How to Design Workspaces That Encourage Collaboration

Fostering an environment of collaboration can have significant benefits to your overall company performance and bottom line. When your employees are more engaged, it will improve your retention and attraction of top talent. This will then lead to increased momentum and profitability.

At MGA, we have found many benefits of having a collaborative culture. Our meetings are more productive, we are attracting top talent, and innovative ideas are being generated.

As we are gearing up to move into our new office this coming May, we have worked hard with award-winning architects to design unique spaces of collaboration. Here are some things we’ve learned along the way.

Tips for Designing a Collaborative Workspace

Everyone needs a private space to work and harness collaboration at the same time. Some elements to consider to create the best collaborative working space are lighting, flexibility, technology, acoustics, and open floor plans.

In our new office, we have allotted several spaces for innovative brainstorming to take place—either as a team or individually. Some are general sitting areas. Others are flex spaces, like our kitchen, which can double as a training room when needed. We also designed a “fishbowl” to be used as our brain center, where four out of five walls will be entirely glass. These areas all offer variety and can be used for “alone” time, various-sized group discussions, client meetings, or even more significant training sessions. Seats can be rearranged, and tables can be moved around, creating an open floor plan.

Each room is also equipped with appropriate technology as well as glass walls that can double as whiteboard surfaces. We are utilizing interactive scheduling tools for meeting rooms, too, with tablets stationed in each area to book the space or make sure you’re not about to ‘steal someone else’s meeting room.’

We intentionally looked at each element of design (down to the details of shapes utilized in surfaces, lighting fixtures, colors, wall coverings, carpeting, seating surfaces, and textures) when creating our new collaborative spaces.

We’ve been working hard with Method Architecture, sharing ideas and trends that may work for our team. However, we make it a point to solicit feedback from our team members directly, too. What do they really want in a workspace, and what types of spaces would help them feel more creative and focused?

Everyone Wins with Collaboration

You can boost your employees’ motivation by creating spaces where they can do their best work. This includes fostering a collaborative culture in your physical workspace. No matter the size of your company, it can directly contribute to your organization’s success by improving your employees’ efficiency and overall morale.

Since office design has been in the front and center of our minds leading up to our office move, we have many ideas and trends that we would love to share with you. We’d love to help you think about your business from all different aspects. Sure, we do accounting and numbers, but we can also help you with your company culture, remote working solutions, office design tips, and much more.

Reach out to us today if we can help your business reach new heights!