Tag: Space Planning & Utilization

Workplace occupancy reports: how’s that going?

What’s your level of frustration with your workplace occupancy reports?

A.  Just fine, thank you. They give me everything I need.
B.  I’m uneasy basing my decisions on them.
C.  Annoyed with what I’m getting and embarrassed to show them to anyone.
D.  I’m tearing my hair out as we speak.

Since you’re reading this, chances are you’re in the B to D range (or even all the way to Z). If so, your frustration with occupancy reports is understandable. After all, there’s a lot riding on the CRE plans and decisions you’re making every day. There’s the cost of long-term leases and all those empty desks, for one thing. Not to mention your reputation and your inability to move toward modern workplaces that better support your business.

Without accurate and actionable information from your occupancy reports, you probably feel like you’re flying blind. As a result, your decisions concerning your CRE portfolio may not be working out as you hoped they would. You are likely facing low occupancy rates, lots of wasted space, and business units that are just as frustrated as you are.

Let’s talk about some of the most common problems with occupancy reports, and how modern workplace reports technology can improve things.

Top 6 frustrating problems with occupancy reports

1. It takes too long!

Whether you’re crunching numbers yourself, or relying on analysts to pull together the occupancy reports you need, it’s a maddeningly slow process. If you’re doing it yourself, you’re stuck at your desk well into the evening juggling spreadsheets. Or struggling to extract some useful information from your behemoth IWMS database.

You might be even more frustrated if you’re waiting days or even weeks for someone else to produce the commercial real estate analysis you’re after. That’s because analysts have to pull raw data from various sources, crunch all those numbers manually and put the results into a (somewhat) readable format.

SPOILER #1: Imagine if you could just open a modern workplace tool and click a button to get the information you need.

2. Information is unreliable

Are you collecting occupancy data with manual audits? How often is your data validated? When you’ve got incomplete or out-of-date occupancy information (or likely both), nobody trusts the data in your occupancy reports.

You heard the old adage, “garbage in, garbage out.” That’s why, when you finally do manage to get a report, you probably find yourself reluctant to trust what it’s telling you. Certainly your superiors and your business units won’t.

SPOILER #2: How much more would people trust you (and your plans) if you had accurate occupancy data? Using the right tools, you won’t need to waste time with manual audits. Believe it or not, you can get business units to enter and validate their own data.

3. You can’t get the level of granularity you need

Are you stuck with the canned occupancy reports provided by your IWMS system? These will rarely provide the level of detail you need to make decisions. For example, you can only see occupancy levels at a building level, rather than for a particular business unit or team.

You also might have data that’s stored in non-auditable locations, so you have no ability to track high level metrics. For example, how many move requests did you fulfill this year? If many of the requests are stored in email instead of a ticketing system, you have no way of knowing.

SPOILER #3: How much better could you plan the use of space if you could drill down in occupancy reports to see the exact information you want? Or access a central source of truth to roll up information and see how you’re meeting high-level goals and KPIs?

4. Customizations are difficult

Another reason canned occupancy reports don’t fit the bill is that they are never designed for the way you do things. If you want to do something as simple as change terminology in an IWMS report, you’ll have to pay extravagant fees for (and wait ages for) customizations.

SPOILER #4: What if you could get customizations done quickly and easily? Impossible? Not with the right workplace management system.

5. Presentation quality is poor

Are you actually embarrassed to share occupancy reports with your superiors? Not surprising when you see the sophisticated, graphical dashboards and reports your business unit counterparts are producing.

This is really about more than impressing people; it’s about wasted time. When you have to pour over piles of complex, cumbersome spreadsheets to get answers, it hampers your ability to make decisions.

SPOILER #5: Grasping the essence of your data is much faster and easier with interactive visualizations. And it takes seconds as opposed to hours to find out what you need to know. Plus, you look like a star!

6. Can’t integrate multiple data sources

It’s difficult enough to track occupancy without a modern workplace management system. What if you’re tasked with tracking actual hourly utilization of space, with the goal of moving to flexible work spaces?

To plan for the efficient & collaborative workplace of the future, you need workplace reports that can aggregate data from a variety of sources. These include badge reader systems, sensor technology, WiFi triangulation, and many others. There’s little chance you can pull that together manually, or using an IWMS system.

