5 Weird Things Millennials Have Brought to the Workplace

Mad chairs, beer on tap, the death of open-plan… 90degrees’ Lauren Spence on how Generation Y is remixing the modern office
It’s fair to say that millennials – that is, the generation born between the early ’80s and mid ’90s – have had an huge effect on the way we design offices. In fact, their all-conquering influence is the single biggest thing to hit the workplace since the invention of the spinny-chair.
This design revolution has its roots in the post-2000 tech/internet boom, and the resulting trophy-offices of companies such as Apple, eBay and Google – companies at which 20-something tech geniuses in hoodies, rather than 50-something execs in suits, ruled the roost.

By radically rethinking the modern workplace in order to attract the brightest millennials, these A-list companies triggered a wave of copycatting throughout the tech, creative and media industries. Suddenly, every other business was attempting to ape the cool perks and colourful quirkiness on offer at the headquarters of Facebook et al.
And if you’ve currently got at least three of the following in your workplace, we’re guessing it’s a pretty millennial-heavy office…
1. Slides (Weeeee!)
The adult-sized slide has been a mainstay of left-of-centre workplaces for ten or so years now: various international offices of Lego, YouTube, Google and Red Bull have all installed them in recent years. Many initially dismissed slides as a ridiculous, flash-in-the-pan fad – but they’re still being installed, a decade on.
The UK’s most spectacular office slide is the helter skelter at Electric Works –a shared tech/creative workspace – in Sheffield. At 87ft long it allows workers to travel three floors in just seven seconds (although only in one direction, obviously) and is the largest permanent slide structure in the UK.

The employee slide is now starting to gain a foothold outside of its natural home, the creative industry: here in Manchester, business-to-business hosting company UK Fast recently installed a two-storey slide in order to “encourage a bit more fun and laughter into the working day”.
Of course, “fun and laughter” have a time and a place, even in millennial-focused offices. If you’re about to announce a raft of cutbacks and layoffs to your assembled staff, it’s probably if you don’t make your entrance by whooshing into the room with an excited “weeeee!”
2. The Slow Death of Open Plan
The open-plan office layout was popularised by millennials’ predecessors, Generation X. When the children of grunge entered the workplace, their mistrust of corporate thinking and unwillingness to work like dead-eyed drones meant that all the partitions and cubicles of ’80s office design had to go. Wide open space was the way forward.

But many millennials are now turning against this ubiquitous layout ethos. Young Facebook employees created headlines worldwide when they anonymously posted complaints about the company’s famed Palo Alto headquarters. “The workplace is awful,” read one. ‘Huge rooms filled with rows and rows of tables; people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with six inches of separation and zero privacy.” The tide was turning against open plan.
With extensive research now backing up millennials’ assertion that open-plan offices are distracting and productivity-hampering, partitioned-off workspaces may be making a comeback – because it can be tricky to concentrate on September’s sales figures while trying to ignore a nearby huddle of colleagues chuckling at a viral video of a skateboarding monkey.

Many UK workplaces – such as the London HQ of foreign exchange Monex – are now re-introducing desk partitions and subdivided offices, while others – such as ad firm Dentsu London – have added pods that employees can use to escape the open-plan hubbub. Even Generation Smartphone need to drown out all the noise and flashing lights sometimes.
3. Eccentric Meeting Desks
Millennials may not be 100% on-board with open-plan, but they are very much into working collaboratively, and need their instantly accessible spaces for spontaneous brainstorms. But if your company is still hosting impromptu meetings around standard-issue desks then your millennial employees are probably laughing at you behind your back, possibly using cruel emojis and indecipherable acronyms (“OMG BZQAT!”).

When it comes to furnishing your breakout area, here’s the rule-of-thumb: if the furniture looks like it doesn’t belong in an office, then it belongs in your office. Oak kitchen tables and wooden pub benches are popular go-to options, but really, the sky’s the limit – the madder, the better. One side of a shipping crate with welded-on oil drums for legs? Go for it!
Or, alternatively…
4. Cartoonishly Proportioned Chairs
Increasingly popular in millennial-heavy offices are meeting pods built from sofas with backs so enormous that they make anybody sitting in them look like a titchy toddler.

There is a method to the madness: the ultra-high backs offer heightened privacy and block out background noise – besides, of course, looking quirkily cool in a way that says ‘brainy millennials work here’.
5. En Masse Desk-Boozing

It wasn’t so long ago that drinking on the job was a fast-track to a P45. But with millennials seeing little division between work and the rest of their lives – unsurprising, when you consider that they’re working longer hours than any previous generation – an early Friday finish accompanied by freebie beers at the desk is now a common perk.
Many companies – including comparison service uSwitch, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and the aforementioned UK Fast – go beyond merely stocking a beer fridge and actually install a full-on, working bar in the office.
Don Draper would definitely approve.
Lauren Spence is Client Partnership Director at 90degrees, a Manchester-based independent creative communications agency
