There are many companies who have adopted the boxed off partitioned office desk mentality. They group office furniture into one area trying to encourage other ways of communicating to employees, adopting similar methods to those used on the internet which are a company’s intranet, hoping to enable staff to communicate quickly and efficiently and feed ideas into the business rather than having employees standing around office desks chatting to co-workers.

This so called ’network society’ is providing employers with big challenges and if they decide to adopt more social practices would they also need to re-jig the office furniture and the office design to suit new and more open thinking? Communicating with people over an intranet is not the answer to encourage happy more ‘team’ involved employees.  An open office desk space policy is much better for this type of innovative, creative team thinking.

Property company, Savills, think this is the case after conducting recent research in the market they claim: "Immediate workspace conditions were rated the most important by over 82 per cent of respondents i.e. comfort of work area and office furniture, lighting and temperature."

So when you are considering a corporate relocation strategy remember that the key to a firm’s long term success could be its next office furniture design, in understanding the psychological results of a new open attitude to working as a team.