By Dominika Kowalska & Pawel Lenart
Edition 4 – September 2014 Pages 24-29
Tags: workplace design • productivity • teamwork
Political transition in Poland,which was initiated by “Solidarność” (led by Lech Wałęsa),caused the collapse of the block of socialist countries (USSR,Czechoslovakia) and began to build a free market economy.This resulted in an unusually high level of unemployment in Poland.That is where the story really begins….[1].
Every area of life started to change. New economic, political and social structures were created.The style of life and work was changing rapidly.All of the aforementioned transformations had a direct impact on the “Polish workplace”, increasingly showing its importance,its role not only in the government but more often in the emerging businesses in Poland.
The rapid pace of change was also characteristic of work environments and the architecture of office buildings.The lifting of numerous COCOM restrictions accelerated the computerization and increased work efficiency. Since that moment the “Polish workplace” started the pursuit of Western work standards.
The typical picture of the office and the nature of work began to recede further and further from the well-known scheme of clerical work in the office,which can be briefly described as follows – “coming to work,having a coffee,chatting with colleagues,opening several documents and going home.” After these economic changes this type of behavior was systematically disappearing – “office work was no longer imitative in its nature but more creative and involving decision-making processes on the part of the clerk. Gathering and processing data became the basis for the decision making and predictions that had an impact on the direction of economic and social development at the micro and macro scale.”
The scale of transformational changes can be best indicated by the number of enterprises founded after 1990 (around 3 million).Some of them went bankrupt very quickly,but others are still functioning today.At that point,the development of the Polish economy resembled one seen in Western European countries 40 years earlier.The first companies offering comprehensive office solutions started to appear in Poland. Monotonous work in enterprises was more frequently performed by the computer – for example,instead of “hand drawing” architects started to use “AutoCAD” computer programs for the first time.
The first offices designed by Polish architects largely resembled the enclosed offices of the “cell” type,which were also the first types of offices in Western Europe at the
beginning of the twentieth century . One of the characteristic elements of this type of office was a large number of rooms arranged along long corridors.The rooms were designed primarily for managers and groups of employees (4-8 people).
Only large multinational corporations,which were increasingly establishing their offices in Poland,could afford to design offices at larger scale (projects were initially carried out mainly by foreign architectural studios). It was not until 10 years after the transitionperiod when Western office solutions began to be used in designing – permanent partition walls started to disappear thus creating a large open space instead ofa number of group rooms.
In other words,“enclosed offices” were increasingly being substituted by “open” ones.What is more,some interesting office design has found its way into the Polish workplace since, and CEOs became aware of the fact that the office cannot only fulfill its basic function,i.e. providing a place for employees to perform their duties,but it can also facilitate carrying out everyday tasks.
At this point it is worth noting the change in the office market in Poland that has progressed over the last 25 years
the first years after the transition a big challenge was what might be termed the “conquest” of office space (office buildings were fully leased a long time before their construction).After year 2000,modern design began to appear in office projects and Polish architectural studios worked for multinational corporations who had their offices in Poland.
However,after the great worldwide financial crisis of 2008, office space was no longer regarded merely as a place to perform your duties but also as a place which could facilitate it.In Warsaw, for example,companies engaged actively in office research and optimization
studies,taking into account the new and emerging needs of optimize their workspace. Despite this large expense incurred on research,many of the companies did not utilize the outcomes.This was due to the fact that very often the results did not fit the working style of their organization and the proposed schematic style of working was not adequate for them.
It is worth noting that the efficient use of rented office space is not a key issue for many Polish companies.What they do care about is improving working conditions,and thus increasing productivity and,consequently,revenues of the organization.
They care about this value- chain. Therefore,local companies employees,and making offices more functional and utilizing a wide range of innovative solutions.
Workplace researchbecame a strong trend in the office market in Poland which,just dealing with working space research were more frequently choosing not to duplicate schemes that had already been developed in the West.A new trend towards increasing significance of qualitative like the new approach to the design of office space,came from the West. First “Western” organizations opened their branches in Poland,implementing solutions that had already been developed for other markets.
The same mechanism concerned workplace research.All that had been already developed in other countries was left unchanged and introducedin Poland. Not always the same scheme works on a different ground,though. For instance office solutions offered to a consulting firm established in London cannot be simply copied into the “similar” organization operating in Warsaw….