FluidSpace™... a unique solution to a widespread problem. With many organisations unsure of how their real estate portfolios will look in 12-24 months' time, we have developed FluidSpace™ as a means of ensuring that companies have the flexibility and confidence to create exceptional workspaces for their people. Find out what it is, why it works, and get inspiration for your own FluidSpace™ Download your FREE Guide Download your FREE Guide What’s Inside? What is FluidSpace™? With many organisations unsure of how their real estate portfolios will look in 12-24 months' time, we have developed FluidSpace™ as a means of ensuring that companies have the flexibility and confidence to create exceptional workspaces for their people. Benefits of FluidSpace™ Discover how FluidSpace™ can assist you through delivering efficiency and flexibility to help you adapt to the changing dynamics of your business. Inspiration Check out some of our favourite FluidSpace™ designs and furniture pieces, including every type of furniture and style from luxe and collaborative to industrial and focussed. Download your FREE Guide

As companies consider the future of their workspace and how they work in a post-pandemic world, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. So as workers around the country prepare to return to the office, how can you prepare your place and your people for hybrid working? While the flexibility offered by hybrid working opens huge possibilities, not all those possibilities are positive. with all the change that you and your people have been through in the last 18 months, the last thing you need is a complicated workspace strategy that confuses your people and leaves them unengaged, causing you serious problems. The modern workspace should be a place that supports workers in their role at every point in the day. A place that enables them to shift between a range of collaborative, cooperative and focussed tasks that comprise their varied and complex working days. FluidSpace™ is a unique solution to the widespread challenges facing companies. With many unsure of how their workspace needs will change over the coming months, we have developed FluidSpace™ to give you the flexibility and the confidence you need to create a unique workspace that grows and changes with you. Start with User Experience In an age when many people derive much more value and identity from experiences than from possessions, the key is creating a workspace with a great user experience. Now that people are thinking much more consciously about how and where they work, the office has to be a welcoming place where your people want to be – both for the experiences they can have and the results they can achieve. This active thinking about how we work provides an unprecedented opportunity to create a unique workspace optimised for how you and your people will use it every day. By creating a leading employee experience in your workspace, you can not only attract and retain the best people for your business, but you can create a true home and hub of company culture that drives the performance of your entire company. Office staff across the world have become used to the convenience and flexibility of working from home and are unsure about coming back to the office. Yet, building new relationships and social capital, the unseen glue of every organisation, is unsustainable virtually. FluidSpace™ can give your people the benefits of both: the flexibility working of environments and styles, as well as the ability to collaborate and connect with team members. Zone-Based Working A variety of work environments is now seen as necessary for a modern workforce. The traditional workspace with individual workstations for each employee, several meeting rooms, and limited collaboration spaces is no longer fit for purpose- if it ever was. Modern teams need different working environments that they can reconfigure to suit their requirements at any time. With a wide variety of reconfigurable, interactive furniture, FluidSpace™ can seamlessly adapt to meet the needs of your people throughout the day. Your people will perform far better if they have different environments designed to facilitate their different roles. To complete personal tasks, they will likely need space and seclusion to focus without any distractions or background noise. If they are trying to resolve an issue, they may need to brainstorm creative solutions with colleagues in a collaborative and vibrant atmosphere. Staff are at their and most productive when given a variety of spaces choose from in which to do their work. Whether that’s café-style spaces for informal meetings, pods for focussing (alone or in small teams), or academy facilities for people to communicate & learn. A FluidSpace™ that facilitates the work they are doing will have a huge positive impact on their effectiveness. Integrate Technology The rapid rise of video meeting technology became meteoric during the first half of 2020, and it is now fully established as a mode of daily interaction. With your teams spread about across various locations and even time zones, technology has an essential role to bring both internal and external stakeholders together. Virtual meetings have undeniable benefits – no travel time, convenience- and can be used in conjunction with in-person meetings to make people more connected than ever. One solution gaining traction is high-end “zoom rooms” with integrated visual & audio technology, sound insulation and other innovations. Some, such as Zenconnect stages, even feature immersive mixed-reality technology and intuitive green screen capabilities. An alternative is high-tech office pods, again with integrated audio & visual technology and sound insulation, that enable immersive, high-quality presentations. But technology in the modern workplace goes much further than meetings. From cloud-based document sharing and collaboration solutions to smart building technology, it will permeate every part of our working day. Non-intrusive monitoring can also monitor how much time people are spending at work and how much relaxation time they have, notifying them of potential burn-out and protecting their wellbeing. Prioritise Wellbeing Among many things that have become considered topics of discussion and thought over the last 18 months, attitudes towards wellbeing have perhaps changed the most. Not only physical but mental wellbeing. Physical wellbeing is a serious concern for many staff as they prepare to return to the office. Designing for social distancing, both through space planning and the implementation of systems like touch-free journeys will be worth considering. Mental wellbeing is also an essential element of post-pandemic workspace design. Your people will need an environment that makes them feel safe and ensure they care for, especially given the stresses of the pandemic. Providing your employees with as much security and stability will increase their confidence and productivity, enabling them to be more productive. Wellbeing is not about offering random office perks, such as food or fitness club memberships- though those can help. Prioritising wellbeing means putting the needs of your people at the centre of your workspace strategy and design. This involves engaging with, listening to and implementing the feedback from your people. The greatest drawback of spending so long working remotely is the diminishing of social capital and the lack of collaboration. By providing ways for your people to collaborate and connect, you will give them the ability to be far more innovative. Where to Start Devising your workspace strategy in the current climate can feel like a daunting task. FluidSpace™ is a workplace concept that we have developed in response to the way working patterns have changed over the last year.​ FluidSpace™ creates agile, flexible workspaces that can be quickly and cost-effectively reconfigured to meet the changing demands of organisations. ​ By utilising furniture to create rooms and zones rather than traditional methods of fit-out such as partitions, it allows for maximum flexibility – new zones and rooms can be established without the need for disruptive and expensive construction works.​ There are many benefits of the FluidSpace™ concept over against traditional methods of office fit-out. FluidSpace™ gives organisations the flexibility to create spaces that can be reconfigured to suit their changing dynamics.​ Furniture is much easier to reconfigure and relocate, compared with traditional construction. Your workspace could be rearranged in as little as a weekend to adapt to your shifting needs.​ FluidSpace™ is also cost-efficient. A large proportion of the costs in a traditional workspace fit-out project are often Mechanical & Electrical. By using storage and acoustic pods to create different spaces, many of these costs are no longer necessary, therefore saving both time and money from construction phases.​ Through FluidSpace™, you can create your own workspace that meets the current needs of your business and can adapt to an uncertain future. Get ideas for your own FluidSpace™ with our inspiration guide or get in touch to find out how we can help you.

