magazine
businessinfomag.uk
38
Office Design
Sit up, stand up
Not long ago, when every employee
had a designated desk and a
clearly defined role, office seating
was selected on the basis of the
employee’s seniority and the specific
task they had to perform. Today, with
shared workspaces, hot desking and
more fluid, collaborative workstyles,
seating is much less prescriptive – and
much simpler.
T
he array of adjustable knobs and
levers that so confused office workers
in the ‘80s and ‘90s have given way to
simpler, sleeker designs with seating
mechanisms that automatically follow
changes in posture, giving the sitter the
benefit of constant support without the
headache of never-ending manual re-
adjustment.
This ease of use is essential in modern
offices, especially those with hot desking
and shared workstations, where users
don’t have the option to customise chair
settings to their specific needs and then
never change them.
Jorgen Josefsson, managing director
of Scandinavian Business Seating (SB
Seating), has mixed feelings about
simplicity. Yes, it makes it easier to
move between work areas. But, reduced
adjusatibility might also impair comfort
and therefore productivity.
One way around this, he suggests,
is to specify the same types of desking
and seating throughout an organisation
so that when employees hot desk they
won’t have to contend with unfamiliar
adjustments. This gives companies scope
to specify seats with a wider array of
adjustments than just seat height.
However, he adds that this will not
help in independent ‘third’ spaces used
by employees when they are away from
the office.
“If you have people coming into a
totally unfamiliar area, then you need
something that is simpler and more
intuitive to work with,” he said. “The
key thing to remember is that you
spend more time with seating than with
any other piece of equipment in your
working life, maybe your whole life!
You’re connected to it for a very long
time.”
Different settings
That said, the number of employees who
spend all day at the same workstation
(and in the same chair) is diminishing.
Wireless technology and portable
computing have freed office workers to
move around the office and change their
working environment according to the
nature of the task they need to perform.
Facilities managers have supported
mobility by introducing a variety of
different work settings, from quiet rooms
to breakout areas for social interaction.
Such areas are furnished with a
greater variety of seating, but Josefsson
stresses that it is important not to lose
sight of the fact that people will still be
doing work in them.
“Now we can work pretty much
anywhere – from home, in a different
shared space, in a canteen – and that’s
brought into play many different types
of furniture: soft seating, canteen
products and higher stools. It’s important
that we don’t forget there are people
working in these spaces and they need to
be comfortable and they need to be able
to perform their tasks to a high standard.
Otherwise, we might end up back where
we started with people sitting at the
kitchen table for hours and hours and
ending up with severe back problems,”
he said.
Seating manufacturers have
responded to this need by developing
flexible, multi-functional seating that can
be used at a desk for concentrated work
and in collaborative environments.
What are the key trends in office design today?
Business Info
asks the
experts, starting with Jorgen Josefsson, managing director of SB Seating
