The Google-inspired fad for slides and ping-pong tables has had a damaging impact on the workplace, according to office design expert Jeremy Myerson.
Myerson said the tech giant's influence had been "detrimental" to good workplace design and said the trend for treating offices as playgrounds is "a very bad idea".
"Work's a serious thing and I suppose the Haworth cultures model is a serious attempt to say that not all companies need a creative playpen," Myerson said, referring to a research methodology developed by Haworth that helps align workplace design with office culture.
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"'We want to be like Google' is a common misconception that clients try to convey to designers, and by that they mean funky offices, playful furniture and ping-pong tables or game rooms," agreed Haworth ideation manager Gabor Nagy.
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"Problem is, if the organisation's culture is not like Google's, chances are very high that such design conceptions will back-fire: employees hanging out in the game room or playing ping pong while working will not be seen as creative innovators, but more like folks who are sabotaging their daily work."
Speaking at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town last month, Fredrik Öst of Swedish graphic design studio Snask said that the famous slides at Google's campus in California were disliked by many Google employees.