SPOILER #6: What if you could see heatmaps on a floor plan showing real-time space utilization? You can plan seat ratios by neighborhood, revise the mix of space types on a floor, and even provide wayfinding tools for your employees.

Modern tools do it better

You’ve probably guessed by now that you can easily fix all these occupancy reports problems with modern workplace management software. Here’s what you can get with the right best-in-class technology:

• A central source of truth for all your CRE data. And TRUTH is the key word here: data that’s accurate and up to date.
• Less work for your CRE team gathering occupancy data and more help from your business units. (Read this related post to find out how you can “crowd-source” your occupancy data: The 8 Superpowers You Need For Office Space Management).
• Always-available presentation-quality commercial real estate reports that make you look good and are available at the click of a button.
• Visual reports like heatmaps, building-level stack plans and floor plans showing seat assignments that make it easy to find & process information.
• The ability to drill down and slice & dice information exactly how you want to see it. Or roll up data from numerous sources to provide high-level insights.
• The ability to track utilization data from numerous technologies and see that data in a useful format for driving smart decisions for smart environments.

Want to see how easy it is for us to customize workplace reports in Serraview? Watch our video.

Isn’t it time you moved up to the “A” level for your workplace occupancy reports?

The right reporting tool is only one of the essential vetting points for workplace management software. Get this informative guide so you don’t overlook anything that could make you regret your decision: 5 Critical Comparison Points for Workplace Management Software.

Create an activity based working strategy. Learn more today.

Still relying on manual audits or “bed checks” to collect occupancy data for your commercial space planning? We don’t need to tell you it’s inefficient, but you’re losing more than you think without a modern workplace management tool.

6 reasons why bed checks aren’t useful for commercial space planning

1. Labor-intensive and costly
To properly handle commercial space planning, you need to know which work spaces are being used and who is using them. Walking the floors with a clipboard and checking off occupied desks sounds simple enough. But with multiple regions, dozens of buildings, hundreds of floors and many thousands of work points to check, it takes quite a lot of people (not to mention money) to gather all that data manually.

TRY THIS: How much are space planners making? How long does it take to audit a floor, then input the manual data into a spreadsheet or IWMS system? How often does the task need to be done to update the data? Do the math and see how much this inefficient process is costing you.

2. Take too long to capture constantly-changing data
That brings up another big problem with bed checks for commercial space planning. How long does the process take to audit even one building? Keep in mind, during that time your business is not standing still. If you’re like most large corporations, people join the company and leave the company every day. Teams continue to move around. So by the time you’re done with one floor and moving on to the next, your data about the first floor is already out of date.

After weeks (or longer) of work collecting and compiling data, the result is inaccurate. And the worst part? You need to start all over again to update it! It’s like your dog chasing his tail: you’ll never quite catch up.

3. Subjective process that’s prone to error
As we mentioned, to those who have not done it, conducting bed checks for commercial space planning seems like a simple task. Just check off which desks are in use.

Well, that’s never as easy as it sounds. People try to game the system. There’s a computer on this desk, but nothing else. Is someone using that or not? This desk has a pile of files, but not much else. Is it a dumping ground for someone’s extra stuff or is that space in use? An empty-looking cubicle could turn out to be assigned to someone who is currently traveling or off on leave. In some cases, teams actually try to “hide” vacant space by putting coffee cups or jackets there to try to fool you into thinking it’s in use.

As a result, the manual audit process is subjective and error-prone by nature. That gives people even less confidence in the data and your commercial space planning.

4. No ability to track utilization
We don’t need to tell you this: today’s mobile workforce is using space differently. So even if bed checks could tell you accurately which spaces were assigned to whom, the process tells you nothing about actual utilization of space. Even if someone is assigned to a space, how much time do they spend there? Optimizing space based on utilization data is the biggest opportunity to reduce CRE costs.

That’s the data that should be driving your commercial space planning and helping you to create more efficient and productive modern workplaces.

5. Contributes to adversarial relationships with your business
Why do you suppose those teams feel the need to “hide” vacant space when they know you’re coming around to check? They want to keep ownership of that unused space because they’re not sure they can get more when they do need it. Simply put: they don’t trust you to provide what they need. The inefficient manual audit process only contributes to that lack of trust.

