Using Collaborative Ergonomics to Solve Your Startup’s Office Problems: Part II

When we think of an office, it’s either a room filled with rectangular desks, or a sea of cubicles. But what would happen if we focused on creating an office built for collaboration, ergonomics, and a growing company? This is the future of the office.

Our goal is to bring more people in, make them more connected, and maximize your space. Collaborative Ergonomics is designed to expand or contract, based on your space. Regardless of your office’s shape, we can create a layout that maximizes both collaboration and ergonomics for every member of your team.

If you missed Part1I, catch up here.

The Future of Collaborative Ergonomics

We believe the future lies in learning how to collaborate better, both as a company and as a society. We find joy in helping companies build a functional and collaborative space that meets their needs.

As office spaces evolve and the startup culture continues to thrive, we’ll see an increase in office diversity. Some companies will continue to use larger workstations, while others will work to maximize their space with a smaller desk.

Regardless of preference and needs, Collaborative Ergonomics is feasible.

Collaboration’s Future

As organizations continue to prioritize collaboration to drive innovation and decision making, they will need spaces that can accommodate them. Space design, then, should ideally de-emphasize a sense of hierarchy by creating more collaborative spaces in more convenient locations.

And what is more convenient than collaborations at your own desk? A recent study of 9 industries and 38 organizations found that collaboration promotes:

• Creativity and Sharing Knowledge
• Company Wide Innovation
• Speed of Decision Making

Creativity and Sharing Knowledge

Collaboration is often seen in creative companies like agencies, but any company can benefit from the improved creativity and knowledge sharing. Knowing how another team is solving a problem can help every department learn how to improve their results, which can help your startup continue to scale.

Company Wide Innovation

Oftentimes, departments are separated within companies. While partially out of necessity, this can also hurt innovation. Members from different departments taking time to collaborate with each other can lead to further innovation that would not occur within singular teams.

Speed of Decision Making

Whether you ascribe to the Lean Startup Method and push out Minimum Viable Products, or prefer to wait, quick decision making is one of the biggest needs collaboration can solve.

Creating an office space that supports communication can improve your decision–making process, making it more effective for throughout your company.

Ergonomics’ Future

When creating an ergonomic workspace that also emphasizes collaboration, there are a number of needs.

• Items within easy reach
• Height Adjustability
• All equipment available in zones according to use

Items Within Easy Reach

An ergonomic workstation is only as big as it needs to be. What does this mean? We want to create a desk that keeps everything you need in easy reach without straining, and just a chair swivel away. Instead of making a deeper desk, we wrapped it around the user.

Cubicle – Stand & Stare

This includes tools like a keyboard and mouse, but also takes into consideration actions like turning the monitor on as well as repositioning the monitor so collaborators can sit and share.

Height Adjustability

Sit-stand workstations have increased in popularity, and while we do produce workstations like this, height-adjustability is more nuanced. Your web developer may be 5′ 9″ and sit comfortably at a standard desk, but your 6′ 3″ project manager’s posture would suffer at the same model.

Height adjustable desks allow every member to set their desk at an ideal height. Ergonomics maximizes a healthy workstation, so your team can work with limited physical stress.

All Equipment Available in Zones

These designs wrap around the user, creating work zones based on their tasks. Their primary work zone features what they reach for most frequently, the secondary work zone offers a “back up” work space, and the tertiary work zone holds items they rarely need to touch.

By emphasizing zones, we can keep employees centered in their work and minimize the physical stress a non-ergonomic desk adds over time.

The Benefits of Semi-Custom Designed Furniture

In addition to our ergonomic product line, we serve customers with both fully custom and semi-custom designed office furniture. Semi-custom designed furniture utilizes our product line or designs for past clients, but with slight modifications to suit your particular needs at an affordable price.

Full Custom designs at an “off-the shelf” (production) price is another option.  We call this “design 1, build 20”, and have helped many companies create their office to emphasize Collaborative Ergonomics. By spreading the custom design costs over multiple units we help your startup find the most effective way to cluster your teams for collaboration while making sure you get not only what you want, but also what you need at a price you can afford.

The greatest benefit of this design process is that you receive a personalized product for only a slight additional cost. (Which is still more cost-effective than beginning from scratch.)

Virtually everything we’ve made since 1998 can be replicated with 0.005″ precision. We consider our office furniture product line a base model, and offer a number of features to make these workstations benefit your team.

We believe in designing furniture around you. We take your needs and space constraints into consideration, instead of forcing you and your employees to adapt to the furniture. We’ve been creating custom workstations since 1985, which means we know what works and where trends are headed.

Modifying Semi-Custom Designed Workstations

There are a few ways we can modify an existing custom design:

1. Stretching or shrinking width.
2. Raising or lowering height to suit your body build and preferred working position(s). (This includes our Height-Adjustable models.)
3. Adding doors, backs, sliding shelves, keyboard shelves, grommets and more.
4. Changing laminates and molding colors.

The advantage of Semi-Custom is that you get a personalized product for a modest additional cost.

The advantage of “design 1, build 20” is that you get a personalized custom solution at “off the shelf” pricing.

Different positions in your company have different needs, and we can create a workstation for every team.

Graphic designers often need a second screen, while your UX/UI team may prefer a keyboard shelf. Your project manager(s) may need additional storage below, and we can accommodate that.

While the physical design is important, aesthetics have a place in office design, too. We can modify laminates and molding colors, so we can match your office’s aesthetic to create a productive and beautiful environment.

As startups continue to innovate with their products, their teams will need an innovative workstation to bring these ideas to consumers. Collaborative Ergonomics will only continue to grow as the office is reimagined. Cubicles will be replaced by clustered pods built for human-centered workspaces, which can save space and build an atmosphere of collaboration.

We’re excited about the office’s evolution, and are thrilled to be a part of the transformation. For more information about our semi-custom designed office furniture, give us a call at (800) 332-3393.