The Heart Association introduced a new trust-based management style 4 years ago and started an extensive working life experiment. This working life experiment has resulted in a desire to create a hybrid working life, where work at home and work in the office are combined. It has subsequently become clear that the physical layout of the Heart Association's head office no longer reflected the organisation. Surveys showed that the office invited cooperation and new thinking to a low degree. Which did not fit well with the strategy of being a modern and professional NGO. This created a risk of employee departure, lack of well-being and possible production loss.

The ambition for our collaboration with the Heart Association was therefore a permanent improvement of the interior design, so that there was a connection between the physical interior design at the head office and the designated strategy.

HOME WORK

In a survey, it turned out that employees wanted to work at home approx. 2 times a week. The hybrid working life results in the purpose of going to the office changing. Therefore, we have created some physical frameworks that encourage collaboration and community and, to a lesser extent, immersion and working alone. It is done instead of at the home workplace. The amount of homework has meant that we have cut the number of desks and gained new opportunities to use the square metres.

OPTIMIZED USE OF M²

In order to ensure that there is no wasted m², for example a poor use of the canteen's square meters, we have organized the office into "home areas" and flexible spaces and other supporting common functions. In the kitchen, we have established a café as the social focal point and a lunch room with space for joint activities, informal meetings and collaboration. The organization also means that the employees move around the location more, so that there are more random meetings that result in more knowledge sharing.

BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

The three biggest changes the employees attribute to themselves are the division between homework and work in the office, the movement in daily life in the office to go from one activity to the next and the planning of the day, so that the employee is aware of which activities she wants to carry out.

BETTER WORKING LIFE

We carried out a baseline measurement before the conversion and repeated it after moving in. The results show a significant improvement on all measurement points. In the baseline measurement, the scores were between 5 and 6 points out of 10. In the post-measurement, the scores moved up to between 8 and 9 points out of 10. For example, the question is: I find that the Heart Association's physical layout invites innovation and new thinking, moved from 5,6, 8,2 points to 10 points out of XNUMX.

The quantitative comments about the effect of the new interior design are also interesting.