Generation Zoomer is having an increasingly decisive impact on companies worldwide.

It has been estimated that by 2025, Gen Zoomer workers will represent 27% of the workforce, 1/3 of the global total (source: Il Sole 24 Ore).

A category of workers with attitudes, needs, and forms of sensitivity that are drastically different from other generations. Different ways of communicating and collaborating that also have an inevitable effect on the working environment and on office design.

This is why many companies on the international panorama are exploring new approaches to the design of their offices, including activity-based working, agile methodology and hot-desking, models that emphasise flexibility, interaction, relations and sharing in order to meet the demands of younger workers.

The question is therefore: “What do Gen-Zers expect from office design?” “What are the design challenges in favouring the inclusion of this generation?”

TOWARDS MULTIGENERATIONAL OFFICES

From digital transformation to solutions that bring together the concepts of sustainability, as well as layouts for both collaboration and privacy, Generation Zers is driving a revolution in workplace design and culture, pushing companies to carry out a true rethinking of office design. Now, more than ever, organisations need to be able to valorise the concept of “flexibility”, creating purpose-designed workspaces, with solutions and furnishings conceived specifically for favouring relaxation and social interaction as well as privacy and confidentiality.

OFFICE TECHNOLOGY

As digital natives, Generation Zoomer is the most inclined to use technology.

Gen-Zers workers are used to living in a “connected” manner, and therefore expect organisations to incorporate digital technology that is capable of facilitating their work into offices; AI solutions, virtual reality technology, cloud computing; Offices are becoming truly smart.

SOCIAL AND PRIVATE

Diversity, inclusion, sharing, privacy, concentration. Generation-Zers have divergent needs that adapt to equally diversified working circumstances.

The desire for “open” spaces for collaboration is interwoven with the need for a workspace that offers privacy and calm.

This is where partitions, acoustics and privacy office pods come into play, solutions that pave the way for a new concept of “sharing space”.

GREEN OFFICE

Generation-Zers are the most sensitive to themes regarding sustainability.

According to a recent survey by Fast Company, an American financial magazine, 70% of Generation-Zers stated that they would prefer to work in a company that is actively involved in actions to protect the environment.

This means, above all, companies that implement a green philosophy and that incorporate into their office layouts ergonomic solutions, biophilic design and green walls, choosing sustainable materials for office supplies in order to safeguard the health and well-being of workers.

HYBRID WORKPLACE

The exponential increase in remote workers is forcing architects, designers and planners to favour office solutions that adapt both to in-house working and smart or remote working.

It is an increasingly marked need, as highlighted by a recent study by Google Workspace, which commissioned a global survey from Economist Impact on the state of hybrid working; more than 75% of those interviewed claimed that hybrid/flexible work will become standard practice in their organisations by 2023.

Flexibility also means allowing the needs of Generation-Zers to coexist with older categories of workers. This is where the concept of the “agile workplace” comes into play. Offices are abandoning traditional layouts to become aggregators of experience and relationships, favouring working environments that are dynamic, interconnected, diffused and interfunctional, and that adapt to the activities of the workers within.

Source: ECONOMIST IMPACT’S “MAKING HYBRID WORK HUMAN”

We are witnessing a true transformation of the office and of working culture. A transition that will bring about many changes, as well as a myriad of opportunities.