Category: Blog

Should we stay or should we go? Raise your hand if you’re a corporate real estate executive who’s asked that question before. As you review and re-evaluate different workspaces, you may wonder if staying in your current office will in fact be double the trouble of going elsewhere.

Why You Should Consider “Saving in Place”

Even though it may seem like your current space just is not working out (you’re growing or shrinking too much to justify the space, it’s underutilized more often since you adopted a more flexible work policy, or your current office floor plan no longer meets the needs of your restructured departments), you probably have more options to save in place than you think. Here’s why you should do that:

• You’re limited to your existing location due to ownership or an extended lease term. Owning the building means you can redesign the office building floor plans or consolidate your team to open a floor and find a tenant. If you lease, you may be able to negotiate for better lease terms or benefits, or work with your landlord to adjust your workspace to better meet your needs.
• You’re in a beneficial location. You may be paying a premium rate for a high-rise downtown or in an urban core, and lower rents in the suburbs look enticing. But consider this: Is your current location convenient to public transit, or close to where most of your employees live? Will they be burdened by the commute? Are you close to amenities that your employees value? Does your location make you attractive to prospects or give you access to a larger talent pool? Moving somewhere else might end up costing you in other ways (in addition to the actual move costs).

Ready to Save in Place? Get Informed

The first step when deciding how you’ll save in place is to get good data. Utilization software like Serraview’s can help you understand your current occupancy rates and usage patterns. It can also help you project and plan different scenarios for expansion or downsizing. Imagine being able to easily visualize how you could best configure your office floor plans to accommodate different rates of growth two, three, or five years out. A tool like Serraview will allow you to confidently say “yes, we can downsize our current space by 20% and still use it effectively for the next three years.”

This could be your opportunity to start transitioning to an agile or activity-based workspace. Learn why that’s a superior option to an open office floor plan.

Seeing and understand usage patterns—like the spike each Thursday when 90% of your employees are in the office, or that two conference rooms are used every day and the third is empty 80% of the time—will provide the evidence-based data to develop alternate ways to use your space.

Find out other strategies corporate real estate leaders can use to reduce costs.

Optimizing Lease Terms

Data-based knowledge about your needs allows your to bring a clear vision to your landlord. If, for example, your company takes up one floor and wants to downsize by 30%, your landlord might argue that 30% of one floor can’t be leased to another tenant. With good data, you may be able to determine that you can give up 50% of your current space to be leased out.

Understanding your current state vs. future state allows you to request first right of refusal. If you’re aware of your space use, you can negotiate for additional amenities, such as more allocated parking spaces, or other services.

Optimizing Office Floor Plans

If you are able to downsize—and hopefully reduce your rent payments—you’ll want to use space planning software that delivers utilization data to create efficient office floor plans and layouts. You can also put some of that savings towards improving your space—perhaps by investing in standing desks, updating office furniture and decor, or offering other perks to boost employee engagement.

In the event that you are unable to physically downsize space and lease obligations, you still have options to better use the space.

If you pay for utilities, see if you can consolidate your employees so you can turn off the lights and other systems in one section of your floor or building.

Think creatively about the unused or little-used spaces in your office. For example, instead of having a large, open room that’s only half-occupied, you can use demountable walls to create a separate room that could be a breakroom/hangout spot or brainstorming space. Or perhaps you could knock down walls so that you get more natural light (and reduce your lighting needs). Utilization software can help you identify needs and change your office floor plans so it’s a more pleasant place to work as well as save you money.

Want to see how you can update your office floor plans to better use the space you have? Contact us today for a demo of Serraview’s space planning tool.

Here at Serraview, we’re fascinated by the workspace and the data it can provide – how it functions in order to help work and create a positive workplace.

Today, we know more than ever about the factors that contribute to productivity and collaboration in a workplace, but now that we have the data, we’re challenged to figure out what it all means. Once you understand that, you can make decisions about open office layouts, closed offices, collaborative spaces, and other usage and space planning questions. Companies that don’t use space planning and space utilization software like Serraview don’t necessarily have the data to make those informed decisions.

Let’s look at how office layouts have evolved and how (we believe) they will continue to do so.

A Brief Timeline of Office Layouts

When we consider “modern offices,” we go back a little over one hundred years to the early 1900s. These offices were modeled after factory floors, with long rows of desks and no walls or dividers—a completely open layout. Private executive offices overlooked these worker spaces.