On the other hand, modern tools for commercial space planning help you do the opposite: build good relationships with your teams by solving problems and meeting their needs. More on that in a minute.

6. Can’t help you plan for the future
With manual commercial space planning, you have no basis for making good strategic space decisions. When considering renewing leases, adding or consolidating space, or implementing flexible workspaces, you need more than occupancy data (and flawed data at that).

Successful strategic planning requires an understanding of your business units, their goals, and their projections about how their space needs will change over time. To get that information, it’s imperative to gain their trust. You also must have modern tools in place so it’s easy for teams to provide that information.

The modern way to collect data for commercial space planning

Even if you have a legacy IWMS system that’s not helping you much with commercial space planning, you can still take advantage of modern tools that can change everything. Here’s what you get from a best-in-class workplace management system like Serraview:

• Integration with your other enterprise systems (including your IWMS) to provide reliable data about your organizational structure and workforce.
• Business units can enter and update their own occupancy data, so it’s always current and accurate. Even better, they can provide you with projections for future space needs. Think they won’t do it? Read this article to learn how to make it happen: How to Get Business Units to Help With Office Space Management.
• Accurate data visualized on a floor plan and in customizable dashboards and reports. This feature completely changes the conversation with your business about commercial space planning. You quickly gain their trust when they can see you know all about them and have the ability to meet their needs.
• Powerful scenario planning tools that help you create a plan to restack a building in minutes. Even better, you can easily create multiple scenarios to right-size your portfolio in an entire city or region. It’s a great way to turbocharge your commercial space planning.
• Best-in-class tools (like Serraview) integrate with sensors, badge readers and many other utilization tracking technologies to provide real-time data about who is using space and how often. This goes far beyond tracking occupancy to help you optimize space, move towards modern flexible spaces and reduce CRE cost.

Read these resources to learn how corporations are moving away from inefficient manual audits and gaining the benefits of modern tools for commercial space planning:

How To Turbocharge IWMS With Facilities Space Management Tools

Learn how to manage your workplace utilization today. 

Do you have a major company relocation coming up? Chances are you’re feeling a little anxious.

When you do it the old-fashioned way, a company relocation is chaos for everyone involved. That includes the employees being moved, management, IT staff, and most of all the relocation team. People have come to expect extra work, frustration and inconvenience, wasted time, lost productivity and even lost items. A botched relocation doesn’t do anything positive for anyone’s career, either.

The “old fashioned way” is doing everything manually: with manual audits, piles of spreadsheets, to-do lists scribbled on white boards and post-it notes, and little to no communication before, during or after the move.

Sound familiar?

The good news is, modernizing your company relocation process can make your move happen faster, more efficiently, and with less anxiety for everyone. And make your relocation team look like heroes.

Here’s our guidebook to using modern tools and strategies for better results.

Some advice for making your company relocation go smoothly

Before we address specific strategies, let’s start with some general advice for improving the outcome of a company relocation.

• Start planning early. Begin creating your company relocation plan as early as possible, documenting as many details as you can, and updating as more information becomes available.
• You can’t communicate too much. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but there is a pound of wisdom there. Everyone wants to know what’s happening and when, how it impacts them, and what they are expected to do. The more you tell people, and the more you listen, the happier (and more cooperative) people will be.
• Stay abreast of changes. Planning a major move takes time, and as you know all too well, things won’t stand still while you’re making and implementing your plans. People will join and leave the company, and individuals and teams will continue to move around. So foster a team of move champions throughout the business who will help you keep your ear to the ground, then be sure to adjust your plans accordingly.

Modern company relocation strategy #1: Collecting information & building relationships

As a corporate space planning professional, you know what a struggle it can be to get occupancy data from your business units. People are busy and don’t understand why they should spend their valuable time answering your questions. They just don’t see what’s in it for them, and they may not trust what you’re going to do with the information. Will you take away some of their space?

If you don’t have a workplace management tool helping you with that process, you’re stuck with time-consuming manual audits and nightmare spreadsheets to find out who is sitting where, what space is vacant, and how much space each team really needs. To make matters worse, some teams make a habit of “hiding” available space. That’s just one reason the manual process is fraught with error. Do you really want to base your company relocation plan on this unreliable data?