Focusing in the Office Focus furniture creates spaces where people can study or carry out tasks that need concentration and a bit of peace and quiet. By giving your people the time and space to focus alone, distractions will be reduced and they will become more productive. For decades, one of the key complaints about the office was the distractions throughout the day. Throughout the last 18 months, remote office workers have become used to being able to focus in peace whenever they want – creating an unexpected productivity boost. While companies are now moving back to the office to increase connection and communication between teams, making sure your people can focus in the office is essential. On average, employees lose 86 minutes each day at a workspace due to distractions around them in their environment – nearly 20% of their working day. Over time that can have a devastating impact on the engagement and productivity of your people. However, improving productivity in your workspace is simple and cost-effective, through careful workspace design and furniture curation. Top 3 Focus Furniture Collections We’ve selected 3 of our favourite ranges of focus furniture, to help you and your people remain on track and productive, no matter your location. Coppice Coppice is a stand-alone, single person work booth that provides a high level of acoustic comfort, increasing the productivity of those doing focused work tasks. Where work requires high levels of concentration and focus, Coppice is the ideal solution, offering differently configured personal booths designed to combat noise distractions in the open-plan workplace. Coppice can be configured in a number of different ways to suit the task in hand, the space in which it’s being used, and the privacy levels required. The Coppice Library Bay's suit 2, 4, 6, or 8 person options, and is an ideal solution to create a private area to settle in within or a workplace or educational setting. Focus Focus is a private workstation on wheels, and it provides both visual haven and true peace of mind while working. This acoustic desk is upholstered with felt that not only looks good but also creates an acoustically friendly environment. With an innovative triangular design and partial ceiling, the Focus creates an immersive world that blocks out the most intrusive of distractions. Focus comes with a variety of options for the interior so that you can choose the options that suit the way you work best from power units to desk lights. The concealed wheel design also enables you to move it around throughout the day, making it a really flexible and convenient option for the changing needs of your people. MySpace MySpace is a universal modular system with excellent acoustic properties designed to shape unique office spaces. This system is the ideal solution for agile, activity-based, and open-plan offices. A wide range of applications and configurations of these modular acoustic screens lets you adapt the furniture to various office planning needs and working situations. From private mini-rooms for concentration to collaboration areas for teamwork, this system provides a comfortable workplace, allows you to distance yourself from ambient noise, and opens up new “office-within-office” possibilities. A variety of acoustic screen joints allows you to build different structures and gives freedom to form almost any desired workspace. Focus Furniture In Your Office While the post-pandemic workspace is set to become a more collaborative hub to facilitate team connections in a hybrid working model, focus furniture is not obsolete – nothing could be further from the truth. It is unrealistic to expect your staff to focus all day every day when working remotely and then to collaborate constantly when in the office. Just as they need effective remote collaboration solutions, focus furniture will be crucial in giving them the time and space alone to focus while in your office. Our unique FluidSpace concept creates a workspace that shrinks, expands, and even relocates with you. By utilising office furniture to create rooms and zones rather than traditional methods of fit-out such as partitions, it allows for maximum flexibility – new zones and rooms can be established without the need for disruptive and expensive construction works. This enables you to create the perfect blend of collaboration and privacy so essential to maximising the performance of your people. It also enables your people to adapt and reconfigure your workspace to meet their needs on an ongoing basis so that they can be as effective as possible. Not sure where to start? Book a call with one of our workplace furniture experts today. The fundamental approach to any successful furniture project is to ask a lot of questions and then to listen. Gaining a deep understanding of your requirements and the way that your business operates is the key to providing tailored furniture solutions that will create the most significant impact on your operational performance.

