Office Space Planning – Determining Layouts for Future Work Modes

In today's knowledge work, employees in companies pursue a variety of work modes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the home office was explored as the most commonly used work location and questions about the role of the office were addressed (e.g., Nappi and Ribeiro 2022). Employees make their choice of work location much more consciously and increasingly consider where they would like to pursue what type of work. Nevertheless, the relevance of the office as a place where work and people are locally embedded continues to be frequently attributed, rather than its disappearance predicted.New user demands such as the changing environment of companies in need of interacting faster, more agile and leaner are driving changes within the office sector. If the needs and requirements for future-oriented and user-oriented office space are met, positive effects on employees and, conversely, on the success of the company can be realized. The purpose of corporate real estate (CRE) is expanding from standard office space, as a place of pure space provision, to a place where productivity and employee well-being are equally maintained. It's becoming more and more apparent that employees visit the corporate office for social interaction, meetings and networking, while staying in the home office for concentrated individual work. As a result, the layout and space configuration of offices will have to change significantly in the future. To provide this opportunity, a variety of different spaces must be available in appropriate proportions, for example individual workstations, group workspaces, and spaces for social encounters. In this research project, based on a classification of employee work types, needs and requirements for future-oriented and user-oriented office space are derived. For an empirical analysis, 754 knowledge workers from one of the largest German pharma companies were surveyed. A cluster analysis, is used to show how office space layout can be derived based on different work modes. The results show that based on the derived work modes from the cluster analysis six different work types with specific characteristics and preferences occur. Based on the results, CRE managers can estimate which layout configuration is needed for each work type. Exemplary layouts for each work modes are shown which differ in number and size of workstations, meetings rooms and collaboration space. Depending on the configuration of work modes in a firm, the optimal space layout and capacity of workstations can be estimated by using these exemplary layouts. The paper has practical relevance for deciding what types of space should be made available and in what proportions as part of the real estate strategy based on work modes performed.