Honestly I just don't feel comfortable in my office. Although my chair is comfortable and ergonomic and my desk setup is very comfortable. The room isn't small but it makes me feel confined. However if I go to a more open area I feel like I can focus more.
I've seen a great connection between how happy people feel about their workspaces and how happy they feel they are in are them, physically and mentally.
When on-boarding in my first regular job, we received a couple of hours training in how to adjust you chair from the health-and-safety manager.
Fantastic training, him spinning around a chair showing how everything can be adapted, optimal eye, leg, waist, elbow height, the company gym instructor visiting demonstrating cases of how necks can get bent forward just by looking at a screen for a couple of years, the company doctor telling stories of the results of not complaining about feeling uncomfortable, and the lawyer telling us that this advice is useful coz we're giving it to you now, don't forget it.
I've worked in a lot of other places since. Some have been more haphazard/freedom-giving in implementing a comfortable desk and I'm a fan of that: Put a stack of paper under the monitor. Have a footrest instead of adjusting the chair. Bring in a fishtank and have some (real) fish (not a screensaver) swimming past you while you work, go to the gym for an hour when there aren't meetings, lots of plants, do a standing desk on empty paper boxes, bring a camping bed to store under your desk and take a nap after lunch on it. Pretty free workspaces.
What I've seen work, and not work, and work better, and this is complete anecdote: Colleagues that have the training to have been informed of best practices, and have an idea of the optimal 'springiness' setting to set their chair to have fun with their chair have freedom with their chair. Companies that do that then then also allow their employees to choose how to setup their environment are more productive, committed and a lot happier.
Open-office environments are actually OK for this. But not hot-desking ones. Feeding your fish is 2-3 minutes of not staring at a screen or typing, refreshment. Knowing the cleaner will throwaway a present for a colleague if you're not cleaned your desk in the evening is a prison. Having plenty of small meeting rooms available can provide peace and privacy.
And a quick nap on a colleague's borrowed camping bed when you're in for a long day, is bliss.
Those office all look nice - until you get to the place where work actually takes place. I don't care if the foosball table is in a nice room or if the kitchen is fancy. I spend 95% of my time at my desk. Focus some energy on making that area bearable.
Please please please no. Having "personal" space at the office is just as important as having "quiet" space. I do not want to feel like a drifter, a student in the library, or a tenant in a co-working space, unless I am actually one of those things.
You just have to remember that you're not confined to that space. So you close that door and you crash out what you need to do. Then you stand up, and you go for a walk outside that space to relieve the cramped feeling.
What also helps is to also have a Window that looks out into something green. If I'm sick of looking at my screen and need to think, I get to look out and watch dogs play at a daycare which is immensely relieving.
I am willing to put up with so much more shit having this peaceful environment, I feel like it is win win for my company+clients, and myself.
An office space, with a computer always on your face and the expectation that you will be working is probably the worst environment possible for any kind of creative work.
... Or not. Make it an open office space, with people taking around you. Then you'll get the worst possible.
Our company waxes lyrical about the “amazing offices” and the “investment” in them. Yet the desks are next to each other and so cramped you have to be careful rolling back your chair when you stand up else you might hit someone else’s chair.
Zero effort was put in to make desks less distracting. Only some desks are height adjustable. Chairs are cheap.
They were hoping all the “fun” stuff would lure people back. It didn’t work. Because while fun stuff is nice, if work doesn’t happen, we get fired, so the working area has to be good too
Same old same old. All that changed was the language to describe the offices and the “experience”
We had an office where they tried this as an experiment. Each desk was sit-stand, had one or two 24inch monitors, a chromebox + mouse + keyboard, plenty of wall sockets easily accessible at the top of the desk and powered-USB port for charging etc. People either plugged their laptop in, or just logged in on the chromebox and were away.
And it was awful.
* People started to have "their" desk where they "always" sit, and left things like coats on the chair, running shoes under the desk, folding bikes (you name it) at the desk. This had the effect of taking the desk "out of circulation" meaning when the "usual" occupier wasn't there for a day people still didn't use the desk, or someone did use it but the usual occupier came in late and someone else was there it was a super-awkward moment of either the first person packing up and moving elsewhere, or the usual occupant getting in a huff with someone in "their desk" and/or continually interrupting the other person when they come over to collect their notebook or headphones or something.
* There were less desks than people. 90% of the time this was fine as usually enough people were on vacation/at clients/on training etc. Occasionally though it meant there was no space and people roamed the office for 15 minutes before having to go and work from Starbucks (if they had brought their laptop with them)
* If you were at meetings or otherwise away from your desk, you would often come back to your desk to find that someone else was now sat at the desk you were sitting at before.
* Even if you found a desk, you were often not near your team. Cue constant "Where are you sitting?" instant messages and people wandering around trying to find each other.
* Desks often had missing cables and stuff - so even if you did get a desk sometimes it was on that one desk where the monitors dont work, or someone had taken the power cable, or the keyboard had a "sticky H key" or something. Because no one "owned" the desks, no one bothered to report the faults to the people managing the facilities and just moved to another desk or stole the cable/keyboard/mouse/whatever from another nearby desk.
* Engineers could not use desktops (since they would have to move them every day, and company policy is no source code stored on laptops) so the computers got given a fixed location, and the nomad engineers had to find a desk to remote desktop into the desktop each day. This is fine for short periods, but day-in, day-out 8+ hours a day looking at remote desktops leads to sea-sickness due to the small lag. So even if the receptionist or admins or spreadsheet jockeys could go and sit in the cool-zones for their work, the engineers were stuck at a dekstop because they need the monitors and stuff to do their job.
After about 9 months or so we moved to a different building due to growing out of the experimental building and went back to assigned-desks in an open plan office which was hugely improved.
Please, for anyone reading this, please please please do not instigate non-designated desks for your workers.
tl;dr - non-designed desks had all of the same problems as an open office, but with extra additional micro-stresses every day that really add up over time to make your working day a misery.
Fwiw, open office with short cubicle walls + standing desks that put your desk surface above the wall + mech keyboards was the bane of my existence. Appreciate having some awareness and compassion for those around you.
I know plenty of people who wouldn't want to touch an office job with a ten-foot pole. It's not like the creature comforts of a nice office environment is the end-all-be-all for every person and their respective inclinations.
Motivational posters might work for some people -- I have a Ralph Steadman poster above my desk here ;) .
He's definitely right about having a nice space to work in where you can feel like you can breathe a bit. Comfortable chair, good solid desk, space to put up sticky notes or a whiteboard... Yes even a plant can help make it feel a bit more welcoming.
Isn't this situation a side effect of the “old ways”, where you had to go to work? So you optimized differently: smaller space, and no work space at home because you had one at the office where you had to go anyway, so it was better to live closer.
Also, not all offices provide decent work spaces. The permanent humming of the AC, background chatter, cheap monitors, ridiculously low quality peripherals, wonky chairs… I could go on all day.
In the end, it's almost as if there wasn't a single, universal best case…
And I think this is what grates people, trying to apply a universal blanket policy when each person's situation and preferences are different, and they could all (or most of them) be satisfied at the same time.
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