Dedicated quiet spaces are a necessity within the high-tech buzz of the modern working environment. Sometimes you just need to be alone. Whether you’re in need of solitary space for private conversation or high-focus working, the modern workspace provides little facility for this, with greater emphasis on open-plan collaborative and social zones, rather than individual spaces for quiet, uninterrupted working. With the rise of hybrid working, the role of the office has become still more of a collaboration hub than a desk farm, but people still need a space to focus on personal tasks throughout their time in the physical workspace. Many modern pod designs also have integrated technology options to help connect those working remotely as well as those in the office. Here, we pick 5 of our favourite pod families from our range of office pods & booths, to help you understand what is available and how they can help you achieve your business objectives. Hush One of our most popular office pod ranges, the Hush family offers stylish design, excellent acoustics, and a high degree of customisability. Personal pods such as the Hush Hybrid and Hush Work are the perfect solution for phone calls, video conversations or highly focused work. It protects the privacy of the user whilst reducing noise in the rest of the space. The largest pod in the range, Hush Meet, is a modular system of pods that allows you to create a space that suits your individual needs. The advanced acoustic technology integrated into the pod provides complete privacy and focus for all users. Residence Drawing on the rich design heritage of California, the Residence range creates iconic enclosures within the workplace, providing a serene sanctuary. The range comes with glazed panels, allowing light to continue to shine through the workspace. The birch plywood finish provides a raw, natural aesthetic contributing towards the need for a sanctuary, inviting people to a serene space through biophilic design. Residence Connect is a single person, tech integrated video conferencing pod. It is crafted to provide an optimal and inclusive virtual meeting experience with excellent acoustic properties. Residence Max and Residence Work are also single-user pods with user comforts such as lighting adjustability, an integrated fan for personalized temperature control, and adjustable height desk surfaces. Bob The Bob collection of pods offers comfort, privacy, and style through high-quality upholstery. The design utilises large flat panels and soft rounded corners which not only look great but reduce and absorb sound. Available in a large variety of sizes, configurations, and finishes, from a 2-seat open-top-&-side version to a 6-person fully enclosed edition, the Bob pod is suitable for a wide variety of uses and design styles. Glass front panels and a door can be added to the Bob Meeting Pod, creating a fully enclosed space perfect for meeting others or working as an individual. Like many others of our favourite pods, they are simple to install and can be easily relocated, either by dismantling the panels or reassembling them in the desired location. Silent Room Silent Room is the oasis of silence in a middle of a modern office. Thanks to this office solution, concentrating at work has never been easier as it enables employees to focus during phone conversations, video conferences or creative tasks without distracting others. The Silent Room family of phone and meeting pods ensure indoor air quality as well as acoustic and visual comfort for employees. Available in a single person version as well as both 4-seat and 6-seat configurations, the space provides you with the freedom to create a personalised setting that suits your needs best. Whether it’s a regular (or high) table for your team meetings or a coffee table that can easily fit in several people for a casual get-together, the Silent Room range keeps noise distractions at bay and boosts employee productivity. Campers and Dens Possibly our favourite pod system of all, Campers & Dens is not just a pod system, it’s a concept change in interior architecture. A unique, demountable system that can be moved, repositioned or re-used to suit changing needs – perfectly suited to our FluidSpace™ workspace model. The platform offers both unrivalled adaptability and the benefits of a manufactured system, putting it perfectly in sync with today’s fast-evolving and constantly changing workplace – in contrast to one-off static designs. A completely customisable range of pods, cabins, and awnings in different shapes and materials is complemented by an extensive range of both integrated and freestanding seating and tabling. This means it can be configured to suit the exact needs of your team and space and can be added to and adapted as you grow and change in today’s dynamic environment. Pods in the Modern Workspace Perfect for focus spaces or meeting rooms where flexibility and privacy are key, office pods and booths are a great way to create spaces where building walls is challenging. They can be moved, adapted, and reconfigured as the needs of your teams and people change, helping to future-proof your workspace in these uncertain times. Whether it’s to bring your people together or give them time and space alone, the office pod is fast becoming a central part of the modern workspace. Check out our full range of office pods and booths.

