COMPANY CULTURE, SPACE AND WORKPLACE DENSITY

To support the new COVID-19 protocols in collaboration, communication and safety, organizations must create a minimum 6 ft. distancing between people in cafes, lounge spaces meeting rooms and open workstations, which will lower the overall density of the space.With these requirements forcing organizations to modify their work spaces, some are wondering how to cultural design of their space will impact the number of lost space capacity.

Some may be wondering: since our organization has a progressive culture and space, and as meetings often happen in collaborative areas, will loss of space be greater compared to an organization with a classic culture with more workstations?

To explore this workplace density question let's review seating pattern for three different cultural floor plans: Classic, Balanced and Progressive.

Workplace culture

To understand the variations in floor plans, lets's break down company culture at high level.

1. Classic Culture: Process-oriented, formal with strong communication and decision- making methods.

• Work: All spaces are assigned (private cabins, workstations).

• Meet: Meetings happen in conference or meeting rooms.

• Socialize: Socializing happens in the cafeteria.

2. Balanced Culture: Market-oriented and represents the intersection of strategy and execution.

• Work: Most spaces are assigned, with a few shared (phone booths).

• Meet: Meetings happen in a variety of conference rooms, huddle rooms and some breakout areas.

• Socialize: Socializing happens in the work cafeteria.

3. Progressive Culture: Adhocracy and team oriented culture.

• Work: Most spaces are unassigned, with a few assigned.

• Meet: Meetings can happen anywhere in the space.

• Socialize: Socializing can happen anywhere.

Each of these cultures follow unique floor plans that impacts the design and allocation of dedicated and shared spaces meeting, socializing and working.

With more collaboration areas, there might be a higher seating loss, but each space design is different.

Even though the company with progressive cultural space has a higher number of people and more collaborative areas than the company with a balanced culture, it might not have high loss of number of seating. Because all space designs are unique, it's important to completely analyse the floor plan to adhere to NCDC social distancing.