In the 1950s-1960s, the office layout was still open, but the German “office landscape” concept brought executives out of their private suites and arranged assigned desks according to job function.

In the late 1960s, furniture designer Herman Miller introduced “modular business furniture” that was intended to promote collaboration and flexibility. Today, we call modular business furniture “cubicles.”

By the 1980s, “cube farms” were the norm (perhaps best displayed in the 1999 movie Office Space).

With the rise of the internet in the 1990s, the “virtual office” gained traction. Thanks to increased internet access, email, and cell phones, employees didn’t have to physically be in the office to get their work done. Some companies, trying to reduce real estate costs, started encouraging virtual or remote work.

Since the early 2000s, office design layouts have been shifting in all sorts of ways. Cubicle farms started to disappear in favor of open office plans. Trendy tech firms started building creative offices designed to cater to employees’ needs and wants.

Paying attention to your employees’ experience matters—learn why.

Current Trends: Open Office vs. Activity-Based Working

As open office plans grew in popularity, so did the backlash against them. In many cases, these office layouts discouraged collaboration instead of promoting it as promised. Frustrated by noisy spaces and lack of privacy, employees would stay hunched over their computers with headphones on if they wanted to get work done.

In contrast, the activity-based workplace recognizes that different types of work activities, and different types of employees, need different spaces. A marketing manager, for example, might divide her day into focused work, meetings, and collaborative work. In an activity-based workplace, the office layout would provide distinct spaces for each activity. She might start her day in a “quiet zone” workstation, move to a conference room for a couple hours, and end her day at a desk in the marketing department’s “neighborhood” where she can brainstorm and share ideas with her team.

What other advantages does ABW have over open office layouts? Find out.

The Pendulum Swing: Back to Equilibrium

It’s hard to predict what trends in office layouts will prevail over time. Right now, we’re seeing companies go to various extremes: Some are encouraging remote work as much as possible (some don’t even have an office at all; everyone in the organization works remotely), while others, including tech giant IBM, have reversed course and started mandating all employees work in an office.

Everyone is looking for the right mix of efficiency, productivity, collaboration, and innovation. IBM found that something was lacking when people weren’t interacting face-to-face. They needed to bring people back to the office to create “water cooler moments” of spontaneous collaboration and develop mentorship relationships. Other companies are depending on communication platforms like Skype and Slack to build that virtually.

If we expect anything, it will be a softening of extremes. A few companies will choose “all or nothing” when it comes to a traditional office or no office, but the majority will settle somewhere in the activity-based or hybrid office layout.

Tech Continues to Drive Change

One thing we can be sure of is that technology will be used in offices in more ways. Most importantly, in one sense, technology like Serraview’s space planning and space utilization software will become indispensable as companies seek those functional spaces that work best for their employees.

Getting accurate, real-time data about your space—everything from your building systems to activity in Conference Room B—will help you make evidence-based decisions about everything from lease renewals to reconfiguring a floor to getting new office furniture.

Learn how your workplace can attract and retain talent, enhance your employees’ experience, enable collaboration, and more—download our whitepaper on best practices for the modern workplace.

It’s not news that your office—its layout, style, decor, and overall design—can profoundly impact your employees and their performance. Your space planning design can help make this impact positive by encouraging productive and collaborative activities.

Space Planning Design for Business Needs

Ultimately, your office design should facilitate your employee’s work so the business can achieve its goals. Productive, engaged employees (i.e. those who can do their work better and faster) usually mean more business goals are met.

So, when looking at the space planning and design for your office, you must be clear on:

• Your business goals
• The work your employees need to do to achieve those goals

For example, one business goal might be to expand into a new market by the end of the year. To do that, your marketing team needs to be able to research and develop a solid marketing strategy. What does that research and development look like? Lots of time and space to brainstorm ideas? Onsite research in that new market? Maybe focus groups to test different strategies?

Once you understand your business goals and how they’ll be achieved, you can begin your space planning design to best facilitate that work.

