The ultimate goal of a workspace design is to make the space not only functional, but aesthetically pleasing as well. Effective use of form and function promote employee health and happiness, which in turn promotes productivity.
Although a neat and organized workspace is a challenge in today's busy world, maintaining an organized and productive space is well worth the undertaking. It very well makes up in terms of time saved, morale and productivity boost and improved service delivery.
Organizing a work space goes way back to the industrial revolution when managers were trying to find out how to make their workers more productive. Initially, the goal was to reduce injuries, but over the years we've learned that carefullyorganizing your work space can improve productivity (Resnick and Zanotti, 1998).
The intersection where generations meet and collaborate each day is the workplace, which companies need to foster and nourish to create this center of production. Perhaps yoga balls instead of regular chairs, individual employee-designed workstations, or integrated rich-media environments with music or video *won't* be such a far-fetched office design in the future.
We frequently hear the term high-performance work space, and I think we are all seeing significant gains in efficiency as our office environments evolve.
Yet, measuring the performance of an alternative workspace today is a tricky business -- especially given many of the new conventions in how we work, such as unassigned work spaces, telecommuting, distributed work, consulting, and outsourcing.
So, what does a "high-performance work space" really mean?