Here’s the trick: your upcoming company relocation is the perfect “excuse” to get business units to provide you with accurate and detailed occupancy information. After all, now it’s obvious what’s in it for them. Business unit stakeholders will want to make sure everyone in their group is taken into account in the relocation plan, and that their team gets what they want and need in the new space.

BONUS: While you’re collecting occupancy information, it’s a perfect opportunity to collect additional information that will streamline future moves and also help you with compliance. For example:

• Conduct an IT asset audit, which is a great help to your IT department
• Document first aid offices
• Record who is a fire warden

Here are some tips for building relationships with your business to get the information you need, and to get them what they need.

Sell them on the benefits. Get them excited (instead of apprehensive) about the company relocation process, by talking up the positives: better facilities, amenities, locations, and opportunities to consolidate the team or sit near a team they work with closely.

Show you’re on their side. Ask each team about their plans and business objectives, so you better understand their needs. Also, you’ll be in the know about any plans for major staff changes that could affect your company relocation plan. If possible, try to time a move around any critical projects or upcoming deadlines to avoid disruptions.

Recruit space champions. For each business unit, recruit someone from the business (executive assistants are ideal) who can provide you with data, handle tasks related to the relocation, and communicate changes to you when they come up. That person not only provides the information you need, but can act as a goodwill ambassador to help others feel better about the move.

Modern company relocation strategy #2: Smart data storage

When you’re handling a company relocation the old way, lots of people are running around with clipboards, then typing whatever information they get into spreadsheets. After that’s done you end up with stacks of spreadsheets that somehow have to be consolidated into information you can use. And of course, while you’re busy manually aggregating all that data, people are changing it.

It’s enough to make anyone have nightmares.

You know what’s worse? After your company relocation is done, all that data gets trashed. So next time you’re faced with a move, you need to go through the manual process all over again.

Updating your company relocation process with modern technology is much easier and more efficient.

• Today’s workplace management software allows you to capture and store your occupancy data in a central database that integrated with your other enterprise systems (such as Finance, HR, your intranet and other IWMS systems). Best-in-class systems are cloud-based for faster, easier and less expensive implementation.
• Your space champions for each business unit can enter their own information with a simple online tool.
• When things change, updates are quick and easy, and you’ll always have an accurate source of truth for occupancy.
• Best of all, after the company relocation, that information remains accurate and available for future use. So the next time you face a move, you’ve already got the data you need to make and execute relocation plans.

Related article: How To Turbocharge IWMS With Facilities Space Management Tools

Modern company relocation strategy #3: Automating communication

One of the most important ways to mitigate problems with a company relocation is to communicate early and often with everyone who’s involved and impacted by the move.

How have you handled comms in the past? Probably by trying to remember to send out emails to tell people what they needed to know. With this strategy, inevitably people get left out, you forget to include important details, or you run out of time altogether and people end up frustrated.

Instead, try this time-saving strategy: create email templates in advance, so you can plan exactly what information you need to send to each person and group. Then use an automation tool to schedule those emails. Here’s what people will be looking for:

• Where they are moving and when
• Instructions for packing and how to prepare for the move
• How to find their new space
• What to do on move day
• How to get help if a problem arises
• How to use features of a new agile work environment, such as wayfinding systems

Here’s an example of what automated comms can look like:

Don’t forget to plan emails for members of your relocation team, including movers, IT consultants, workplace strategy consultants or other technology service providers. Planning your communications with third-party providers will make sure they are aware of and committed to your schedule.

After your company relocation is complete, continue to use your automated comm tools to make sure everyone knows whom to contact if they are experiencing any problems. You can also use them to distribute your customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey.

Related articles:
Office Relocation Planning: Keeping Your Move On Track
8 Tips for Optimizing Churn Management

If you’re missing essential space management features that you need for your company relocation, such as a business unit portal and automated communication tools, it’s time to consider a more modern workplace management system.

Learn more about other must-have features from this reference guide to 5 Critical Comparison Points for Workplace Management Software.

When you begin evaluating workplace management solutions, you’ll quickly discover there is a wide range of pricing. Not to mention very different pricing models. That’s partly because systems vary in sophistication and the capabilities they offer. How can you compare apples to oranges and figure out which solution will provide the most value for your organization?