The Importance of Office Chairs While often overlooked, task chairs are an incredibly important part of your workspace. As the seat that your people will likely use the most, your task chairs will have a significant impact on the health and performance of your people. Unergonomic and misused task furniture can cause serious lower back and neck pains, and can even increase the risk of heart disease. On the other hand, a high-quality office chair can help ensure your people are in the best possible position to perform throughout their working day. Whether you’re needing to prepare your workspace for a hybrid future or looking to support remote workers to be as healthy and productive as possible, a great office chair is the starting point of an effective and ergonomic workstation. What makes a great task chair? While task chairs come in a dizzying array of shapes, styles, colours, sizes, and prices, the elements that make a great task chair stay the same. Adjustability Your staff are all different, so they will all need a different chair setup to perform at their best. You will need office chairs that are adjustable in terms of seat height, seat tilt, and back titl at the very least, though adjustable headrests and armrests are also recommended to provide optimum comfort for users. Lumbar Support Your back curves along the length of your spine, and the shape and style of this varies from worker to worker. adjustable lumbar support will support the curve of your lower back perfectly, preventing you from slouching, which reduces energy and alertness, and in the long term can lead to serious back issues. Materials Many staff will be sitting in this chair for around 6 hours a day, so it's crucial that the seat is adequately cushioned with a thick pad of ergonomic foam to reduce pressure on the hips and ensure adequate comfort for the user. The back should be made of a breathable and pliable material like mesh, to allow the chair to be comfortably used for significant periods. Armrests & Headrests Adjustable armrests are an under-appreciated element of ergonomic design in a task chair. The ability to move in all 3 planes will ensure that all of your staff have well-supported elbows and shoulders – an essential in the technology-led modern workspace. A headrest can also provide enhanced neck support, improving staff concentration and reducing stress on the back. Quality Ultimately, quality design is the most important element in the best task chair. A carefully created and rigorously tested operator chair made from certified materials should last for more than 5 years. This will save both time and money, proving a worthy financial investment. Many modern ergonomic office chairs also have excellent sustainability credentials, making them good for the planet as well as your staff. The Best Task Chairs Our extensive range of task chairs includes a huge variety of options to suit every brand and budget. We’ve chosen 5 of our favourite task chairs to help you decide which one is right for you. AllowMe AllowMe is an ergonomic chair that improves comfort and wellbeing by promoting continuous low-threshold movement and active-dynamic sitting, for any size or shape of user, built around pelvic rotation and hip abduction. The innovative chair back involves a single piece of geometry based on a helical sprung section, providing progressive resistance during the natural recline movement of the user, regardless of their shape or size. Coza Coza is a task chair that boasts extraordinary comfort and dynamic support by using the natural flexibility of a single ribbon of material. Unlike other task chairs, it does not require multiple components or complex assembly. Coza is visually and functionally unique and is the perfect chair to facilitate flexible working in a modern office. Diffrient World Diffrient World is simple, beautiful, and functional. The design eliminates the need for traditional mechanisms, instead using the laws of physics and the sitter’s body weight to offer the perfect recline for each individual sitter. Diffrient World offers the ultimate user-friendly sitting experience. Do The result of taking a completely fresh look at task chair design, Do does more with less. One of the most popular task chairs available, Do is innovative in terms of the materials used, the way it’s assembled and transported, and the powerful performance it delivers. Thanks to user-centred design and a weight balancing mechanism, Do doesn’t have a multitude of knobs and levers to find and struggle with. Kirn Kirn has been developed to provide an excellent balance of comfort and support. Kirn is resilient, manufactured with the requirements of both service and end-of-life in mind. Its materials are all high quality and its major elements can all be easily replaced or upgraded, giving your chair a long, hassle-free working life. Task Chairs in Your Office With the rise of hybrid working and home working, making sure your staff are well-equipped to perform in their home office is important to ensure the success of your company. As the role of the office changes to a more collaborative hub in the years to come, your office chairs need to be adaptable to suit a variety of roles they will need to fulfil – not only as traditional workstations, but for meetings, small team collaboration, and other roles. Task chairs are a crucial part of any office design. With your people spending more than 30 hours a week in these chairs, ergonomics and practicalities should be considered in order to make the right choice for you and your people. While there are countless cheap options, providing your staff with high-quality ergonomic office chairs is a viable investment that will pay off with improved wellbeing and productivity. Adjustable office desks or multi-functional office furniture are central to any office space. By ensuring you equip your space with furniture that empowers your employees, boosting productivity and wellness, you can create a fulfilling and effective office space that will serve your business well into the future. Want to know more? Explore our office desks & chairs, or book a call with one of our furniture experts to help you decide what is the right task chair for you.

Why your office design matters As a business leader, you are constantly grappling with the question of how best to optimise two of your greatest costs (and opportunities): people and real estate. When designed well, your workspace should be a hive of creativity and collaboration, bringing your people together to drive your company forward. It’s an environment that so seamlessly meets the needs of your people that they barely notice it's even there. They can simply focus on producing their best work. However, this vision is far from reality for so many companies. An international survey of 10,000 workers by Ipsos found that 85% of employees are unhappy with their office environment and struggle to concentrate for extended periods of time. A dysfunctional workspace costs you money every day through poor productivity, culture, and wellbeing. Whether it's an outdated design that makes your people feel jaded, space planning that limits communication, or poor ergonomics that harm productivity and create health issues, a substandard office is not only an opportunity missed but a serious problem holding your company back. Improving your office may seem like a daunting challenge, but at a time of such upheaval in the workforce, you have an unparalleled opportunity to change the way your people work. By creating a great workspace, you can ensure that you are maximising the performance of your people and ensuring a thriving future for your company. 