As companies embrace flexible seating, one common concern is the potential loss of team cohesion. If everyone can sit anywhere, how do you ensure that teams who need to collaborate can do so easily? The answer lies in the concept of “office neighborhoods”—designated, flexible zones that are assigned to specific teams or functions. Within its neighborhood, a team can enjoy the benefits of flexible seating, while still maintaining a home base that guarantees proximity to their colleagues. This innovative approach balances individual autonomy with team-based synergy, and technology is the key to making
work.
The Best of Both Worlds
Office neighborhoods offer a compelling compromise between fully assigned seating and a complete free-for-all. They eliminate the rigid, static nature of assigned desks, allowing for fluctuations in on-site team presence from day to day. At the same time, they prevent the fragmentation that can occur when team members are scattered across an entire building. A team’s neighborhood provides a sense of place and identity, ensuring that when employees come to the office to collaborate with their team, they can actually find them without a frustrating search.
Technology-Enabled Neighborhood Management
For neighborhoods to function effectively in a hybrid environment, they must be supported by a smart booking system. A workplace platform allows administrators to designate specific zones on the office map as neighborhoods for different teams (e.g., “Engineering Neighborhood,” “Marketing Hub”). When an employee from the engineering team goes to book a desk, the system can default to showing them available desks within their designated neighborhood first. This gently guides people to sit with their teams while still giving them the freedom to book a desk elsewhere if they need to collaborate with another group or require a different environment for the day.
Facilitating Cross-Functional Collaboration
While neighborhoods are great for team cohesion, it’s also important to facilitate interaction between different teams. A workplace platform supports this by making the entire office transparent. An employee from the product team can easily look at the interactive map and see where the marketing neighborhood is located. If they need to have a quick, in-person chat with a marketing colleague, they can book an available “hot desk” within that neighborhood for an hour or two. This technology-enabled transparency and flexibility allow the office to be both a home for individual teams and a dynamic hub for cross-functional collaboration.