From supporting health and wellness, to training and implementing WELL certified showrooms, as well as committing to minimize the environmental impact of their processes; Teknion is a leader in the industry in many ways. 

Read their full report here, to learn more how Teknion is leading the charge as a manufacturer in this ever-evolving industry of commercial furniture and product design.

A letter from the president:

Welcome from David Feldberg
President & CEO

Since starting this company almost 40 years ago with my father, Saul, everything and nothing has changed. While the office landscape has dramatically evolved over the past 10 years, and we have matured into a leading international manufacturer of furniture, the character of our company has remained the same. We are human, bold, curious, connected and ready. I believe the success of our sustainability efforts is rooted in our approach – which has always been to do what feels right – in the way we collaborate with our customers to win great projects, in the way our employees give back to community causes they feel strongly about, and in the way we incorporate people with different abilities and perspectives into our organization. We do what’s right because it makes us a more competitive company and a better place where generations of people want to work. It’s not always the easiest way but it takes us further. I am proud of how far we have come. As a family and a community, we have always risen to any challenge presented to us. We remain consistent to the substance of our goals, not just the narrative of sustainability. We have never shied away from what’s difficult. Lots of work remains to be done, and I look forward to doing it, together.
Yours truly,
David Feldberg President & CEO

As many prepare to go back to work, the focus has quickly turned to preparing the workplace. Guidelines have been given by the government, real estate firms and the A&D community. All of these guidelines have several principles in common.

• Add cleanable barriers between workstations. These barriers can be permanent or mobile.
• Create distance between workstations (at least 6′).
• Reconfigure workstations to avoid face-to-face layouts.
• Decrease overall density in the workplace.
• Temporarily eliminate gathering spaces.
• Utilize a “work shift” strategy to help spread worker populations.
• Make cleaning supplies readily available.

We realize this has been a difficult time for all of us and we recognize that the future of commercial office design will include these guidelines as part of current and future planning. OID is here to help you provide a clean, healthy and safe workplace for your team. Our mission is to make the transition back to the workplace as easy and efficient as possible.

​See more divider options from Teknion here and here!

Culture has become a buzzword in the corporate world. An increasing number of business publications, executives, coaches, and experts have zeroed in the importance of creating a positive office culture. 
Creating a positive workplace culture is all about creating an environment that increases employee happiness and boosts overall job satisfaction. Most people will spend one-third of their life at their job, and more employees want that time to be enjoyable. They also want to feel that their employers care about their wellbeing. 
However, developing a positive office culture isn’t straightforward. It requires a deep understanding of what workers want and need to feel satisfied. 
According to recent research, 87% of employees would like healthier workspace benefits. Moreover, 93% of workers in the tech industry say that they would stay at companies longer if they offered healthier workspace benefits. 
What are these healthy workspace benefits, and how do they impact culture? 

What is a Healthy Workspace Benefit?

When it comes to creating a healthy workspace, it starts with benefits. Health insurance used to be the gold standard in employee health benefits, but employees today want more. They’re looking for benefits like:

• Fitness Benefits
• Healthy Lunch Options
• Ergonomic Seating
• Wellness Rooms
• Desks with Standing Options
• And More

When combined, these benefits create a culture that prioritizes health. Beyond benefits, companies around the world are taking other measures to create a healthier workspace. 
Creating Safe Buildings

The International WELL Building Institute is making waves for creating premier standards for buildings and interior spaces. They discovered several vital areas that contribute to the overall health of employees, and they offer certification programs for companies to become WELL certified. 

However, you don’t have to get a certification to know what those areas are. According to The International WELL Building Institute, The key areas that contribute to the overall health of workers are:

• Air 
• Light
• Sound
• Community
• Water
• Movement
• Materials
• Innovation
• Nourishment
• Thermal Comfort
• Mind

Some areas are less complicated than others, but let’s dive into a few of them that have straightforward fixes and immediate benefits. 

