Why Are World's Leading Companies Focusing So Much on their Office Design?

Uber successful and rapidly growing companies around the world have one thing in common: they meticulously focus on their office design. They create workspaces and environments that are so distinct that one can recognize their offices, much like their products, writes Tushar Mittal, MD, Studiokon Ventures

Whether it is technology companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple or other companies with significant global presence like Boston Consulting Group, Harley Davidson, Infosys, or Redbull, iconic office designs have been integral to defining the path of growth. Surely, these offices require investment in time, effort, and money. They need to be planned ahead and executed by experts. Then why are these companies not making-do with standard offices and cookie-cutter designs? Why are they focusing so much on innovative office designs, and what are they getting out of the investment? These are critical questions we should be asking before getting on-board the growing wagon of companies getting custom offices or dismissing the idea altogether.

Increased Productivity: Leveraging Office Design

It is obvious that workplace aesthetics will have a direct impact on the productivity of employees by creating a pleasant environment and making them feel more energetic. Creating a space that accommodates the functional needs of our teams can help save dozens of hours of company time every day. This is especially true when it comes to integrating technology in the workplace. Building a space where technology flows seamlessly will ensure that teams don't have to waste time dealing with a confusing bunch of cables just trying to connect to the projector.

We must get over the 'one size fits all' mindset, and realistically look at the functional needs of our teams and how their lives can be made easier just by tweaking the office design


Tushar Mittal, Studiokon Ventures

It is also important to understand the working dynamics of our teams and creating spaces accordingly. Use the white space for calling rooms, Skype rooms, varied bunch of formal and informal meeting spaces, collaborative areas, story boards, mind maps, or individual working pods that people can get away to when they need to focus.


Foster Innovation: Help Teams Unleash Creativity

Doing business in an increasingly competitive market, it can be easy for companies to end up in an arms race to build better products and services. Excellence is no longer defined by perfection, but by innovation. However, for our teams to be able to create market disruptors and help us do better than our competition, we need to do away with uninspiring workplaces and create spaces that enable them to collaborate and provide them with enough stimuli for the execution of innovative ideas.


A lot of companies are adopting out-of-the-box ideas to help teams collaborate, encouraging people to come together to solve problems and address challenges, as opposed to working in siloes. Many companies are providing break-out areas, relaxation areas, and flexible seating and leveraging office design to fuel their employees' creativity and innovativeness.

Building Culture: Important Tool for Sustainable Growth

Any company that has been able to build a strong and effective work culture will attest to the fact that office design has played an indispensable role in helping it create the right environment. The way we design our office not only helps us provide a structure to the organization, it also shows how much we value our employees. Showing that we trust our teams to use time efficiently, by providing a range of working locations and empowering them with greater flexibility over how they work, can quickly translate to a workforce that is mission-driven and highly effective.


Investment vs Benefits: A Worthy Trade-off

Time and again we see companies and people assuming that great workplace design is a luxury. This, perhaps, grows from the stereotypical view of design as style and aesthetics and not as a tool for implementing the strategies and achieving the objectives of an organization. The belief that only the unicorns can afford to focus on their office design – 'Google can do it! We can't!' – keeps hundreds of companies from leveraging the untapped potential of their workspaces. However, investing in your workplace design can be the worthy trade off that not only sets you apart from your competition but also lays the roadmap for the success of your business.