Here’s a primer that will help you hone in on the most cost-effective workplace management solutions for your needs, take Total Cost of Ownership into account, and calculate the return on investment & value you can expect to gain.

Narrowing the scope for workplace management solutions

Chances are, your search for workplace management software is driven primarily by a need to manage your CRE expenses. When you follow the money trail, there are two key variables: your supply of space, and the demand for space.

Any leasing tool can do a decent job of managing the supply side of the equation, including how much space you have, cost per square foot, etc.

On the other hand, demand management is where a great workplace management system comes into its own. Best-in-class systems provide the means to help you understand the following:

• How well occupied is your space?
• Can you improve space usage or grow within your existing space?
• Can you reduce your footprint/total cost of ownership?
• What is the current demand for space?
• What will the space demand be in the future?
• How well is your real estate working for your business units?
• How well do you understand your business unit’s strategy and how real estate can enable it?
• How can real estate work better for your business?
• How can a workplace management tool help you to drive strategic conversations with your business?

Effectively managing workplace demand and real estate strategy is a task that is rarely outsourced and belongs within an organizations four walls. It is also the area that delivers the most strategic value.

If your primary goal is to reduce CRE spend, you’ll get the most bang for your buck with a workplace management solution focused on modern space planning.

Here’s where to concentrate your efforts to get the most value:

Managing occupancy & optimizing your use of space, so you can avoid leasing unnecessary space. Most companies are wasting 50 to 60 percent of their office space. Here’s an eye-opening exercise: take a walk around one floor of your building and count how many empty desks you see. At $10,000 per desk each year, wasted space costs you a fortune. Look for a tool that makes it easy to identify and re-allocate pockets of under-utilized space. Taking back just 100 vacant desks adds up to a $1,000,000 per year in cost savings.

Getting useful & reliable analytics about how your space is used, so you can make better decisions about your future portfolio. This requires accurate data as well as the ability to slice and dice it as needed to produce the business intelligence you need to guide decisions. Look for modern workplace management solutions with useful tools for keeping data accurate & up to date, and the ability to customize reports to your requirements.

Moving to agile, collaborative workspaces is an idea that’s catching on, and with good reason. The shared workplace model is uber-efficient and has the potential to yield in the tens or even hundreds of millions in savings. Agile workspaces also enable the collaborative cultures that companies need today to remain competitive. If your company has plans to move in this direction (and what progressive corporation is not at least looking into it?) don’t ignore support for agile environments in your evaluation of workplace management solutions.

And if you’ve already got a legacy IWMS in place, modern workplace management solutions can be integrated with existing systems to enhance functionality.

The result? In a surprisingly short period of time, you can take control of your CRE portfolio and reap huge financial paybacks.

Related article: How to Turbocharge IWMS With Facilities Space Management Tools

How pricing models differ

Now that you understand the capabilities that drive value, how do you compare the variety of pricing models for workplace management solutions? Fundamentally, space management systems are priced based on one of the following:

Number of users. The most important priority for workplace management solutions is gathering accurate data and keeping it that way. To that end, it’s in your best interest to have more users entering and validating information in your system. In an ideal world (and simple to achieve with the right tool), you want your business units to participate. Unfortunately, that becomes prohibitive when you have to pay for seat licenses for each business unit representative.

Volume of space managed. It’s one thing to pay for managing the space that actually needs managing: your employees’ work spaces. Workplace management software provides value for that space by tracking who is using it. It’s quite another to pay for managing large, empty spaces such as common areas and meeting spaces. After all, space management tools are not providing any value for these spaces. With this model, you end up overpaying since your total square footage counts toward the price.

Workpoints. When your workplace management software is priced based on workpoints, you’re actually getting what you pay for, since the tool is providing value for every desk in every building. What’s more, as the tool helps you optimize space and reduce unneeded workpoints, you have the opportunity to reduce the cost of the tool.

Other costs you must factor into the equation

It’s important to realize that the cost of implementing workplace management software can reach far beyond the price of the product alone. When calculating costs, don’t forget to include:

Professional services and implementation. Many vendors employ (or outsource) professional services people to help you through a complicated install and data collection process. How much extra will you pay for these services?

