Shift Happens

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Photo courtesy contemporary office interiors

Rethinking the places people work

We live in an age of complexity, uncertainty and disruption. It affects every aspect of our lives, including how and where we work. People and organizations need to get comfortable with the concept of continuous change. We are now in the new normal. We won’t be returning to the way things were. Constant change means constant adaptation.

“The shifting landscape of work has left many people and organizations out of sync with modern workplace needs,” says Scott Ellis, president of Contemporary Office Interiors. COI is a certified Herman Miller dealership with offices in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver focused on helping shape the modern workplace in more responsive, connected and human ways. “Individual and group spaces are not optimized for the modern worker.”

Business leaders want the promised benefits of the team-based organization (collaboration, problem-solving, agility, engagement and innovation) but aren’t willing to commit to the changes needed in management practices, culture and the workplace to drive better outcomes.

Get Modern

“Get modern is an expression of our brand and a call to action,” Ellis says. “We aren’t likely to create your workplace of the future by revisiting yesterday’s conversations, yesterday’s metrics and established industry benchmarks. We have to get beyond the false security of the status quo. We have the insight, tools, methodologies and furnishings to help organizations and their design partners plan for and make sense of the complexities of the modern office. The question to business leaders is, ‘Do you want to use your workplace as a strategic tool to effect change and drive better outcomes?'”

Evolve and Shift

Get modern is an invitation to evolve and shift. “The idea of the workplace is changing, and how we design, think about and value space has shifted,” Ellis says.

We are shifting our thinking away from work life balance to work life integration. A new mobility allows for work-from-home flexibility accommodated by free address work environments that feature reduced real estate footprints, unassigned work points and alternative work settings where group space rules.   

We are shifting from one-size-fits-all to no-size-fits-all, where people are empowered to seek the spaces that will accommodate their best work—a new autonomy of freedom and control shaped by variety, choice and purposefully designed work settings that create a more human experience.

The true value of the modern office is in its ability to be agile, to evolve on the fly and to adapt to the shifting demands of the organization and its people.
Get modern.

Learn more about Contemporary Office Interiors at coi.bz, on LinkedIn or Facebook, or on Instagram @coisocial. #getmodern #coisocial.