Workplace innovation

At RAW Brothers we are fascinated by the idea of the future workplace: what could be achieved if we all took a deep breath and invested in a new approach, bringing workplaces alive through research, strategy and creativity. We belong to an organisation called ‘Go Human’ which looks to see the best of humanity brought alive at work; and strongly believe a creative, intelligent, human approach to workplace design is a key part of this.

Intelligent design based on insight

Innovation and creativity in workplace design are great; but your design has to be grounded in the values and culture of your organisation – what works for one company won’t necessarily for the next. Follow trends at your peril: create a workplace based simply on a good “look” and you may find people don’t use the space or it really doesn’t fire their enthusiasm or engagement.

An intelligent design for a creative workplace is one based on research and data guiding the creative brief. It will have asked employees what they need to experience their best day at work. It will consider ways of improving workplace collaboration, and how to flex with the changing daily requirements of the office - who may be in or out or hotdesking on any particular day, what meetings need to be catered for and so on. It will have involved all the key players to ensure there’s a collective understanding of the activities and priorities of this particular workplace.

The future workplace will be one that is collaborative and highly flexible, growing and shrinking according to capacity requirements. Not everyone needs to be physically sitting at their office desk every day: in our ‘new normal’, employees may only come in for a few hours a week and move around the office in all kinds of small meetings. We’ve learned to value more than ever the importance of face-to-face human connections, but at the same time seen that agile, secure technology is vital. 

Designing for this flexibility is not as difficult as it sounds. When you use intelligent design to create space informed by the genuine needs and priorities of your workforce, you’ll soon hone in on what you really need.

So what can you do?

As with so much in our culture today, good looks are important. You want your physical office space to impress visitors, convey your reputation and inspire staff.  But real good looks are those that are natural and authentic. We are attracted more to people that are authentic and genuine rather than fake; they have a natural charisma about them and put you at ease. It’s exactly the same when it comes to the look of your workplace.

You need to dig down and establish the true authentic personality of your organisation – based on its purpose, values and culture, and framed by talking to your employees – and make sure this is brought to life through the intelligent design of your physical environment. 

How can we help?

The RAW Brothers approach is wired to personality. We are firm believers in authentic, intelligent design based on the ‘real you’. Drawing on our many years’ experience we’ll help you bring your creative workplace to life using key insights about who your organisation and its people are, connecting this personality to your people and your place.

Over the years we have helped conceive many creative workplaces, as well as outdoor place branding and brand environment projects. We have stayed abreast of many emergent ‘phases’ of workplace design and innovation, through various technology revolutions, concepts of agile working, remote working, activity-based design and now the dawn of AI. In our experience, whatever the latest theory or development, great workplace innovation is always the result of aligning organisational personality, employee engagement and workplace strategy.

We partner with a range of forward-thinking organisations and design specialists, providing advice and solutions to bring you the best in intelligent design of the future workplace.