Data management. If a tool is difficult and cumbersome to use, you may end up paying consultants to enter and validate your data. This can be an ongoing expense that you’ll have to live with for a long time.

Report design. No two companies are the same, so everyone needs custom reports. How much extra will this cost? Don’t forget you’ll need different reports as your business changes. So this expense can multiply.

Customizations. Again, you’re not a cookie-cutter corporation, so you’ll need software customizations to align the product with your needs. How much more will this cost? And what happens when your requirements change?

Upgrades. How often will you get software updates and what’s the cost each time?

Soft costs to consider

Beyond the hard dollars involved in purchasing workplace management solutions, there are also “soft costs” that you’ll want to factor into the equation:

Service and support. How about the cost of your stress level and your workload? Which vendor is going to make your job easier, and even more pleasant? Are they committed to helping you work through issues and reach your goals?

Your reputation and career. No pressure, but this decision has the potential to fast-forward your career trajectory, or not. Which product will make you look like a star to your business units and your superiors?

Your ability to influence and drive business change. Will the workplace management software provide the tools and ammunition you need to drive strategic workplace changes and business goals? Can it help you build relationships with lines of business so they support your initiatives?

Comparing time to value

One of the most overlooked factors in evaluating workplace management solutions is how long it will take to realize the benefits.

If you have been involved in implementing an IWMS system in the past, you know that it’s likely to take years for the system to be fully operational. And return on investment? Who knows if that will happen at all.

Today’s modern workplace management software is different. Cloud-based and built on modern technology foundations, systems can be implemented in a matter of months. It won’t be long before you’re taking back unused space, right-sizing your portfolio, and making strategic decisions that save millions. You may even be ready to make the move to agile working for the biggest cost savings of all.

Don’t forget to factor in the cost of lost opportunity. While you’re waiting years for that new system, how many unneeded leases did you sign? How much are you continuing to pay for wasted space?

Related topic: Improving Time to Value for Workplace Management Technology Implementation

Calculating ROI

You’ll hear a great many claims from workplace management solutions vendors about how their system will save you loads of money. How many of them can back up their claims?

Get references. Speak to at least one current client (ideally one that’s similar to your company in size and/or CRE goals) to learn how they have used the tool to cut CRE expenses. Find out the scope of the results to date, and how long it has taken to achieve ROI. At the same time, it’s a great idea to ask how the vendor has provided assistance along the way and helped to overcome any hurdles.

Find out how to calculate hard savings. Ask each workplace management solutions vendor you’re evaluating about how they calculate the potential cost savings they promise. They should be able to provide guidance at a minimum, if not actual tools to calculate ROI.

Serraview has an interactive value calculator that helps potential clients estimate the actual cost return they can expect. Feel free to reach out to us and we can guide you through it.

Now that you understand how to compare pricing, make sure you’re focusing your evaluation on the right features and benefits with this informative reference guide: 5 Critical Comparison Points for Workplace Management Software.

This two-part blog series shares strategies for driving workforce cultural change and innovation through collaborative workspace design, from Unispace workplace design expert Simon Pole. Unispace is a global design firm that seamlessly unites strategy, design, project management and delivery to achieve real, measurable results for clients.

If you missed last week’s article, see Can Office Design Drive Productivity & Innovation?

The demand for innovation is driving the growth of the collaborative workspace

Even for the most successful companies, maintaining the status quo is not enough to keep them competitive in the global economy. Remaining at the forefront of their industries demands constant innovation.

Ideas have become today’s most valuable commodity. One principle that’s become generally accepted is that collaborative working fosters more and better ideas, and ultimately leads to the innovation companies are after. As a result, companies are doing everything they can to create a collaborative workspace environment that encourages creative thinking and innovation.

However, it’s important to realize that there’s more to creating a successful collaborative workspace design than just adding more open space.

So what do you need to make effective collaboration happen in your workplace? Read on to learn about 3 essential strategies to get the best results from collaborative workplace design.

1. Don’t be swayed by popular trends

It’s tempting to be influenced by the cool new space going up next door, or by the photos you see online showing off the latest collaborative workspace designs. Expert workplace designer Simon Pole of Unispace cautions against giving too much weight to popular office design trends.

