August 2019 - Serraview

The global economy grows more competitive each year. That’s why enterprises are making agile, modern workspaces a top priority. An agile work environment does away with dedicated workstations and instead uses flexible, shared spaces, allowing employees to choose how and where they work.

A thoughtfully designed, agile workplace enhances productivity and reduces the cost of real estate by right-sizing space and increasing capacity. It can also help you attract, retain, and cultivate the best talent for your company. Here’s how you can design a high-performance, modern workspace that inspires and motivates your employees.

Workspaces That Motivate

A modern workspace isn’t just about aesthetics. Sure, a tastefully designed work environment helps put people at ease. But it goes deeper than that. Traditional floor plans with dedicated workstations waste space, costing your company valuable resources in the form of unused real estate.

Our surroundings also have a profound impact on our motivation to complete tasks. You might think that with a big enough salary and benefits package, you can motivate your workforce toward the next innovative breakthrough in your industry. However, motivation doesn’t always work that way.

And don’t be caught confusing an agile work environment with an open floor plan. Although open floor plans were once in vogue, the truth is that they are noisy and distracting. And despite promises to the contrary, open workspaces can even put a damper on workplace collaboration by reducing face-to-face interactions between employees.

To stay motivated in the workplace, most people need to feel a sense of autonomy, competence, and connection. Market research agrees—a well-designed, modern office boosts employee productivity. Flexible workspaces are especially effective at giving people the power to choose the space that best suits the task at hand.

Quiet areas promote focused concentration. This makes it easier to reach a state of flow and complete tasks that require deep, independent thinking. At the other end of the spectrum, open and inclusive workspaces help people feel connected to their coworkers and allow them to collaborate effectively.

Unfortunately, most companies fail to provide workspaces that meet the needs of their workforce.

Want to learn more about creating a high-performance modern workspace? Download our whitepaper, Optimizing Corporate Real Estate for the Modern Workforce.

Redesign for Productivity

Is your business behind the times? If it is, you might be doing your employees and your business a disservice.

Learn to recognize inefficiencies that could impact employee productivity. Ask yourself the following questions:

Does your company allow its employees to choose where and how they work?
Do people have access to space to engage in casual chats or ongoing collaborative work without disrupting other employees?
Does your workspace support learning and information exchange between workers, regardless of their department or team?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, it’s a sign that your workplace is hindering the productivity of your employees.

But when does it make sense to overhaul your workspace? Think about redesigning if you’re getting ready to significantly increase your headcount or move into a new space. These are golden opportunities to take a critical look at your workspace design and make improvements.

Be a Champion for the Modern Workspace

Reinventing your workspace can transform the employee experience, but it requires the hard work of an internal champion. As a champion, take the lead on building an initiative that maximizes employee satisfaction and productivity.

When it comes to creating a modern workspace, your real estate is your most strategic asset. Seek out new technologies that can monitor and track your space usage and other useful building and facilities data. This will help you get informed before making any major changes.

Building a Modern Workspace Strategy

How do your employees interact with and connect to space? A workspace redesign won’t do you any good if it’s not functional for the people who use it. To build a better workspace, you need to understand how your employees work in their current space. Here’s how you can develop a successful strategy to build a functional, modern workspace.

Use technology to strengthen your real estate strategy

Technology solutions provide valuable insights into space utilization and real-time occupancy information. This helps you minimize costs when building your strategy by:

“Right-sizing” office space
Evaluating multiple move scenarios
Helping you start the transition to flexible or activity-based workspaces
Planning for peak utilization
Increasing real estate capacity with flexible, ratio-based seating

Data-driven insights will also help you gain support from your organization’s stakeholders. With supporting data, stakeholders are more likely to get behind a transformational workspace strategy.

Keys to driving change with a strong workplace strategy

But how do you know when you’ve built a successful strategy? Here are some important boxes you’ll need to check if you want to drive meaningful change.

You’ve identified KPIs within your real estate strategy to track the growth of your business.
You have technology in place to help you maximize your space utilization and overcome guesswork in space acquisition and consolidation.
Your decision-making process is proactive.
You have access to dynamic data for ongoing insights to consistently optimize your real estate portfolio and align with changing needs.

Closing Thoughts

With the global economy moving at a rapid pace, enterprises are looking for new solutions to stay ahead of the curve. A well-designed modern workspace will allow your employees to reach their fullest potential and help your business flourish. Technology solutions can give you valuable, data-driven insights into how to transform your workspace and employee experience.

Modern workplaces are continuously evolving to keep up with the speed of technology and the changing needs of employees. Businesses that fail to meet these needs may find themselves losing workers to businesses that are keeping up with their expectations. By giving your people all the tools they need to perform at their best, you’re almost guaranteed to see a measurable ROI and future cost reductions. You’re also likely to improve employee retention while attracting new talent.

