As humans, we all crave proximity and closeness. These aren’t important only in our personal lives. Feeling close to one’s co-workers creates a sense of community and makes it much easier to bond with other employees.

That sense of community has taken a blow over the past year. Covid-19 social distancing measures contributed to the restructuring of many offices. Distanced workstations and even the return of cubicles have both impacted the community.

We live in a world of open spaces and informal interactions between co-workers. Hence, maintaining a sense of community is vitally important in terms of productivity and engagement.

Office interior design can be employed to give people a sense of closeness, while adhering to mandated safe distancing measures in workplaces. Here are some of the best ways to maintain the feeling of community in 2021 through the power of interior design.

Portable Workspaces

Fixed workspaces don’t work for many businesses. Whenever creatives have to come together or people need to perform various kinds of responsibilities, portability makes a lot more sense.

Portable work stations are the perfect choice for many industries. In addition, these can be used to bring people closer together, regardless of social distancing.

As the name suggests, a portable work station can be relocated to any part of the office. This is an easy chance to create team groupings or to distance certain employees from the rest of the workers.

Such flexibility makes people feel like they have a choice. Gone are the days of rigid arrangements. Movable work stations allow for social distancing measures to be overcome upon necessity (for a meeting or a brainstorming session, for example). At the same time, these workspaces are very easy to bring back to their original positions or position further apart from each other to maximise safety.

Specialised Desk Shapes

Is it possible to use office desks that create a physical barrier between employees without increasing the distance significantly?

The answer is yes.

Many custom solutions allow for such arrangements to be created.

Horseshoe-shaped desks are one excellent example of such office furniture. These desks usually seat two employees at the two ends. This way, the design creates more than enough personal space while keeping team members close to each other.

Embracing such designs creates enough space between people without repositioning the work stations. At the same time, such shapes provide perfect opportunities for effortless communication and collaboration.

Technological Integration

Since the beginning of 2020, we’ve all learned that technology can be used every single day to keep in touch with others while observing safety guidelines. Hence, contemporary office interior designs that embrace a human-centric approach will need to make such technology readily available.

Video conferencing stations and screen integration throughout the venue simplifies the process of contacting remote employees, clients and business partners. While this type of communication is somewhat indirect, it can still be utilised to maintain proximity and a feeling of being connected to others.

Great companies engage their employees, even when people need to spend time away from the office. Luckily, technology makes the task simple. It’s simply unfathomable to craft an office interior design project today without a focus on multimedia integration and video conferencing.

Efficient Utilisation of Outdoor Spaces

Offices that benefit from an outdoor space like a large balcony or a patio provide the perfect opportunities for community building in a safe manner.

It’s not typical for office design to integrate outdoor spaces into work station creation. An outdoor space, however, is perfect for the creation of innovative collaboration spaces.

Adding workstations to outdoor spaces is an excellent choice for all businesses. Not only will people feel safer interacting with their clients in the open air, they’ll also benefit from the sunshine and the change of scenery.

Most businesses will get to position a fairly small number of work spaces outside. Still, this additional opportunity will be perfect for team members in need of more proximity and a bit of flexibility.

A Focus on Workspace Wellness

Providing wellness opportunities that employees can seize at any given time maximises community building even further.

Office wellbeing is more important today than it has ever been in the past. Depending on the available space and your corporate culture, you can introduce the concept in multiple ways.

An office gym, a fitness room or creativity room can all be incorporated in the design without being too difficult to execute. These spaces will make it much easier for workers to decompress and spend quality time in each other’s presence (as long as social distancing measures are implemented, of course). Working out together with a colleague, even if two treadmills are positioned far apart from each other, will result in a casual bond that can be beneficial during the actual work process.

Today, perfectly planned and executed office interior design can achieve various things. It can help a company meet its goals, it can get workers feeling at ease within their environment and it can maximise safety. All of these goals can be accomplished at the same time whenever the right professionals get chosen for the job.

If you’re looking forward to an innovative and functional office upgrade, get in touch with SORDC. We know what it takes to boost worker wellbeing without taking away from the sense of community.