3 Ways to Improve Your Office Design Making big improvements to your workspace doesn’t always need a big budget. Here are 3 cost-effective ways to improve your office design that will make your people happier, healthier, and more productive. Create Focus Zones While the post-pandemic workspace is set to become a more collaborative hub, focus furniture is not obsolete – nothing could be further from the truth. Focus furniture creates spaces where your people can study or carry out tasks that need their full concentration. By giving your people the time and space to focus properly, you are eliminating many potential distractions and they will become more productive. A recent study has shown that on average, employees lose 86 minutes each day at a workspace due to distractions around them in their environment – nearly 20% of their working day. Over time that can have a devastating impact on the engagement and productivity of your people. However, creating focus zones to improve productivity in your workspace can be simple and cost-effective. Check out our Best 3 Focus Furniture Collections for more information and inspiration. Install Office Pods & Booths In the age of hybrid working, office pods & office booths provide a great chance to focus and work in peace. Whether you’re in need of solitary space for private conversations, or craving time away from the background office noise to concentrate on a task, office pods and booths create an environment perfect for boosting productivity. While some office booths are single person, other larger pods are designed to create convenient and private meeting spaces for all types of meetings and teamwork. Whether it’s to bring your people together or give them time and space alone, the office pod is fast becoming a central part of the modern workspace. Office pods are fast becoming an essential element of the hybrid workspace, with options to suit every brand and budget. The most important thing is that your office pods suit the needs of your company and your people, making them as effective as possible. Explore 5 of our top office pods and booths. Increase Collaboration Areas With the rise of the hybrid working model, the physical office and remote working are now more closely intertwined than ever. After months of social starvation, colleagues are desperate to interact and connect in a way that simply isn’t possible through a computer screen. While remote working has undoubtedly had some surprising benefits, one of the main benefits of a productive office – collaboration - has remained unfulfilled by replacement video conferences and phone calls. Collaboration is the fuel that drives any successful organisation, and creating spaces that people can work together has never been more important in the workspace. By creating a variety of zones within the office footprint for staff to plan, discuss and share ideas, the workplace can become a hub of creativity and innovation. Collaboration and connection don’t need to be in competition with focus and productivity. As the element of your workplace that your people interact with the most often, furniture has an essential role in bringing your people together to create the future of your business. View our range of collaboration furniture to get some inspiration for your perfect workspace! FluidSpace™ Want to create a cutting-edge workspace that constantly adapts to suit the needs of your people? Welcome to FluidSpace™ - flexible workspace that shrinks, expands, and even relocates with you! We have developed FluidSpace™ as a means of ensuring that companies have the flexibility and confidence to create exceptional workspaces for their people. It does exactly what it says – it creates agile, flexible workspaces that can be quickly and cost-effectively reconfigured to meet the changing demands of organisations. By utilising office furniture such as office pods and zoning furniture to create rooms and zones rather than traditional methods of fit-out such as office partitions, it allows for maximum flexibility. This means new zones and rooms can be established without the need for disruptive and expensive construction works. Through FluidSpace™, you can create your own workspace that meets the current needs of your business and can adapt seamlessly to an uncertain future. Improving Your Office Design Your people spend around a third of their lives at work, so it is essential that you create the best working environment possible for them to thrive in. It's only that way will they be able to achieve their full potential, creating amazing results for your business. A carefully considered office design can save you serious amounts of money by ensuring that your employees are present, healthy and in the best possible position to perform. It can enable employees to synergize, creating results far above the power of themselves as individuals. A great workspace can be a hub for your company that brings people together to create the kind of future that you want for your business. Want to know more about improving your office? Download our Office Pods & Booths Price Guide to get great ideas for your office or view our office design gallery for more ideas and inspiration. Interested in creating a cutting-edge future-proof workspace? Check out our FluidSpace Guide to find out how to implement it in your own workspace.

What is a Third Space? It’s often said that we spend the majority of our waking lives at work – it’s like a second home to many of us. In the 1980s, Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” – the third place where people work. For many, the first place we work at is the office and the second place is home. The third space is a place outside either of these where people can fulfil their roles as well as network and interact with other relevant people. Two perfect examples of the “Third Space” concept are coffee shops and coworking spaces. Coffee shops, long regarded as the home of the digital nomad, have become more popular not (only) for the coffee, but the atmosphere and facilities. This trend has also driven the rise of coworking for similar reasons. These “in-between” spaces have a special function in our modern culture to connect people and enable genuine synergy. But can you recreate that synergy and innovation in your own workspace? By bringing diverse people within your company (and others) together, could you provide an environment for collaboration to flourish? Creating your own third space can offer a retreat from the pressure and sometimes blinkering mentality of the day job. In a fresh and inspiring environment, your people can connect informally and build a sense of community and culture. While video meeting solutions have been surprisingly successful over the last few months in enabling virtual communication, they are not as effective as an in-person third space. According to Oldenburg, “If you get people sitting together, talking together, innovation comes quicker. And that’s going to be the thing for business and industry for a long time.” The Benefits of a Third Space But it’s not all about making your people happier and more interactive, though that can have significant benefits. A change in environment can be the catalyst to inspire new concepts and paradigms. By allowing your people to switch off from the “thick of thin things” they can look at the bigger picture and create true win-win solutions, rather than just becoming another unit of labour. If you create a third space within your own workspace, you are taking control of the environment and can guide this process and engrain this concept in your culture. More time spent at a desk doesn’t necessarily mean more work produced. By keeping your people mentally fresh and open, they can become more innovative and productive in their roles. As Oldenburg says, “Managers found out that if they let people work where they want and when they want, productivity went up”. An effective third space can have a significant impact on productivity in your business. How to Create your Own Third Space Creating an environment that maximises the potential of your people is something that can have a massive impact on your culture and results, and creating a third space within your second space can play a big part in this. An on-site third space serves as a retreat for your people, allowing them to disconnect from their immediate pressures and enables chance interactions and connections. If you’re wondering where to start with your third space, you can take inspiration from restaurants, coffee shops, bars and other spaces your people will associate with socialising and recharging. The use of luxurious materials such as wood and leather, mood lighting, and even the amenities design all contribute to creating an atmosphere that is more conducive to creativity and serendipity. At a time when employees are under more pressure than ever, it’s crucial to provide them with the opportunity to switch off and relax when they need to. Not only is this essential for their wellbeing, but it also benefits you as a business, boosting productivity and guarding against burnout. An effective third space inspires, engages, and connects your people, increasing their effectiveness and making your workspace a truly creative place that drives company culture and performance.