Air 
We all need air to breathe, but the quality of air in a workspace can impact health and, in turn, boost productivity. In fact, the World Green Building Council found that productivity increased by 11% when workers had a reduction of pollutants and increased access to fresh air. 
How can you incorporate higher air quality into your workspace? Start by weatherproofing windows and doors to keep harmful pollutants out of the building. Add an air filtration system, use green cleaning products, add plants, enact a non-smoking policy, and more. 

Light
According to one study, exposure to natural sunlight can increase productivity, boost moods, and reduce rates of anxiety and depression. Also, poor lighting can increase eye strain and irritation. So, having plenty of natural light and ensuring all your lights work correctly can dramatically improve the health and output of your workers. 
 
Sound
Building acoustics, annoying noises, and a lack of privacy are all nuisances for employees. And over time, they can negatively impact overall wellbeing. Since wide-open concepts became popular, employees now struggle with a lack of privacy and the inability to focus. Some companies are combating this by adding private, quiet spaces or acoustic ceiling or wall systems, which allow their employees to get some peace and focus.  

Materials
It’s no secret that hazardous building and office materials can have negative impacts on employee health. (Does anyone remember asbestos?) One simple way to contribute to overall employee health is by choosing non-hazardous building and office materials, and switch out any problematic materials with non-problematic ones. For instance, swap those cheap plastic desks and counters to solid countertops. You might have to pay more for safe materials, but your employees will thank you for it, and it will ultimately play into boosting overall company culture. 

Why Creating a Healthy Workspace Matters

These are just some of the more straightforward areas that contribute to healthy workspaces. However, there are many more factors that come into play. One of the most influential components of culture and health revolves around stress. Creating a healthy environment often means finding ways to decrease employee stress and increase employee happiness. Those sorts of things are a bit harder to nail down. 
The one thing that clearly resonates is that employees want to feel safe at work. They want to see that their bosses care about them. Doing things like adding health benefits, working to reduce stress, and making small changes to make your building safer all contribute to an environment and a culture that values its employees. 
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The benefits, aside from healthier and happier employees, are improved productivity, reduced turnover, and boosted outputs. Ultimately, improving culture is fundamental to increasing profits, and the first step towards improving culture lies in prioritizing healthy workspaces. 

Matt Lee is the owner of the Innovative Building Materials blog and a content writer for the building materials industry. He is focused on helping fellow homeowners, contractors, and architects discover materials and methods of construction that save money, improve energy efficiency, and increase property

TEK VUE RESPONDS TO CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS FOR A VALUE-ORIENTED GLASS OFFICE-FRONT SYSTEM WITH AN EMPHASIS ON AESTHETICS AND SIMPLICITY

​Teknion Corporation on Nov. 27 announced the introduction of Tek Vue − its latest architectural interiors product offering.

“We designed Tek Vue in response to our customers’ requirements that increasingly emphasize aesthetics, simplicity and value. Our new glass office-front system responds to these essential needs of today’s workplace,” said Mike Laudeman, VP, Architectural Interiors. “Tek Vue focuses on single-center glazing and thin-profile frames, while providing effortless integration with conventional building construction and existing Teknion wall programs. Tek Vue wall and door programs are built on the concept of a universal platform, which re-envisions how a system can be specified, planned and installed within the evolving and fast-paced world of interior architecture and construction.”

Tek Vue is positioned to provide a unique blend of attributes found in demountable partitions and conventional glazing systems. Horizontal profiles are only 1 3/8 inches thick x 2 1/2 inches high, and house single-centered 10mm or 12mm laminated or tempered glass. These frame profiles, as well as wall starts, door frames and transitions, provide independent building site accommodation and integration with conventional construction. As well, Tek Vue is designed to integrate with Teknion’s Altos and Focus wall programs, leveraging their existing functionality to create more comprehensive workspaces.

Tek Vue can be specified with a low-profile electrical program. Wall transition panels have the capability to house special technology when required. Tek Vue also offers an articulating wall connection program that responds to various angles and facets in building architecture.
A comprehensive door program provides ease of specification with its universal frame and on-site positioning, allowing maximum on-site flexibility. It features a simplified yet progressive collection of both pivot and barn doors.

