Simon Grundy, commercial interior designer, helps organisations transform their businesses through design.Here he discusses the importance of talking with a designer, and your teams, when considering a new office.  

In business we don’t always have the luxury of time. When it comes to office design, we can make the most of the time we have by thinking in a different way.

Most people search for a property then think about fitting it out as an office. But how do you know what to look for if you don’t have an idea of how it should be?

This is a good time to start talking to a designer. They can carry out an occupancy evaluation of the existing office space to find out where floor area is working hard and where it isn’t, they will bring fresh ideas and detailed product knowledge.

Then talk to your people about what they need to help them work more productively. This process, known as user engagement, provides crucial information for the design brief.

How long this takes depends on the size of the business, how much change is planned and whether people have already been involved in discussions. It is an iterative process, and should include as many people as possible from across the business. It allows them to own the design and adapt to the new environment more quickly, paying back on the initial time invested in engagement.

Law firm Muckle LLP recognises the importance of design in contributing to staff wellbeing and business growth, and we have worked together over many years to create environments to meet changing business needs. They also recognise that early staff engagement is key to a successful outcome.

Their latest office design, completed just over a year ago, was part of a move to advance the flexible working initiative that Muckle began in 2017 with the introduction of their agile working policy. The firm says this has given people more flexibility, more control of their lives and the freedom to be themselves and work as they work best.

An occupancy analysis of the existing space was carried out over two weeks, monitoring every hour to see how it was being used.

The user engagement process ran over six months to find out how people wanted to work and what was important to them about work. It involved 150 staff meeting in small groups every two weeks, and the insights gained informed the development of the interior design concept.

As part of the final design presentation we used virtual reality to bring the scheme to life. Staff involvement continued with conducted tours as the fitout was progressing, and together with Muckle we developed a user guide for the new design.

On the first day after completion everyone had settled in by 10am as they knew exactly what to expect.

We’re also working with several other organisations around the UK to develop agile working environments to suit their individual needs.

In each case we consulted with the head office team and a regional team, then engaged people through a user questionnaire and online workshops to find out about their first post- lockdown working experience, and how they wanted to work in the future.

Despite speculation that offices aren’t needed anymore since more people started working from home due to coronavirus, we learned that people liked the flexibility of being able to work from home and that they still valued the office as a place to collaborate and touch base with the business’ culture.

Where businesses have the technology to enable people to work from multiple locations, the office can become a different type of environment. A hub where people can feel part of the organisation again, with socially distanced meetings and team sessions, allowing them to recharge and leave with new purpose.

Occupancy analysis and user engagement provide huge opportunities to guide office selection and design. You may think you need more space, but what if you now need less, or a different type of space to allow the business to work better? It’s time to talk.

 

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