Top 9 Workplace Trends for 2018

Is your company embracing these trends?  If not, what are you doing to create a space that brings more joy and a better bottom line?

The workplace, like the homespace, is changing because we are all becoming more aware of the impact environment has on our ability to thrive and create a world worth living — and working — in.

“Offices Become More Mindful,” is #2 and “Digital Workspaces Revolve Around Humans” is #3 of the 8 trends, as reported by Spacestor, a London-based company creating furnishings that are “California Cool with London Design.”

And #9 — the BIGGEST Trend in workspaces is: the desire to know how to use color, design and placement to speak the body/brain language and lead to corporate, business and personal success. 

According to Spacestor, 2018 Workplace Trends are:

1. Upskilling helps with the recruitment crisis

2. Offices become more mindful

3. Digital Workspaces revolve around humans

4. Artificial Intelligence frees up employees

5. Mixed reality blends right in

6. The fourth space expands

7. Workforces grow more diverse

8. Four generations working together

Trend #9: Body/Brain Design

To design spaces that accommodate the changes in workforce and work style it’s important to know have knowledge of  how our brain and our bodies respond to the environment and how to eliminate the subconscious stress response that limits us and creates illness.

Good design –and good redesign— makes way for us to reduce the stress that prevents our body from allowing us to access  the parts of our brains responsible for higher-order thinking, creativity and that foster collaboration.

When you realize that the colors, lighting, arrangement and items in the space you occupy each have a direct influence on your ability to be successful, you’ll want to know how easily you can make a few changes and then you’ll laugh all the way to the bank.

Top 9 Workplace Trends — Is Your Company Ready?

How well we work is a precursor to how well we play and live and love.

These trends are less about how to design and more about what how we are changing the needs of the workplace.

As to design, most of what we have in our spaces is often interpreted by our brains as stressful.  Colors, shapes, items all signal our brains to respond subconsciously to a perceived threat to our safety.  You’d be surprised at how our bodies read color, shape and item as triggers to send us into protective stress mode.

Acute or short-term stress is beneficial, but when that turns into long-term, low-level stress we become ill, overweight and experience many other negative results to our health, longevity and productivity.

Some of these are simple to eliminate and when shifted will allow creativity and health to emerge.

Notice what is around you in your work space.  Do you feel clear?  Safe? Alive?  Hopeful? Are you confident, creative, effective and happy? Does it feel beautiful to you?  Beauty in our spaces is actually an ancient signal that we are safe to thrive.

Where to Start?

Check out first the posts on Power Position and How To Use Mirrors as a first step, simple way to get you closer to feeling personally powerful and happy.

Then stay tuned for more information about colors to select, artwork to place around you, even how to reduce the impact of nasty people–Just with Design!

If you would like to attend a CEU for design professionals, explaining how to begin to make positive impact on people through your designs, email Fawn.  

Sign up here to be notified when you can purchase Fawn’s book explaining how to design for positive impact on body, brain and life.

I want to pass on this post by Spacestor: Top 8 Workplace Trends for 2018…and beyond.   Read the entire, yummy, and brief article here.