The “open” office was once synonymous with collaboration. But we’re now realizing that it may be doing more harm than good. An agile work environment is proving to be the true key to a collaborative workspace because it gives employees the power to choose an open or solitary location to work. Here’s how you can stay ahead of the curve by implementing a truly collaborative, agile work environment.

Collaborative Workspaces: Past, Present, Future

In the last decade, rapid changes in technology have transformed how we live. With smartphones in hand and an abundance of IoT devices available, we’re now more connected than ever. This increased connectivity in our personal lives has prompted a similar transformation in our workplaces.

The Importance of Collaboration in the Workplace Today

Companies have put significant effort into breaking down organizational silos. And few would deny the fact that a more open, collaborative work environment leads to better outcomes than each employee or team working in isolation.

Workplace collaboration encourages personal connections, brings together diverse viewpoints, and promotes honesty and information sharing. That’s why collaboration is invaluable in the modern workplace—it serves as the crucible for new and innovative ideas.

The Rise of Collaborative Workspaces

With our increasing connectivity and desire for collaboration, the open office plan has become the dominant blueprint for workplace design. But to be successful, a collaborative workplace demands more than just an open office floor plan. The noise and busyness of fully open workspaces can actually discourage collaboration for some employees, who may feel the need to use headphones or other self-isolation strategies to get some work done. Agile work environments encourage collaboration by making it a choice, offering open spaces along with more private areas for focused work time.

Improving your company’s workspace not only promotes collaboration but can also improve employee engagement. Businesses are finding that employee satisfaction is strongly linked to a sense of control over one’s working environment. And most people need a balance between solitary deep work and collaborative group work to be productive.

Driving Productivity and Efficiency with Real-Time Data

With advances in sensor technology and machine learning, modern workspaces can also offer real-time data and predictive analytics to further increase workplace productivity. Real-time data tools allow companies to be more proactive and make the most of the space they have. For example, space management tools can help predict your space needs based on current and historical usage.

Ready to learn more about cultivating a modern workplace environment? Download our whitepaper, Making Space Utilization Work for Your Organization.

Understanding the Value of an Employee-Centric Strategy

Attract and Retain the Best Talent

As an enterprise, your people are your greatest asset. Making improvements and modernizing your workspace is like making an investment in your employees. When it comes to workspace design, an employee-centric strategy can increase your company’s ability to attract and retain a talented workforce.

Promote Innovation

When you create an environment that attracts top talent and fosters collaboration, you’re also creating a hotbed for creative and innovative thinking.

Boost Productivity

An agile work environment empowers your employees by giving them a greater sense of control and satisfaction when it comes to their work. And it’s no surprise that happier employees are more engaged and more productive.

Right-Size Your Real Estate

An agile work environment that promotes collaboration is a win for employee satisfaction and company productivity. But it can have an even bigger impact on your bottom line. Doing away with dedicated workstations and moving toward an agile workplace saves you real estate costs by using space more efficiently.

What Will Make a Collaborative Workspace Successful?

According to Steelcase, “The key to successful workspaces is to empower individuals by giving them choices that allow control over their work environment.” This kind of workspace will demand change in both physical space—how we design our workplaces—and in culture.

The Need for an Agile Work Environment

So what does a modern work environment look like? The modern workspace is quickly moving past the old paradigm of open versus closed space. Instead, it’s about placing power back into the hands of your employees. The way Jan Johnson of Allsteel sees it, “People expect to have more autonomy and control. The workplace should be designed to support that.”

And how is this autonomy reflected in the physical space? The built environment will need to evolve from its current monolithic state to become an agile work environment that offers a diverse and flexible set of functional spaces.

These spaces should be available on demand depending on the needs of individual employees—whether they’re looking for a large conference room to hold a team meeting or a quiet corner to hunker down and draft an important presentation. In The Future of Work and Workplace, an insight report by Holtby Turner, Despina Katsikakis describes the ideal space in this way: “Like a stage-set, it will be reconfigured to respond to our individual functional and wellbeing demands.”

Joining the Movement Toward Modernization

How do you know when it’s time to transform?

Has the way you work changed? Are your team members more mobile? Are you planning a big move in the future? These are all signs that it’s time to take your workspace planning to the next level.

Many companies are still hesitant to make the switch. But if you take the lead, you can use your space as a competitive advantage and strategic asset for your business.

Workspace Advice: Planning for Today and Tomorrow

Implementing a modern, collaborative workspace isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes internal champions, cultural changes within the company, and the help of modern workspace software solutions.

With technology continuing to advance, it’s hard to predict what the average office will look like 10 years from now. But with an agile work environment, you’ll be ready to respond no matter what the future brings.

How to Cultivate a High-Performance Modern Workspace