“My pet peeve at the moment is what I call ‘designed by Pinterest’,” says Pole. “It drives me nuts when you see so much copycat design. A while ago I asked a designer, ‘Why have you gone for that particular design?’ The response was, ‘Well, it’s so trendy right now.’ I ripped that material out of the library and threw it in the bin. Businesses are different. What they need from the space is different.”

The result of all the copycat design out there is poorly designed spaces that don’t produce the intended collaboration, because they are not based on what the business needs and how people work.

That’s why investing in research and strategy building is a critical step in developing a collaborative workspace.

2. Invest in research to design your collaborative workspace

Building a successful collaborative workplace requires understanding what drives the business.

According to Pole, this process starts by looking at how the business goes to market and the lifecycle of a company’s products.

“If a client’s product takes 10 years to develop, there’s no point in trying to shave seconds off their day with a certain kind of design,” says Pole. “We need to focus on other areas. Whereas in the financial world, seconds can make the difference between making money or not making money.”

It’s also essential to understand what collaboration actually looks like for the business.

“We have to dig into their values and really understand, at each step through their value chain, what they mean by collaboration,” says Pole. “How do you collaborate?”

To find out, Unispace studies the current use of space. They look at the utilization of various spaces including the numbers of people using them, the technology available, and what type of activities are taking place. They also learn about the more unplanned collaboration by spending time observing the business.

Pole explains, “We look at what’s going on within the process cycle of an organization.” Doing so helps them to understand which people and groups need to be collaborating more. That might not be the people you expect.

“Once we’ve gotten that understanding, then we start with pen and paper, and not the other way around. That’s just good strategy. At that point, you can start planning great a collaborative workspace.”

That involves bringing together all the important elements that contribute to a successful collaborative workspace, including:

Adjacency. Is the space located where people are likely to use it?

Acoustics. Are the acoustics in the space designed for the intended usage, or for a variety of uses in a shared space?

Privacy. Does the space provide adequate privacy for the activities taking place?

Environmental concerns. Is the temperature comfortable? Is the lighting adequate? Does the view inspire creative thought?

“People think you can just throw a D-shaped table and a 42 inch screen into a floor plan and collaboration happens. It doesn’t,” says Pole. “A collaborative workspace needs to be thought about as part of the business journey: who needs to use it, where should it sit, and who needs to be in it?”

3. Embracing collaboration requires a shift in company values

There’s one fact that companies who have implemented agile working will agree on: you can’t make people collaborate with space alone. The values of your business need to change.

In many cases, that means a shift from rewarding competition to rewarding collaboration and teamwork.

Pole explains how people get protective about sharing knowledge when organizations reward competition. “It’s my knowledge. I get paid for what’s in my head, so why would I be willing to share that? That’s my next paycheck.”

“To use an Australian Rules football analogy, the person who scores the goal gets a point, but the person who kicks the ball to set up the score is just as important to the team,” says Pole. “It’s not only about the goal score, it’s about the passage and play that sets it up.”

“In an organization, it’s about setting the KPIs around assists and not the goals or the score. Then people are encouraged to share and use that collaborative workspace more.”

Related article: 8 Tips to Encourage Collaboration in the Agile Workplace

Create an activity based working strategy. Learn how today.

This two-part blog series shares strategies for driving workforce cultural change and innovation through workspace design, from Unispace workplace design expert Simon Pole. Unispace is a global design firm that seamlessly unites strategy, design, project management and delivery to achieve real, measurable results for clients.

What does workplace productivity mean today?

Companies have always wanted workers to be productive, yet the meaning of the term has evolved over the years. How has the definition of workplace productivity changed, and what does it look like today?

In years past, workers were judged based on quantity of output: how many widgets they could produce. Workplace productivity and efficiency were all about increasing speed and decreasing cost. If a company could produce more widgets in less time at a lower cost, they could be successful.

Today’s workplace productivity is about the quality of output. How much value does the work bring to the organization? The change is all about a shift in the organization’s processes and goals. Processes have changed due to the evolution of technology. Today, much of the high-quantity, low value work is being done by robots and machines.

In the increasingly competitive business landscape, it’s no longer enough to produce more at a lower cost. Companies need to differentiate themselves with better ideas. As a result, the value of workplace productivity now comes from innovation.

