Overview
A Flexible Workplace environment is designed to support a variety of workstyles and promote flexibility within the built environment, allowing individuals to move from one activity to another with ease, adapting to new circumstances as they arise, and to effectively shift how, when and where work is done.
Such environments offer areas for focused, interactive and collaborative work and the option for the addition of off-site work.
Flexible Workplace environments empower employee efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction by offering nimble spaces and technology that enable collaboration and adapt easily to operational, technological, and location changes. How people work is changing rapidly, driven largely by technology serving on and off-site communities simultaneously. The university’s space portfolio has been inflexible and expensive to adapt in past years. Driven by the global needs of 2020 and beyond, a new culture of flexibility is necessary. The goal is to holistically provide people with the flexibility, spaces, technology and training to support their workstyle and location needs.
This new approach to flexible office space will be applied to significant office reconfigurations, build-outs and renovations, tenant improvements in new leases, and all new major capital projects. At this point in time, these standards and guidelines will not impact faculty offices.
Please view this video as an introduction to Flexible Workplace.
Flexible Workplace Model
The Flexible Workplace Model provides workspaces that respond to the way we work, how we work and where we work. It takes into consideration and individual’s on-site and remote work patterns, and the work styles in the design, configuration and assignment of individual work spaces.
Flexible Design Guidelines
The Capital Project Management Design Team manages and administers design standards and guidelines for University projects associated with Flexible Workplace. Please refer to their website for detailed information.
Technology standards and support
The Office of Information Technology supports campus computing and communications needs. They have developed a guide to resources for working and learning remotely that are available to UMN students, faculty, and staff. Please refer to their website for guidance related to these resources and other IT standards and support.