Corporate leaders have started to pay attention to the buzz and research around culture and employee engagement, as they are seeing that these are critical to attracting and retaining talent, and they have a direct connection to their bottom line. The realization is that the sea of cubicles is not quite conducive to deep employee engagement and it’s time to evolve the open office space concept to fit a more dynamic digital economy.
Most research happening around workspace design, collaboration and innovation has focused on a corporate office environment, which are often homogenous, closed environments for single entities. But Steelcase, Zappos and a few other trailblazers have moved to studying the coworking environment using their own unique spaces as living labs and inviting non-employees to join their fun.
Coworking spaces are the living future of work, as they give us a glimpse of what we may all experience at our workspaces sooner than later.
What will companies, space designers and organizational behavior analysts have to learn from this grand experiment that is here to stay?
What are the factors to be considered in creating coworking culture when you have diverse members from different organizations and disciplines?
We look forward to exploring these questions with our fellow Juicy attendees next week. – – – – – –
Steve Kinder
Founder & Designer, LOFTwall