick relaxation, onsite daycares for family convenience, games for socialising, and dining halls providing healthier meal options.
Giving employees access to rooms tailored to their needs throughout the day provides a retreat from their workstations, and more variety of spaces encourages movement while also elevating the overall office experience.
Focusing on health and well-being
Besides amenities, organisations are optimising offices to bolster employee health and well-being with circulation paths to promote walking, standing desks, air purifiers, natural light features, and plants.
Research shows that nature in the office improves health and productivity at work – even artificial plants and depictions of nature like paintings give employees a boost.
Additionally, we are seeing offices designed to highlight and support mental health with motivational signage, warm lighting, artwork, texture variations, and positive colours to achieve a soothing environment where workers feel happier and calmer.
Blue Nova 825 is a possible contender for 2024’s office colour of the year, with the violet and blue hue evoking positivity and adventure.
Emphasising collaboration
As remote and hybrid work climb, offices are being reinvented as collaboration hubs. More open layouts allow team mingling, while “focus” areas enable quiet heads-down tasks, and mixed zones cater to different work modes in one seamless space.
There’s also a rise of specialised collaboration areas like mediascapes for video calls, huddle rooms for quick team meetings, and think tanks to spark innovation.
Glass partitions are replacing cubicles and walls as bosses seek to get colleagues working more collaboratively across departments.
Integrating sustainability
Due to changing perceptions of climate change and the green transition, eco-conscious offices are becoming expected, not just best practices.
Tactics like upcycled and sustainable furniture, recycled building materials, LED lighting, paperless policies, and reusable dishes/cups help reduce waste. Living walls and air-purifying plants also boost sustainability while benefiting wellness.
Workers now demand greener workplaces, with over 45% researching environmental policies when job hunting. A sustainable office with natural elements brings positive PR as companies showcase their commitment to the planet.
Utilising tech for accessibility
Technology is making offices more accessible for all. Voice assistance aids those with vision impairments, ambient tools improve spaces for neurodivergent individuals, and wearables provide security access rather than badges for wheelchair users.
AR/VR solutions might be in their infancy in the consumer realm, but at work, they help remote staff feel immersed in the workplace virtually. Those out sick can “log in” to meetings, less formal business travel is required, and hybrid teams are connected, keeping work accessible despite location or ability constraints.
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