A new wave of the workforce requires more from their employers in order to stick around for more than a year or so.

Companies are looking for new ways to have satisfied and fulfilled employees, and a good part of that satisfaction comes from the workplace itself.

Employees that are comfortable in their work environment are happy employees, and happy employees are more productive employees. This simple and very straightforward math explains that people who actually like their workplace, are more likely to want to continue working there, and they are likely to be more motivated to produce the best results.

Since different people have different needs, the agile design has proven to make sense for a lot of companies.

To accommodate flexible working practices an office needs to be adaptable.

Part-time and remote workers need to feel welcome and part of the team, so it is important to have a place for these workers when they are in the office. When these workers are absent, the full-time workers should be able to make use of this space as well, and turn it into a relaxing area, or place for casual brainstorming.

And for those full-time staff members, technology has removed the need for them to be rooted in the same spot all day, every day. Creative hubs, break-out areas, quiet zones, and meeting spaces, used in conjunction with laptops, tablets, and phones all help to drive this new, proactive, collaborative work-ethic that will, in turn, drive productivity.

This new agile working concept has been successfully adopted by companies including BT, Google, and Unilever, who value its measurable impact, not only on productivity, but also on recruitment and retention of their best staff. And when delivered by a workplace design consultancy with the right expertise, agile working can also deliver up to a 20% savings of usable office space.

Creating an agile office requires much more than simply transforming the physical space of the workplace. The change requires a shift in organizational thinking that doesn’t just “magically happen” once the new office furniture arrives. Employees need to be encouraged to make use of these spaces and they need to be led by example until they can ease into this new mindset and comfortably use the space in the way it was meant to be used.

By Azra Šahinović, Marketing Manager and Graphic Designer at GLC Europe, Budapest, Hungary