Activity-Based Workplace Design

What is Activity-Based Workplace design?    

As companies around the world open their minds to new ways of working in response to the global pandemic, 'activity-based' workplace design has become quite the buzzword. As an early adopter of “activity-based” workplace design, with over 30 years’ experience in this field, Senior Associate at AWA Clark Elliott shares the secret to taking this more versatile approach.

The concept of activity-based workplaces consists in combining an academic approach with focus on putting people at the core of our decision-making, to create efficient work environments. The first activity-based work environment was created in the nineties. But only now, 24 years and a global pandemic later, are people really acknowledging that a mix of work from home, work from the office, and activity-based working with spaces - designed for different activities - seem like a good idea!

For the first activity-based project Clark Elliott did, they started the process by asking questions. They discovered through staff interviews and focus groups that a significant amount of the sales force said 99% of their time was spent in the city selling. So, they challenged the fact that they have allocated desk spaces of 9 sqm each that are empty 99% of the time. And they created a very interesting activity-based floor we called it the ‘Business Centre’. The Business Centre featured a mix of territorial and non-territorial solutions - meaning the back office had assigned places, the front office had shared spaces designed for sales consultants.

A while after the project, a salesperson who had previously been allocated a nine sqm cubicle desk said “thank you for taking away my desk.” He didn’t sit at his desk on a Monday and wait for the phone to ring. He clustered his meetings and scheduled his time and was much more proactive.

This holistic approach to activity-based workplace design has just been growing since then. Now, over 20 years later we have all the ingredients perfected along with the technology to accommodate distributed working, activity-based working, and remote-working. In the wake of Covid-19, with many governments across the world encouraging a mix of home and office working - this activity-based approach is more relevant than ever.