The Benefits of Collaborative Workspace Furniture

Today’s office workspaces deserve better than endless rows of monochrome cubicles. So do your employees, who are real people craving functional yet aesthetic office furniture letting them perform at their best.

That’s where collaborative workspace furniture comes in. Designed to foster open communications and office camaraderie, collaborative furniture is one of today’s top design trends. Explore how to integrate collaborative furniture into your own workplace — plus what benefits that furniture brings.

The Benefits of Collaborative Workspace Culture

There are many advantages to introducing a collaborative workplace design into your office — for your employees, your clients and even your wallet.

• Higher engagement: Businesses with high employee engagement rates see improved performance across departments. Employees also boast better health outcomes. This, in turn, has been shown to propel customer engagement, lead conversions and client retention.
• Stronger employee rapport: Employees with strong social ties at work are happier and healthier. The rapport also fosters a less vertical work atmosphere. Colleagues are more likely to reach out, connect and work together over projects. As its best, that workplace rapport leads to improve workflows with less staff and departmental silos, increasing overall office productivity.
• Customizable: Say a group of colleagues suddenly need to address an e-commerce product release whose sale pages have unexpectedly malfunctioned. With office furniture innately designed for collaboration, those colleagues can easily move chairs, rearrange desks or tables or move to a free open work zone to fix the issue quickly and effectively. Modular collaborative furniture is particularly great here, empowering creative problem solving and project management. 
• Functional: Collaborative furniture allows you to create an ideal workspace as-needed. From spur of the moment brainstorming sessions to planned project tasks requiring multiple subject matter experts to weekly all-hands meetings, collaborative furniture helps get the job done.
• Approachable: Less isolated workspaces create an open, inviting office. New and seasoned employees are less separated from others on their teams or across departments. The welcoming atmosphere helps everyone — even visiting clients or vendors — sense that this is a place where people work together, not compete at-odds.
• Profitable: High-performing, high-engagement workplaces have been shown to maintain earnings-per-share growth more than four times their industry competitors. Collaborative offices even result in a 21% higher annual profitability. What could your business do with nearly a quarter more earnings?

Collaborative Workspace Furniture From Amish Outlet Store

Today’s range of collaborative furniture fits any office seeking an alternative to traditional desks, seating, storage and more. See how Amish Outlet furniture delivers the collaborative workspace staples you need in the styles and designs right for your brand.

1. Shared Work Tables

Traditional office designs rely on row after row of boxy cubicles. Those cubicles themselves are cut off from one another via monochrome partitions without any personality or flexibility. Employees are relegated to their isolated desk inside a poorly lit, poorly configured cubicle, often working in very small spaces.

Contemporary office furniture breaks from the cubicle mold. Instead of being stuck at an isolating desk, employees can share clusters of work tables. Each still receives their own work station, complete with a computer, laptop, phone connection, office supplies and more. Yet they sit in harmony with their colleagues, reducing social isolation.

Our line of Amish Conference Tables offers numerous choices for shared work stations, each lending your office space the elegance yet openness today’s workplaces demand.

2. Bookshelves

Both homey and functional, bookshelves offer a creative twist on styling your office while also maximizing storage space.

What’s more, bookshelves offer collaborative-minded offices a particularly unique benefit — they double as partitions. Available in a range of heights and styles, artisan office bookshelves organize open-concept office floorplans, designate departments or even segment special work zones, such as those for group meetings. Mix and match wood types and stains to get the ultimate on-brand look for your space.

3. Multi-Functional Office Storage

Storage space is a premium in today’s offices. Designs must allocate sensible but considerable room for employees’ desks, ensuring layouts aren’t cramped and people work with a healthy amount of personal space. Yet offices must also hold enough for supplies, equipment, various meeting rooms, entry lobbies, restrooms and more. It can easily get cramped, with storage often pushed to the wayside.

The answer — multi-functional office storage pieces that can serve more than one furniture purpose. From file cabinets integrated into desk pods to shelving that doubles as a partition or room divider, storage is an important fixture in a contemporary collaborative office, saving you space and money.

Review the range of multi-functional office storage pieces available today, from customizable filing cabinets to other storage-equipped furniture fitting your current needs.

4. Breakout Stations

Breakout stations are a unique take on contemporary office layouts. Rather than allotting distinct functions to meeting rooms or even assigning individual desks, breakout stations let employees pick where they want to work for the day.

The entire office is then organized according to tasks or functions. Quiet solo work is best achieved in one area, client phone calls over there, dual or small group activities here and large team gatherings in that area. Employees choose their own seats daily, so long as that station is open.

Breakout stations are best achieved through clustered office furniture layouts. Individual work tables and desks are bunched together to create work zones vital to your core business functions.

5. Mobile Seating

One of the most important characteristics of a collaborative office is its seating arrangement.

Consider equipping all desks and work stations with portable chairs. Your employees can easily move their seats around, allowing ad-hoc brainstorming blitzes, group meetings and creative problem-solving sessions to happen in an instant. Employees feel less inhibited and have greater ownership of their space with wheeled desks chairs, working where they want, when they want.

Collaborative Furniture Layouts

Once you have the collaborative office furniture needed to reinvigorate your work culture, how can you best arrange them? Consider any of these top contemporary office arrangements:

• Open concept: The open concept layout is a natural home for contemporary office furniture. The expansive setup lends the most flexibility to arranging shared work desks, rolling around wheeled seats, rearranging breakout spaces and more.
• Clustered: Clustered furniture arrangements create pod-like sections for specific teams or departments. Each cluster maintains nearly all the equipment the team needs to get its work done, including relevant storage and a sub-section dedicated for group work.
• Unassigned seating: As its name suggests, unassigned office layouts give full agency back to the employee. Individuals decide where they work on any given day, so long as they meet their responsibilities and are still readily communicative.
• Assigned work zones: A work zone office layout takes unassigned seating to the next level. Rather than split the office up by departments, the office is divided according to types of work, including zones for solo tasks, voice or video calls, team collaboration, training and formal meetings and also space for more informal social activities or camaraderie building.

Create Your Collaborative Office Workspaces Today

Shop for quality collaborative workspace furniture on AmishOutletStore.com. Our wooden workspace furniture is available across ten distinct furniture lines, with each piece handcrafted and customizable to fit your vision for your office. Shop our workspace furniture lines today.