It is important to clarify the main differences between the two concepts.

What is the Flex desk not ?

Huge open tops filled with desks

What’s the Flex desk :

The Flex desk, is a set of intermediate and temporary solutions, grouping workstations in pre-existing "office" spaces and governed by the practice of the clean desk. They are not allocated individually but by entity (notion of homebase).

To enable you to organise your activity as well as possible, in addition to the shared workstation, an increased number of bubbles and meeting rooms will be made available to the community. 

However, the Flex desk does not reflect the SWoW ambition, which is currently being rolled out within the Group.

You have probably heard about the spaces inaugurated at the Solvay Campus in Building S and in Genas (Lyon), - but also in Mumbai and Mexico City - which so far serve as a reference point for the Group's ambition for SWoW.

What is SWoW?

The key principle of a SWoW space is Activity Based Working, or simply put: working in a space that corresponds to the nature of the work to be done, guaranteeing greater flexibility.

A well-designed space is not enough: Activity Based Working only becomes a reality by relying on the "4Bs", both the Bricks (nature or configuration of the building), the Bytes (digital environment), the Behaviors (adapted behavior) and the Branding (environment that reflects our identity).

In practice, there are three types of areas dedicated to Activity Based Working: Collaboration, In between and Focus.

Let's take an example: if I need to concentrate on a task such as analyzing a datasheet, I move to the Focus area dedicated to concentration, where I will not be interrupted.

Example Focus :

Example Collaboration Zone :