While some businesses have issued return-to-office mandates, others continue to optimise their facilities to cater for the demands of flexible working. Lucinda Pullinger explores workspace flexibility and the art of finding the right mix for your people.
Businesses around the world constantly consider how to optimise workspace, retain talent and maximise profitability. Flex workspace offers a solution, providing lower costs, more flexibility and more amenities than traditional long-lease workspace.
While the transition requires planning, flex is a solution. This shift towards a more hybrid world of working was underway before Covid, and lockdown just accelerated the journey.
Workspace flexibility
Most workers think meaningful office attendance is fair
The widespread adoption of technology by businesses enabled this transition, but the technology is constantly evolving and businesses are constantly advancing to ensure a more efficient and productive working environment.
Good management delivers productivity. If a business takes time upfront to create a clear, well-considered workspace strategy with a viewpoint on the purpose of their office or offices, then it doesn’t matter if your team is in the same office, 10 miles or 100 miles away.
Workspace ultimately needs to align to the needs of the teams who are using it. If you get this right, the location and the design of the office will complement the work being undertaken and enable productivity.
If you can explain to your people the “why” of your workspace strategy, they will understand and be willing – almost enthusiastic participants. Then, the business can get back to doing what it does best, confident in the plan they have adopted and effectively communicated internally.
Employees want their wellbeing to be looked after (which makes them more productive and loyal, so the business benefits), employers and investors care about the carbon footprint of their business and employees and employers want their business to be financially successful.
Memberships
Flex provides choice, which can help align employee and employer interests. Flex covers a wide variety of products, including virtual offices, co-working spaces, serviced offices, memberships and short-term leases. The art is getting the right mix for your business.
Memberships, where employees have a monthly “allowance” to access co-working or serviced offices, mean desks are only booked when they are needed and employees retain choice over where they work on a daily basis.
Memberships are increasingly able to be curated by businesses offering aggregator platforms, which ensures that employees only book space that adheres to corporate standards (wellbeing, security, etc.) whilst maximising choice. Cost parameters can also be put in place, so employees know the maximum budget they have “to spend” over a period and as a result cost is controlled.
Serviced offices, taken for prescribed periods of time, enable agility for a business, but despite the shared amenities, the flexibility comes at a price. Additional space can’t always be guaranteed by the operator, so there is still the “how much space do we need” dilemma.
Short term agreements or leases mean you have your own branded workspace and you can therefore optimise from a design perspective to suit the needs of your business and wellbeing of your employees – for example telephone pods, meeting rooms, sit-stand desk ratios, art, biophilia, food and drink, sound control and the materials that are used.
D&I elements should also be considered, whether design accommodates physical disabilities or neurodiversity. This will help ensure all your employees thrive and enjoy the space and see that it helps them to perform well. There is research that shows specific carpet tile colours can help partially sighted employees, for example.
Employee feedback
How you choose office requirements can largely be determined by data. For example, for a city or neighbourhood does a short term leases make economic sense versus a serviced office, how much space is needed to optimise return on the investment being made (from a cost and carbon perspective), how much an office is being used and when (is the same cleaning regime needed every day) and how much the memberships are being used.
Gathering employee feedback and considering A/B testing as your plan is implemented all provide rich data points that can be easily collated and used to evolve and improve.
Increasingly landlords are offering short term leases and are inviting operators into their buildings for a number of floors. The upside for businesses is they can take a leased space whilst having access to bookable co-working space or additional meeting rooms on an as-needs basis in the same building.
Businesses today are in a great position. There is vast choice regarding workplace strategies and huge proliferation of products available in the market with lots of data to get it right. This means there is more opportunity, however getting it wrong creates risk and ultimately this can impact on profitability and the talent pool.
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