Unless you live under a rock you will know about the Apple Watch by now; after all we do keep you guys up to speed with all the latest on this very site. What we haven’t told you is what the watch and a well-planned office space have in common, which makes for pretty interesting reading.

Let’s get stuck in right away, shall we?

1. The watch doesn’t last forever, and like the workspace, your office design will at some stage need a recharge: over the past few years in South Africa open plan, collaborative spaces are proving to be popular as more and more companies are seeing the benefits. A recent IBM study found that “extensively collaborative” companies performed better than their peers, and companies that collaborated with external sources made more money than those that didn’t.

The pin-up-boy of office space design, Google, was an early adopter of collaborate spaces, realising the impact that these spaces have on creativity. As people change so do our needs and requirements, particularly within the workspace. Every 48 hours the Apple Watch needs to be recharged, and so too will your workspace in order to keep up to date and meet workforce requirements.

2. Only the best for the best: the premium Apple Watch Edition is essentially a status symbol. In relation to the workspace your office should be used to attract and retain the best in the industry. Modern workspaces need to be optimally planned in order to attract, retain and engage workers of today. Quite simply, the better designed a workspace is the more productive the staff members using it are and, equally importantly, more productive workers gravitate to organisations with better work environments.

3. Technology and innovation: one can use the Apple Watch to check-in at hotels and even unlock the door to your hotel room. In addition it can also open the garage and even the car door. Today technology isn’t just a given, but rather extension of who we are. Be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop we always have at least one piece of technology with us. We demand connectivity and ease of use to simply plug and play. Modern workspaces need to support this technology-driven lifestyle.

4. Keep it mobile: the Apple Watch takes phone calls: today’s executive is on the go with no cellular office, no desk, and more importantly no ownership. Apple is aware of this and so too are South African companies when seeing the benefits of Activity Based Work (ABW), which can also be referred to as hot-desking. Workers in an activity-based office don’t own a desk, or any space for that matter, and choose what type of workspace to work at on a daily or even hourly basis.

It is an ownerless environment that allows staff to come and go as they wish and work wherever they wish. Space costs money and now local companies are reconsidering the way they work and design their office spaces, not only ensure that they optimise every inch of space they have but to also make sure that the space is working smartly and enhances productivity.

5. Health and wellness is key: just as a healthy office space increases work productivity, inspires creativity and costs a company less on its bottom line, it appears health is also a feature for the watch, positioned by Tim Cook as “a comprehensive health and fitness companion”. The watch tracks your movement, how much you are exercising and tells you when you have been sitting still for too long. It also tracks your heartbeat. It’s evident that wellness incentives are beneficial to an organisation’s bottom line.

Employers are now assisting staff to improve employee’s health and wellbeing so they can lead productive lives at home and work. The benefits of creating a healthy work environment are numerous, and small changes can lead to big returns. By simply improving the lighting in your office you will improve productivity, with better seating reduces absenteeism. All these small changes have a significant impact on the work environment and how people work within it.

Change – we all go through it, whether it’s a new watch or a new working space. Some of us embrace it and some of us simply hide under the boardroom table. The importance of change is that we keep up, abide by it and that it meets our everyday (working and personal) needs.

We’re lucky in that we have companies like Giant Leap at our disposal, people that understand the need for every workplace to maximise the potential of their employees and ensure every business runs full steam ahead. Check out their brilliant website for inspiration assistance and a creative nudge in the right direction.