Why the Best Offices Support How People Actually Work

"The best design is the one that supports the way people actually work, not the way we think they should." - Gensler

There is a version of your office that exists only on a whiteboard. Clean rows of workstations. A conference room for every occasion. A breakroom nobody uses because it is too far from the people who need it.

Then there is the workplace people actually use. The one where the corner couch with the cool (and acoustical) backdrop became the most sought-after spot for video calls. The hallway where two co-workers dragged chairs to work, because it’s quieter than the noisy workstations they usually work in. Where the expensive phone booths sit empty because they are too hot.

Gensler has been studying how people work for decades, and this quote cuts right to the heart of the problem most companies face when they design their offices. They design for an ideal that does not exist. They design for how work looks in a conference room presentation, or because of something they saw at another companies office, not how their team's work actually unfolds across a Tuesday morning.

Real work is usually fairly messy. It’s constantly shifting between focus and collaboration, loud and quiet. Between sitting, standing, and walking to think. The best workspaces are built for that reality, not around a floor plan that looks good in a brochure.

One of the first things you should be thinking about is not what you want your office to look like, but how your people actually spend their days. Ask them. Their answers almost always surprise leadership.

If the space is not serving the work, it is working against it.

Monday Musings is our semi-regular series of quick, unfiltered thoughts on the design world. No deep dives. No whitepapers. Just the stuff that's rattling around in our heads as we start the week. Think of it as a coffee-fueled conversation about how spaces shape the way we work, think, and feel.