The Hybrid Office As companies transition back to the office many are still unsure exactly what the future looks like. The expectations of staff and clients have changed dramatically over recent months. Many companies and workforces look entirely different to what they were 2 short years ago. The fact is, however, that very few significant workspace trends to emerge post-pandemic are actually new. Many were niche topics that have been catapulted into the limelight by social isolation, remote working, and the quantity of change we have all experienced over the last 18 months. Hybrid working is now becoming accepted as the new way of working for companies across the globe - combining working from home with working from the office. With the pandemic having forced employees across the country to reconsider their work-life balance and values, the companies that cater to these the best will attract and retain the best employees. Here are the 7 key workspace trends that have been accelerated over the last 18 months and are now driving the future of workspace: Flexibility Over the last 18 months, Employers and employees alike have a newfound appreciation of how different work is best done in different environments. With 62% of staff wanting a hybrid approach to work, and 35% looking to return to the office for collaborative work, there is a clear shift in how people perceive their working location options. No longer is the office even default – all options are open, and what matters is output, rather than physical presence. Hybrid workers have been shown to feel greater job satisfaction and engagement, while also being more innovative and productive. With this in mind, offering your people the ability to work across multiple locations will have significant benefits for their productivity and your profitability. Variety Offering location flexibility has a massive side-effect: the way your people use your workspace completely changes. Those long rows of desks will now be almost unused, as staff sit in peace at a desk all day at home. Meanwhile, collaborative areas become overcrowded creating a noisy and unwelcoming environment, to say nothing of a serious health hazard. In order to create as many opportunities as possible for collaboration and innovation, your workspace design needs to have a variety of zones designed for specific types of activities, encouraging your people to move around throughout the day, meet new colleagues and remain mentally refreshed. Hot Desking Another side effect of part-time remote working is the rise of “hot” or unassigned desking. A huge majority of workers prefer their own desk in the office, but this is becoming less practical as staff are rotated through the office through the week. Despite employee concerns about hygiene and privacy, unassigned desking is set to become far more common. Companies who adopt hot desking policies will need to do so with clear communication and effective systems. The use of space utilisation and reservation technology will also be crucial to manage staff density and health considerations. Hybrid Communication The risk of remote workers feeling excluded and becoming disengaged during collaborative activities is very high. This can have serious equality and inclusion issues for your business. The effective use of technology and workspace design is essential to ensure all your people feel connected and inspired, wherever they are. Ensuring that the experience of remote workers matches the experience of those working in the office will have significant benefits for your teams. In an age where distributed workforces are an inevitability, making sure your people have all the tools to communicate effectively will be essential to ensuring a bright future for your business. Wellbeing In today’s extraordinarily competitive environment, levels of worker stress have never been so high. From the pressure of ever-shorter deadlines to concerns about the pandemic and mixing with colleagues, work is a big contributor to this serious issue. Extensive research has shown that a focus on wellbeing can have benefits including reduced absenteeism, improved staff retention and increased productivity. By strategically designing your space to maximise the wellbeing of your people, they will feel valued, supported, and be in the best possible position to deliver the results you need. Investing in workplace wellbeing is not only for companies who think they can afford to – the returns of investing in staff wellbeing are so great, every company can’t afford not to. Privacy In recent years, the open-plan office has become the most popular office layout, and this is set to continue despite the pandemic. However, while the open-plan office enables quick and informal collaboration, the very nature of the layout reduces focus due to increased distractions for staff. On average, employees lose nearly 20% of each day at a workspace due to distractions around them in their environment. By allowing and encouraging privacy in your workspace, you are showing your people that you trust them. This will go a long way toward increasing engagement and integrity toward your company. By giving them the time and space to focus alone, distractions will be reduced, and more work will get done. Collaboration There are countless studies detailing the close correlation between collaboration and productivity. Without meaningful collaboration, companies aren’t able to maximize their potential and achieve their vision. Your workspace has a crucial role to play in enabling and increasing collaboration in your company. As the element of your workplace that your people interact with more than any other, furniture has an essential role in increasing collaboration. Through skilful use of collaboration and social furniture, you can create an adaptable and flexible modern workspace that fulfils the needs of you and your people. Creating Your Hybrid Office In a time of such change, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the way you and your people work. As you consider the future of your workspace and the way your people work in the months and years ahead, an understanding of the trends shaping the next generation of the office will be crucial to help you plan for the future. With many organisations unsure of how their real estate portfolios will look in 12-24 months' time, FluidSpace™ is an ideal way to ensure you have the flexibility and confidence to create exceptional workspaces for your company and your people. FluidSpace™ does exactly what it says – it creates agile, flexible workspaces that can be reconfigured to meet the changing demands of teams and organisations. Exceptional workspace plays an integral role in both attracting and creating exceptional employees, which in turn create exceptional results - and companies. Through FluidSpace™, you can create your own workspace that meets the current needs of your business and can adapt to an uncertain future.