The pivot door program offers a single universal frame which houses a frameless glass, framed glass or solid leaf. Each pivot door leaf affords different levels of acoustic and visual privacy at varying price points. Pivot doors provide easy installation, a high level of adjustability and more integrated finishes when compared to traditional hinge doors.

Tek Vue’s barn door program consists of a universal door frame and economical frameless glass leaf. The frame’s adjustable top rail that mounts to the interior or exterior of the storefront does not require a third post, providing seamless visual integration with the glass partition. The door can be planned off-module from glass demising walls, taking further advantage of rooms requiring an extremely small footprint.

Tek Vue pivot and barn doors share similar hardware options for visual consistency across the storefront when required. Hardware is always specified separately from the doors to optimize delivery and installation time. Both door programs have been future-proofed to allow advanced hardware and door leaf options, ensuring the continuous evolution of the product line.
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Tek Vue is available in a variety of combinations of frame finishes, as well as glass types and finishes.

Teknion creates furniture that empowers people through design. Dedicated to innovative and sustainable design, Teknion provides a diverse portfolio of office furnishings, seating, ergonomic accessories and architectural products. The company’s versatile and integrated furniture collections support workplace wellness, responding to essential human needs and behaviors. Clients are served through a worldwide network of facilities, showrooms and authorized dealers. To learn more about Teknion, please visit teknion.com and join Teknion at facebook.com/teknion. ​

In this day and age, most of us have so many things to juggle at once, it’s sometimes hard to keep track. Between long working hours, spending time with family, working towards personal goals, practicing hobbies, maintaining a social life, doing chores, exercising and having some quality downtime as well as enough sleep, the never-ending list of things to do can often seem overwhelming.

You likely keep listicles, calendars, notebooks, and diaries both at home and at the workplace to help monitor your tasks. But it sometimes can seem difficult to keep up with so many things on numerous different platforms. That’s why we believe it might be much more useful to have everything at your disposal on a simple device you always have access to: your phone.
​
With the help of a handful of apps, you can seamlessly transition from your busy workday to your cozy and relaxing home life. These easy-to-use, must-have phone programs can serve as your personal assistant and can help make your life much easier while maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the process.

TimeTuneTimeTune 
is a productivity app for Android devices that helps manage your time in a smart and efficient way. You can set your daily routine, analyze your progress and use the statistics to examine how you actually spend your days. Once you study your routine, you’ll be able to tweak your daily tasks in order to be more productive and achieve more things in less time.
TimeTune has been developed in a way to be beneficial not only for workers or freelancing individuals but for students and parents as well. It serves not only as a routine manager and task reminder but also as a habit creation tool and a productivity enhancer. The app only works on Android devices, however, if you’re looking for something similar for your iOS phone or tablet, you might want to check out ATracker.
SpaceThe abundance of available WiFi connections and hotspots one can connect to on the go is growing and expanding by the minute, which means we can slowly but surely stay continuously connected to the online world from our phone. While this might be quite beneficial for a lot of things, it can also make it harder for us to disconnect from our work life.

Space 
is a personalized behavior change program that helps you to combat this issue and find your phone-life balance. It helps you understand your digital life by monitoring your connectivity and showcasing how glued you truly are to your phone. You can establish limits for some apps that take away precious downtime, you can set up pings to warn you if you’re spending too much time online and you can even block access to other apps that demand your attention in abundance.

Sanvello
Sanvello, known previously as Pacifica, is a stress managing app that uses clinically validated techniques to help ease your worry, anxiety, fear, and depression. In this fast-paced world of ours, many struggle with these symptoms because of the great number of tasks they need to complete and check off their to-do lists on a daily basis.
The app helps you navigate these disturbing stress factors in a healthy and fun way, so you can leave your mountain of tasks behind and focus on enjoying your precious downtime from the moment you leave the workplace. It offers tools to find calm and shift perspectives, record your mood, build your life skills, feel more connected to your surroundings and more in control of your time.
CoziIf you’re in search of the perfect organizing app for families, then you should definitely check out Cozi. It will help you organize and assign tasks and manage each family member’s appointments, schedules, and activities in an efficient way.

