The Attraction of Great Coworking Spaces

Last week we partnered up with Bertie Van Wyk from Herman Miller to talk about how properly activated coworking spaces are the workspace solution of the future. We learned a lot about fear, design and antimicrobials. Check out the sound bytes and resources below for a peek. 

Sound bytes from the webinar:

“Going back to the office isn’t just going back to work, but its better for our physical health… Two minutes of gentle walking per hour, decreases your chances of death by 33%.”

“The floor layout decides who will meet who and who will never meet within a space. The furniture you put in will decide how often people change their posture. So, going from sitting to standing which effects their physical well-being and their social, their mental well-being. How well they connect with others.”

“Social ergonomics is how to make individuals and organizations more productive, more healthy, and more connected. That’s really what we want from a great space.”

“A safety bundle: so, providing loads of different elements to make people feel like ‘this space is perfect for me to go in and it is safe for me to go in.’”

“When you go back you try and sell the way that makes a great coworking space a great coworking space its that element of creating friends. That is the power of a great coworking space.”

“Never say social distancing, its actually physical distancing because people want a physical distance, but they still want to be social.”

”Your main task is to get people connected. That’s why its so successful as great spaces allow people to become friends.”

“There’s so much negative noise around us that we shouldn’t be adding to it. So if you want someone not to use a space don’t put a cross there, don’t put a red tape or a yellow tape saying don’t sit here. That tells people there’s a negative thing it gets them to think of the crisis and then people will get anxiety and stress.”

“All I want is a bit of privacy to get the work done and that’s what your spaces can provide. More areas and more spaces for me to go and hide. And the reason is you know we get interrupted every 4 minutes and it takes us 23 minutes uninterrupted to get back to that level of focus that we were at before we got interrupted.”

”One of the things with antimicrobials is the production of them is very environmentally unfriendly.”

Resources courtesy of Herman Miller: 

You can get all the information from the presentation and more from the links below:

• Short-term return-to-workplace tactics and long-term workplace strategies – Download here 
• Physical Ergonomics – References here.
• Social Ergonomics – References here.
• Cognitive Ergonomics – References here

The recording can be viewed here as well.