Resimercial... set to be the biggest office design trend of 2021. Find out what it means and why this workplace trend will help you and your team get back to office life in 2021. Download your FREE Guide Download your FREE Guide What's Inside? What is the Resimercial Revolution? Find out what this new design trend means and how it's going to affect your business in 2021. The impact on employee engagement Understand how Resimercial design will be key to employee engagement next year as we move away from home-working. Office design in the post-Covid world Find out how to take the best bits of home-working and apply them to your office design. Tips for a Resimercial office makeover Get started with your own Resimercial makeover using our expert tips and advice. Download your FREE Guide

It is well known that it takes just 7 seconds for people to form a first impression. That means that within 7 seconds of walking into your reception, your prospective clients (and staff) will have formed an almost irreversible impression of your business. Your reception space is an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand and culture to prospective staff and clients, as well as affirm it to your people every day. It’s important that the design of your workspace, and especially your reception, has the right balance of visual attraction and professionalism, to present you and your company in the best possible light. Your choice of furniture is vitally important. This is one of the most eye-catching elements of the space and the physical element that your visitors and staff will interact with the most. Here, we’ve chosen our 5 favourite receptions from the projects we’ve recently been involved in. ASL ASL International is a London based multi-disciplinary loss adjusting and forensic accounting practice. When they relocated to a new agile workspace, the reception was one of the most eye-catching parts of the design. With a stunning copper-effect finish reception desk and bold upholstery colour scheme, this reception differentiates ASL from the traditional “accountants office” and showcases them as a bold and dynamic brand. MTI When Music Theatre International (MTI) refurbished their London headquarters, the reception was an essential element of the design. The refurbishment was inspired by theatre throughout the last 100 years and some of the shows that they have been a part of. From Les Misérables to Mamma Mia, the soft colours, and luxurious golden and velvet finishes, are a unique reflection of MTI's work and culture. Blinkhorns Blinkhorns are a London based accountancy practice, offering taxation, finance, accountancy, and business advice in the entertainment sector. Along with their office, their reception had become tired and no longer reflected their brand and culture. Their amazing new reception area has a clean and crisp aesthetic, on-brand furniture, and a visually striking living wall. Blinkhorns now have a reception that is truly reflective of who they are. Gett With their business travel software serving over 30% of the fortune 500, Gett needed a reception that delivers an amazing and noteworthy experience for their clients. The reception was part of a larger office relocation project, designed to create an on-brand, modern workspace. With a bright, spacious tone and carefully curated design features, Gett now has a reception that gives clients an instant snapshot of their brand personality. Alteryx Alteryx are global leaders in data analytics software with offices across the globe. As part of their expansion, they took an extra two floors in their existing London workspace to create a stunning client lounge and collaboration area. The reception is perhaps the most stunning part of this design, with imitation London phone boxes, a contemporary reception desk and an incredibly realistic underground carriage meeting room! Reception Furniture and Design A well-designed reception area can have a transformative impact on those essential first impressions that prospects experience when they visit your workspace. It can also affirm and remind staff of company values and culture on a daily basis. A great reception user experience is a crucial element of any effective workspace. If you need expert advice on how to update and transform your reception space, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Working with over 300 furniture manufacturers enables us to give you access to the very best reception furniture for your project. By partnering with us as your furniture experts, we can guide you through the project from the very outset until your chosen furniture has been installed.

Just as the kitchen is the heart of the home, the breakout area is the creative hub of any workspace. In a time when we are spending more time than ever staring at screens, the chance to disconnect, however temporarily, can have significant productivity benefits. The workspace breakout area can act as a catalyst for collaboration, encouraging your people to share ideas and concepts, providing an environment for the fabled “watercooler moments”. More time spent at a desk doesn’t necessarily mean more work produced. Expecting your people to remain motivated and focussed all day every day at the same workstation leads to a disengaged and unproductive team. By keeping your people mentally fresh and open, they can become more innovative and productive in their roles. This change in environment can be the catalyst to inspire new concepts and paradigms for your staff. A well-designed social space with great breakout furniture is a fresh and inspiring environment that encourages your people to connect informally, building the social capital that is the basis of all collaboration. This space can also become a haven, providing your staff with a chance to refresh and recharge, ensuring that they remain engaged and focused throughout the day. BE Offices BE Offices are an award-winning serviced office operator, with nearly 700,000 sq/ft of workspace across the UK. We worked with office design & fit-out contractors Zentura to supply the loose and fitted furniture packages, including this stunning client lounge at their refurbished headquarters at 150 Minories. This space provides a central hub for all the users of the building to interact and collide, creating a diverse community that promotes innovation and networking. Alteryx Alteryx is a global leader in data analytics software with offices across the globe. Their cutting edge 24,00sq/ft workspace includes several amazing breakout areas, and ‘The Garden’ is no exception. The exposed ceiling increases the spacious feel and helps to create a relaxing, airy atmosphere. With a focus on natural wood finishes and biophilic design, the area encourages staff to disconnect from the pressures of the day job and recharge mentally, protecting wellbeing and guarding against burnout. VCMT VCMT is a leading global commodity trading firm, specialising in the global energy markets. When they relocated to an 11,000 Sq/ft workspace in Aldgate’s iconic 1 America Square, the breakout space was one of the key features of the design. Inspired by sporting heroes and cultural icons, the space features a variety of furniture and finishes. This breakout area provides a space for traders to disconnect and recharge and well and connect and collaborate. Creating your Breakout Space A well-designed breakout space can be a hub for bringing your people together and creating new and dynamic solutions for your business. While it can incorporate extravagant design and stunning features, it doesn’t have to. Through furniture, you can create a cost and space-effective breakout area that meets the needs of your people as well as the constraints of your budget.

