Google employees may soon enter their offices to find ‘team pods’ instead of the usual desks and meeting rooms. Since the future of work seems to be all about a mix of working from home and from office, the Company is taking a relook at the appearance of the workplace.
Each team pod will comprise chairs, desks, whiteboards and storage units on casters so that they can be wheeled around and placed wherever required, in arrangements of choice as per the needs of various teams.
The new meeting room provides for participants to sit in a circle with large vertical displays in between. The room is aptly called Campfire.
The Company has also taken into account outdoor work spaces, so that there is less danger of transmission of viruses in the future, which is a risk associated with the usual closed office spaces. The Google headquarters in Silicon Valley has transformed its parking lot and lawns into Camp Charleston, creating a true camp-like atmosphere with groups of tables and chairs arranged under open tents. Employees will have the option to work from their desks in rotation, as per a specific schedule, which will allow them to come to work at the physical office on specific days. No two adjacent desks will be occupied on a single day.
Camp Charleston was launched in March and teams wishing to get together have been using it since then. Such open work spaces have been designed across Google’s offices in New York, Sydney, Munich, Los Angeles and London.
