The Rise of "Collaboration Space": Rethinking Workplace Design for Hybrid Work

While face-to-face interaction remains valuable, the post-lockdown landscape demands workplaces that support a wider range of collaboration styles, both physical and virtual. In the article below Joseph Huddleston, Business Design Development Executive for Squaredot reflects on this idea.

Collaboration within and around the workplace has always been a hot topic, with a general consensus that group learning and contribution is best done face to face. A fact that was well demonstrated and discussed at the recent British Council for Offices Annual Conference in Birmingham by Dr Hannah Critchlow, PhD, HonDSc, Neuroscientist at The University of Cambridge. 

Our collective but very separated experiences of working in siloed conditions during ‘lockdown’ amplified this message. Teams, Zoom or other virtual meetings provided somewhat of a stopgap while online collaboration tools which encouraged a ‘shared voice’ and ‘creative input’ however fell short; seemingly more biased toward the technically literate or those, simply with stronger internet connection.

No doubt these technologies are here to stay and will continually mature thank goodness. We are now presented with collaboration opportunities and requirements that demand a range of settings, enabling face to face, hybrid and completely virtual collaboration.

‘Collaboration’ has become a key feature and buzz word of our built environment discussions, whereby crudely speaking we have swapped desk positions for collaboration spaces. A pre-pandemic desk sharing of approximately 8 desks per 10 people now sits at more like 5 desks per 10 people. With a deficit on desks and some wild occupancy swings still apparent, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, this invariably puts pressure on ‘the collaboration space’ to serve a multitude of roles and be various in their form.

As each business is unique and its requirements diverse, rather than attempt to define every collaboration type and it’s use case, we present a few examples that we have explored over the years with our various clients, as part of our workplace consultancy process.

Joseph has over 20 years of professional experience in Interior Design and a passion for contributing to local and national built environments through workplace consultancy and design.

He is focused on research informed solutions based around inclusivity and environmental responsibility and has been involved with the British Council for Offices for many years, currently committee member and regional mentorship lead.