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Heather A Ochmane-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates
Update 1: Collaborative Workspace
I chose to focus on a collaborative workspace. I work in an office setting (when we are not in a COVID world), and back pre-COVID I felt like a collaborative workspace was the way of the future. Our office was getting more and more open and adding areas around the office for group collaboration to happen. I was always interested in venturing out to these areas, but it always felt a bit taboo, especially working in finance. Was there really a need for collaboration in the world of math and spreadsheets? The answer is an obvious yes.
Collaborative workspaces have many benefits that go beyond the socialization of coworkers. In one example, a company Citrix, took in this collaborative workspace to the max. They completely redesigned their offices to support a culture of teamwork (see image). The company knew if they wanted to shift behaviors, they need to have “people live the change, not just be told about it.”
The benefits of shared workspaces are both for the business and the employees. For the business, you can make do with much smaller workspaces, saving money on real estate. You can also save money on individual office items like desk, printer, cube for each employee. For employees and employee retention, networking and ability to work together with ease are the largest benefits. It is also noted that collaborative workspaces increase productivity and motivation. Additionally, shared workspaces truly reflect a positive company culture for employees and strong teamwork philosophy.
This is a key problem of my large Fortune 500 company not fully committing to a collaborative workspace – while they did spend money and add in these new collaborative pieces of furniture, they kept us all in cubes and the collaborative space was not being pushed on us enough.
The interesting change now is how will companies tackle the demand of a collaborative workplace while also returning to work from a post-COVID world. COVID 19 threw a wrench in everyone’s work life and flipped a typical workday upside down. Do you feel that a collaborative workspace will still be possible for large corporations while still facilitating a cleaner workspace?
After over 16 months of working from home, I feel the main benefit of returning to the office is the socialization and collaboration. Most large companies have proved day-to-day they do not need employees in a physical office to succeed. How do corporations push employees to come back in to the office, and how to they encourage the networking culture companies had prior to COVID 19?
Richardson, Adam. “Inventing the Collaborative Workspace.” Harvard Business Review, 21 Aug. 2014, https://hbr.org/2011/11/inventing-the-collaborative-workspace.
Revoy, Jeff. “Collaborative Benefits.” SpaceIQ, https://spaceiq.com/blog/benefits-of-a-collaborative-workspace/.
Collaborative work space is a great way of moving forward with ideas being shared between colleagues and it does save money too as everyone is in one common space.
Moving forward from this idea imagine having an online collaborative work space where the there is no limit to area of country. The only thing they need to have in common is similar job roles. Imagine the ideas and concepts exchanged between people and exchange of knowledge and ideas.
The most important thing in having cooperation and collaboration in an office with other colleagues is the highest motivation that can spread in the atmosphere of the workplace which due to the vaccination process hopefully we can experience it again. We couldn't be very successful with the virtual co-working because we still really don't know the best way that we can get the benefit of social media and platforms at the time that it is not possible for us to be in the office together.
While at a personal level, I definitely agree that collaboration and socialization are some of the key benefits of being in office- I think the reason why this is the case, is mainly because a lot of us are unfamiliar/ do not have strategies in place on how we can do this remotely.
If we were to be more cognizant of the resources that are available to us, that can enable us to build these strategies, then I think, being physically present would prove to be redundant.
Hi Molly,
Thanks for your interesting update. I watch the situations mainly in Scandinavia and Japan and agree with your views that 'After over 16 months of working from home, I feel the main benefit of returning to the office is the socialization and collaboration'.
Covid crisis has shown us that it is not enough to be a specialist but we really need interdisciplinary views. Functions of offices will never be the same as before Covid.