Getting Good Employee Input

When you’re planning a change in your workplace, whether it’s relatively small or radical, getting and using input from employees is a good way to help them get excited about the change. The key is to get constructive input. There are three methods companies use most:

• Surveys: These can be very helpful, but it’s often challenging to design a survey that will give you complete and accurate data. Employees may not have time to fill out surveys, so you may have to offer incentives to get responses.
• Focus groups: Focus groups allow you to ask deeper, more specific questions to a select group of people that represent each department or business unit.
• Audits: Walking around your workplace, observing what people are doing—and asking them, what they’re doing and what would make their jobs easier—can give you a lot of good information. But, you’ll need to conduct this exercise several times to get a complete picture.

Space planning and utilization software, like Serraview, can provide an accurate picture of the type of work people are doing. Empirical data can illustrate how often employees are in meetings or conferences or how frequently they collaborate or work solo. Of course, it also will show many people or which teams are typically in the office on any given day.

The data you gain from strong utilization software can be invaluable. You may know, based on data that your utilization software provides that approximately 60% of your employees are in the office at a given time. But, does that mean 60% of every department? More likely, maybe 25% of your sales staff is in the office most of the time, along with 80% of your HR department, 50% of your legal team, and 40% of your IT department (except on the various days each week or month when different departments have “all hands” meetings). Utilization software will be able to provides specific data so your space planning design can account for the different needs of each group.

How does space planning software maximize ROI?

Create Water Cooler Moments—but Don’t Force Them

Most companies today want a space planning design that encourages collaboration, both planned (breakout or brainstorming rooms that teams can book) and spontaneous (cafe-like settings where people can stop and chat while having coffee). You should intentionally try to design a layout that encourages a certain flow through the space. You can add furniture and other items, like whiteboards, that will encourage people to share ideas when they meet. But don’t get so fixated on creating the “ideal water cooler” space, and don’t worry if the space doesn’t get used exactly as you intended.

Learn how to make your workplace go from lifeless to lively.

If certain spaces are being used differently than designed, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being used incorrectly. If a space is designed to meet people’s needs, they will use it—but their needs might not be exactly what you envisioned. Flexibility is a crucial element in every space planning design.

Flexibility does not have to mean a completely open office, or even an activity-based workspace. It just means that, as you design your space for your current needs and you keep potential needs in mind. This may mean choosing smaller desks for offices to make it easier to move them (and people) around. Or it may mean running cables and wires through ceilings to make it easy to convert an office to a conference room with video capability. You will not be able to plan for every possible scenario, but with some forethought, you can make it easier to adapt to different possibilities.

Strong space utilization software makes office space planning and design a snap—request a demo today and find out how.

You’ve made the switch to activity-based working and have reduced your footprint. You’ve removed desks and individual workstations, and now your people-to-seat ratio has been adjusted based on your usage data. You managed the transition well and your employees seem happy and productive.

Until…somehow, every department decided to schedule an all-hands meeting on the same day. Will there be chaos as everyone tries to find an open desk and sufficient meeting room space? Or have you planned for peak utilization of your building?

What Is Peak Utilization?

It’s the scenario above—when everyone, or nearly everyone, shows up to the office, expecting to have a desk or workstation. Will there be enough to go around? As companies adjust their people-to-seat ratio (on the understanding that, on average, 40% of their space isn’t being used) and move to hybrid or agile working environments, planning for peak utilization is a crucial exercise.

Change how you track space utilization to get a more accurate picture of your building usage.

What it Takes to Plan for Peak Utilization

There are two main approaches that go hand-in-hand:

1. Understand work patterns so you know when/how often to expect peak utilization

Each department likely has slightly different needs and work patterns. Maybe Monday through Thursday, you can safely assume that only half the Sales team will be in the office, but that department has a meeting every Friday and almost all of them will be there in person.

Maybe the Marketing team, which works next to Sales, also regularly schedules a team meeting the last Friday of every month, so you know that’s the day when that space will be crowded.

2. Encourage work patterns to keep resource utilization balanced

You could just accept that on that last Friday, Marketing and Sales will be fighting for space. Or you could share the data you have with Marketing and Sales to help them make a decision about their schedules.

Take a close look at employee work patterns so you know what to expect on any given day.

Activity-based working is not a one-size-fits-all—learn how it can be adapted for your company.

