What is the perfect workplace? There is no single answer to that question. Sometimes all you want are four walls and a door. At other times, an open space with colleagues. Or a project room with writable walls. A comfy sofa in a coffee lounge. Which setting works best, is likely to differ from time to time, depending on your activities, your personal preferences and your mood. So wouldnt it be great to be able to choose any of these, at anygiven moment?Essentially, that is the promise of activity-based working (ABW). Instead of providing employees with just one, fixed workstation, ABW aims to offer a diversity of work settings that are designed to facilitate different kinds of activities (hence the name activity-based). To make sure that everybody has the same choice, all settings are shared, which comes with the additional benefit of requiring less space. This concept is often considered as newby some as shockingly newbut it isnt. The origins of activity-based working lie in the 1970s and since then it has become increasingly popular. This is not to suggest, however, that activity-based working has yet become the new normal. In many projects the concept still gives rise to a lot of debate, if not resistance. And while many projects are successfulachieving both costs savings and increased staff satisfactionthere are also projects that fail due to design errors, cultural barriers and flawed implementation processes.This practiceguides aim is to steer organizations through these complexities. It explains what the activity-based working concept is, what its aims are, how it works and how it can be implemented. The recommendations are based on the first-hand experience of experts and on a review of the available literature on ABW.The books main message is: when implementing ABW, make sure to get it right. Activity-based working is not some kind of formula that can simply be applied to any given situation. It is a way of working that touches upon deeply held assumptions about how we use space, how we interact with colleagues and how we organize our work lives. The implementation of ABW should therefore be seen as a change process rather than a fit-out project. As this guide will explain, its success requires excellent workplace design, a multidisciplinary approach, careful change management and, last but not least, commitment from the organizations leadership.