Each member of the family can access it and there’s also a family message board for swifter communication. Cozi is very easy to use and helps you keep events, activities, grocery lists, meal plans, and shopping lists in one place. The application is completely free of charge and works well with iOS, Android and Windows devices.

**Read full article from publisher: CommercialCafe.com 
https://www.commercialcafe.com/blog/apps-work-life-balance-reality/

One thing we think this article left out, was the community aspect to co-working. Just like FUSE here in Lincoln promotes; coworking fosters community innovation and nurtures the team culture. Visit FUSE to learn more about it! To learn more about Lincoln's most popular co-working space: Fuse - visit here: https://www.fusecoworking.com/
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Article from CommercialCafe.com, click to read full article.

"While millennials typically embrace a more free and unstructured work environment, they’re not the only ones opting for coworking lately. Moreover, companies are increasingly giving in to this popular, new approach, which allows for productivity and professionalism in a more diverse environment.

Below are some of the main benefits of coworking that allow businesses to thrive.
No geographical limit to recruitingHistorically, companies have hired individuals who were willing to relocate and work at its headquarters. While this worked for many companies, it also limited their recruiting efforts and may have even caused them to lose out on great talent. With coworking, this is no longer an issue.
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Coworking allows organizations to recruit talent from anywhere and their employees to manage their responsibilities from a coworking space. Consequently, these skilled employees can be offered employment by a company they want to work for, and they can do so without having to work in a socially isolated environment, while still benefiting from a professional working space.
Fueling creativityWhile a typical professional, structured office environment is ideal for some, it does little to spark creativity for others. Conversely, coworking spaces allow for a more relaxed environment with the opportunity to interact with new people, from the same company or different organizations.

Expansion is easierCoworking is also a great way for organizations to begin expanding into new territories. Essentially, it allows them to set up a temporary headquarters, with the coworking company taking care of all expansion matters from the new location. Furthermore, it’s much easier to expand because the size of the coworking location is monitored on-site and depends on the number of team members who join the company. While the number of people who are employed at a coworking space is limited, the general idea of coworking is not to have a large location (which would simply be another headquarters).
Cost-effectiveThe flexibility of the coworking model allows a company to adjust the size of its commercial lease based on the number of employees in a specific location. While it’s true that the coworking cost per square foot is often more expensive than renting actual office space, there are more factors to take into consideration with the traditional alternative—which, in the long run, can amount to a larger investment.
What’s more, there isn’t always a need for a traditional office for employees to be productive and the company to thrive. In fact, coworking can provide all they need to be successful and effective at what they do, thus benefitting the company overall.
Coworking is a smart investment for companies, and jobseekers should determine if there is a similar option before deciding to relocate for a job. For example, looking at Brooklyn apartments for rent can consume much more time and money than finding out that you don’t even have to move at all."

We all know that color can change the way that we use, act, and transition through a space. Laura Guido-Clark is a designer who dedicated her life into finding the potential in everything- including the power of color.

Laura thinks that color is transformational in that it has the potential to encourage change. Some designers are shy to use color because of the different ways that color can be perceived. Laura states that she never had trouble with color because she saw it as an opportunity to convey a sense of connection to her users.

To read more about Laura's thoughts and advice, click below.

For some, rendering is more than an image shown to a client to help them perceive a design. Joel is a 3D artist who explores design through digital rendering/computational work. His ability to render opened up his mind and changed the way that he viewed his designs.

Digital rendering takes time, practice, and patience. Rendering begins as the designer decides on spacial elements, apertures, enclosures, and transitional elements to include in their 3D program. From there, the designer might add furniture, lighting, materials, installations, electrical work and so on. What sets this 3D designer apart is his ability to add layers and layers of detail. The final stages spent in Photoshop can change the mood and emotion within the image.

Take a look at the article attached to view the process that Joel Langeveld reveals.