What’s Stopping Companies from Planning for Peak Utilization

Historically, getting accurate data on building usage required time-consuming manual audits. Now, thanks to space planning and utilization software and other technology, the bigger barrier is effective communication. Employees often resist being told to change the way they work—whether that means giving up their desk or scheduling meetings earlier or later to avoid overbooked conference rooms. Having a strong change management and communication plan will help you implement policies to handle peak utilization.

But What Do You Do When Everyone Shows Up?

Sometimes, no matter how much you plan and prepare, you’ll be surprised by a full office. If you’ve been creative and purposeful with your space planning, you won’t have chaos. Set up multi-use spaces that people can use: lobbies, hallways, cafeterias or breakrooms can all be outfitted to serve as part-time workstations or meeting spaces. Some companies can make use of outdoor spaces as well.

When you create multi-use spaces, make sure they will function well when being used for work activities. Check that your Wi-Fi can support them and that they have adequate technology available.

Communication for Resource Utilization

Having these multi-use spaces or a plan to handle peak utilization won’t do any good if no one knows about them. In addition to a communication plan that eases employees into new ways of work, your change management strategy should also explain how various spaces can be used and what to expect when office traffic is above average. You can also share your usage data with department heads so they understand how they can adjust their team’s work patterns to minimize occurrences of peak utilization.

Find out other ways activity-based working serves your employees. Download our guide to creating an activity-based working strategy in your office.

Although companies recognize the value of real estate, those costs are often one of the largest items on the balance sheet. Corporate real estate leaders are tasked with bringing the most value to the company while also controlling costs. Here are some ways you can cut your corporate real estate expenses (and as a bonus, most will also increase your ROI on real estate!):

1. Relinquish your lease or sell a building

Lease or mortgage costs are most likely the biggest corporate real estate costs you incurr, so on paper, this is the easiest way to cut costs.

Of course, in real life, moving—to a smaller space in your current building or to a new building altogether—is not easy. Lease renewals come up and they are renewed, even if the company knows they’re only using 50-60% of the space. To break this cycle, pay attention to your lease termination dates. Your opportunity to make strong business decisions, in most cases, is about 12-18 months from that date.

Using space planning software will help you identify how your space is being used or unused. If it includes utilization functionality, like Serraview’s workspace utilization software, it will also tell you when and how your space is being used. Both can also help you make better plans and decisions faster. With the right software and data, the decision cycle can be streamlined, saving time with the relocation.

Learn about the modern workplace strategies that can revolutionize your organization.

2. Review and renegotiate your lease options

If you decide to stay put, you can still negotiate for better rates or value-adds to your current space. Again, you need to pay attention to your termination dates and start this process early. Read your lease closely to understand all the available options and make sure you have strong understanding of your needs and usage. This is also an opportunity to rethink the utilization metrics you’re tracking.

3. Audit your utilities regularly

You might be surprised to learn how long your HVAC system runs when very few people are in the office. Pay attention to your employees’ patterns and habits—which may change seasonally—and adjust your utilities systems. Depending on the size of your company and your current corporatel real estate expenses, this can translate to six-figure savings or more annually.

4. Reuse and recycle

When you’re redesigning your office layout, look for furniture vendors who purchase used or recycled desks and cubicles for repurposing. You can purchase recycled materials, especially if you need to reconfigure one floor, but are planning a bigger move in the next year.

Using recycled furniture or decreasing your utilities usage can have a bonus benefit of highlighting your sustainable practices. Both employees and clients or customers will appreciate your efforts.

Discover other ways your workspace influences your company culture.

5. Coordinate with other departments

When you cut corporate real estate expenses, be aware of how that might affect other departments. By shrinking your footprint and allowing people to work remotely, you save on your real estate costs while increasing spend in another department, such as IT. If you work together on moves and policy changes, you can find creative ways to save money.

6. Look for potential multi-use spaces

Maybe you know that overall, you’re only using 50-60% of your building, but it seems like the conference rooms are always booked and people are clamoring for more space. Can you instead use the space you have in different ways? Maybe you can make it easier for people to have meetings in the cafeteria or lobby by adding some new furniture.

Add Value by Reducing Corporate Real Estate Expenses

Cutting corporate real estate expenses no longer has to mean sacrificing a nice, well-provisioned office. Slashing expenditures instead can free up funds for offices that function better and make it easier for employees to get their work done.

With space planning technology, you can make better, more informed decisions about your corporate real estate expenses. Find out how.