The Importance of Privacy Despite the challenges that working from home presented, it created an unexpected productivity boost. However, this was negated by the loss of social capital and collaboration from working in the office. The challenge for business and HR leaders around the world is how to combine the benefits of privacy and collaboration in order to maximise the performance of their teams and companies. In recent years, the open-plan office has become the most popular office layout, and this is set to continue despite the pandemic. However, this is not to say that an open-plan office is perfect – far from it. While it enables quick and informal collaboration, the very nature of the layout reduces focus due to increased distractions for staff. On average, employees lose 86 minutes each day at a workspace due to distractions around them in their environment – nearly 20% of their working day. Over time that can have a devastating impact on the engagement and productivity of your people. However, improving productivity in your workspace is simple and cost-effective through careful workspace design and furniture curation. The 3 Types of Privacy Privacy is defined as the quality or state of being apart from company or observation, or freedom from unauthorized intrusion. There are 3 elements of privacy that you need to cater for in order to create distraction-free environments for your people: Spatial Privacy One of the main drivers behind the move to open plan offices was the huge increase in employee density that it enabled, but this has had an inevitable impact on privacy. Over the last 25 years the average office space per employee has fallen from nearly 200sq/ft to below 100 – in many cases just 80sq/ ft per person. This makes finding a private space in which to focus a lot more difficult. In the post-pandemic future workspace, it is more important than ever that employees have enough space to both feel and be safe. Effective space utilisation can ensure that your space is optimised for the way your people are going to use it in the months and years ahead so that you are maximising the productivity of both your people and your office. Visual Privacy To truly focus on individual tasks, the vision of the employee needs to be completely free of any distractions, so that the main (or even only) thing to focus on is what they are working on. This is impossible when looking out over an open plan workspace abounding with visual distractions to reduce focus and productivity. The other element of visual privacy is being unseen by others. The thought that someone might be looking over your shoulder at something confidential is not only a security risk but inhibits your ability to concentrate. Ensuring your space facilitates the right level of visual privacy will mean that your people will be much less distracted and more able to focus on confidential and private tasks. Acoustic Privacy The third and final element of workspace privacy is perhaps the most difficult to manage. Sound is like water – it can make it through the smallest gap. Open-plan offices are known to be loud and distracting spaces due to a large number of people with few barriers to absorb the high noise levels. The higher level of collaboration in open-plan offices only adds to this problem. There are several ways to improve acoustic privacy in your office, the easiest of which is the use of acoustic office furniture. Soft furnishings, carpets, and wall or ceiling mounted acoustic baffles can also absorb excess sound in your space, reducing distractions and creating a healthier working environment. This is especially important in spaces that are designed for people to work alone, so that they can feel safe and undistracted, with the peace and privacy to focus on their work. How to Increase Privacy in Your Workspace The only way to achieving the required balance of collaboration and privacy is through creating a workspace with a variety of different zones that are designed for different activities. This includes the right amount of collaboration spaces, as well as private and semi-private environments, otherwise your private spaces will be used by those trying to collaborate, which will lead to a noisy and unwelcoming environment for those trying to focus. By designing separate and distinct zones in your office for private, semi-private, and collaborative work, each of these areas will create its own atmosphere that encourages the activities is it designed for. By giving your employees the choice over how and where they work, you are giving them the ability to work in an environment that matches their needs, dramatically improving their ability to perform. Acoustic furniture is also an essential part of increasing privacy in your workspace. Office pods and booths are perfect for focus spaces or meeting rooms where flexibility and privacy are key. They can be moved around your workspace as your needs change, and can even be relocated when you do, reducing the need for expensive dilapidation works. Personal acoustic workstations can create mini havens of peace and tranquillity where your staff can really block the rest of the workspace out and focus on what they need to. Privacy in the Modern Workplace Our unique FluidSpace concept creates a workspace that shrinks, expands, and even relocates with you. By utilising furniture to create rooms and zones rather than traditional methods of fit-out such as partitions, it allows for maximum flexibility – new zones and rooms can be established without the need for disruptive and expensive construction works. This enables you to create the perfect blend of collaboration and privacy so essential to maximising the performance of your people. It also enables your people to adapt and reconfigure your workspace to meet their needs on an ongoing basis so that they can be as effective as possible By allowing and encouraging privacy in your workspace, you are showing your people that you trust them. This will go a long way toward increasing engagement and integrity toward your company. By giving them the time and space to focus alone, distractions will be reduced, and more work will get done. Not sure where to start? Book a call with one of our workplace furniture experts today. We believe that the fundamental approach to any successful furniture project is to ask a lot of questions and then to listen. Gaining a deep understanding of your requirements and the way that your business operates is the key to providing tailored furniture solutions that will create the most significant impact on your operational performance.