Nowadays, we often switch to remote or hybrid work, so we do not visit our company at all, or we go there from time to time. This, however, makes the old principles invalid and requires new solutions. In order to prepare a modern workplace, we need to have excellent planning skills. This is why we need spatial intelligence - to be able to create new, efficient work environments. Read on to learn in detail why you need spatial intelligence to plan your modern office.
What is spatial intelligence?
Spatial intelligence is the ability to perceive and organize visual information, such as objects or furniture. It is also the skill of creating mind images of real-life objects and their position in space. As such, visual intelligence helps us furnish our houses, aids architects in their designs and, what is most important, lets us organize the surroundings efficiently.
How can spatial intelligence help you organize your office?
Before the pandemic, we did not need spatial intelligence to organize the workspace - we kept one general formula and applied it to most offices. It was effective, since the workday was similar in most white-collar jobs. However, since the outbreak of COVID-19, the situation has changed.
Many companies switched to home-office at the time of the pandemic. Some of them returned to onsite afterward, however in many businesses remote or hybrid work became dominant. As a result, there are no fixed occupancy levels - someone may come to the office on one day, but work remotely on the other. This, however, makes planning more difficult - you need to have an office ready to accommodate many people and convenient for a smaller group at the same time.
The fact that the number of people in your office may vary from day to day, might create potential issues. For instance, you do not want your conference room to be too far from the desks - people will get annoyed that they need to cover long distances when there are only several employees in the office. But, on the other hand, you need to be able to accommodate all workers at the same time - so you cannot organize ‘backup’ workspace somewhere far from the conference room either.
However, with proper planning, you might be able to organize your space in the most efficient way. This is why you need someone with spatial intelligence - you need to carefully plan your whole office, thinking both about the days when hardly anybody is there, and the days when it is crowded. Your mission nowadays is to find the optimal solution. And, this is impossible without spatial intelligence.
Conclusions
Spatial intelligence is the ability to analyze visual data and visualize objects with their relation in space. It is important in modern offices, as they have to be adjusted to hybrid work, where sometimes hardly anybody works onsite and sometimes everybody does. Only through spatial intelligence will you be able to create the optimal, agile workspace for your employees.
