4 Reasons You Should Consider This Alternative Office Design by Alexander Saint-Amand

In a piece for Fast Company,  GLG CEO Alexander Saint-Amand discusses  the innovative office design at GLG, By integrating an activity based workspace, every employee can find a productive environment that fits their unique needs.

Sometimes building a new headquarters is especially difficult. When my company, a global 1,000-person professional learning platform called GLG, was in the middle of our pivot, we felt our new office could help define our future, but we had two unexciting options.

One option was traditional private offices and cubicles, which are unimaginative and restrictive. The other was an open office plan—the shiny new toy in office design 15 years ago—but a growing body of evidence suggests it decreases productivity and weakens job performance.

Instead we designed our new corporate headquarters across the street from Grand Central Terminal—65,000 square feet over two floors for nearly 300 New York employees—around a new paradigm, neither open nor full of private offices.

Our architect, Clive Wilkinson, introduced us to an idea called activity-based working (ABW). The thesis is that people should work in the type of space that supports the work they’re actually doing, and that might change many times throughout a day.

Read more about GLG’s activity based workspace on Fast Company  here.