Workplace productivity lessons learned from the open plan concept

The trend toward open plan office spaces grew during the 90’s and early 2000’s, when making as many widgets as possible was still the goal of most companies. Efficiency was the name of the game, and the open plan workplace was a way to squeeze as many workers as possible into an office space.

According to workplace design expert Simon Pole of Unispace, that created a workplace productivity problem. Companies failed to address the different working modes that people need to accomplish their work tasks: including focus, social, learning, and collaboration modes. Employees were forced to do everything from focused work to team work in a single space that was not well suited to the task.

“If I’m trying to draft a document and I’ve got three people talking in my ear, it’s hard to concentrate,” explains Pole. “There’s also visual distraction. Every time someone walks past my desk, I lift my eyes. It takes about 20 minutes to get into deep thought and focus. With every distraction, I lose my focus. So I don’t feel productive. I’m frustrated. I’m working longer hours. It all just breaks down from there.”

On the other hand, the open office does work well for collaboration and sharing of knowledge.

“People in open offices love the teamwork,” says Pole. “They love that knowledge-sharing. Because they’ve just overheard three conversations, they are better informed, and can go to another meeting and share that information.”

In an open environment, there’s a natural increase in what Pole calls “fast collaboration:” those quick, ad-hoc conversations at your desk where you ask someone for input or offer information to a colleague.

The problem is providing for the next step (what Pole terms “slow collaboration”) that’s more planned. In an open plan office, there is nowhere to take those longer conversations where there’s a need for privacy or to avoid disturbing others.

“Today we’re getting the balance right again through research and strategic workplace design,” says Pole.

From open plan to ABW: transforming workplaces & mindsets to support innovation

Now that workplace productivity is more about innovation, companies are looking to create workplaces that support the type of collaboration that spawns ideas.

That’s led to the growth of Activity Based Working (ABW), where companies provide different types of spaces designed for the tasks employees need to do each day. That means an employee doing focused work can choose to work in a quiet, enclosed cubicle, while a team having a brainstorming session can work in a comfortable, open lounge.

Related article: Why ABW Is a Better Alternative to Open Office Design

So how do you go about creating an ABW environment that supports workplace productivity and enhances workplace innovation?

Read on to learn about 3 important elements that can make or break the success of your new space.

1. Research and strategic planning

“Companies are looking for organizational change, and exploring how the workplace can support and ignite that change,” says Pole.

Accomplishing that with workplace design requires a good understanding of what the business is trying to achieve. There’s no “formula” for ABW that can be applied to any business. Copying the latest design trend just creates a cookie cutter space that might look great, but won’t help the business reach its goals.

“We believe in putting the science before the art,” says Pole. A beautiful new space won’t do the job of driving innovation and workplace productivity if it doesn’t have research and solid strategy behind it.

Developing the right design strategy means taking the time to understand what the building should be doing for the organization: spending time with management and lines of business, asking questions and observing how people work.

“True design from the inside out is figuring out how to get those spaces to make a difference so organizations look different, feel different and act different,” says Pole.

Only then can the property become an extension of the brand, and truly support the cultural change the company is after.

2. Technology provides the data to drive design

It’s no secret that an ABW workplace design needs the right technology to enable workplace productivity in a mobile environment. They need laptops with docking stations, the right network infrastructure, and wayfinding tools, just to name a few.

However, technology can also be an important tool in your research and strategic planning arsenal. Utilization tracking technology is a great example.

Designing a successful ABW work environment depends on your ability to track the right space utilization metrics. Technologies such as badge readers, lighting sensors and Low Energy Bluetooth enable you to see who is using which types of space and with what frequency. Armed with this data, you can create the right mix of different space types and the right ratios of seats to people for each neighborhood or business unit.

Take a look at this useful resource to learn more about utilization tracking technologies: Managing Workplace Utilization.

3. Breaking the cycle of group think

Pole points out an issue that’s often overlooked in all the discussions about designing space to support innovation and workplace productivity. It’s not all about the space.

“The strategy and design act as an enabler, but collaboration is also about people and their mentality,” says Pole. “In some organizations, people have been working together for so long that everyone finishes each other’s sentences.”

That’s one of the benefits of bringing people from different sectors or business units together in an ABW workspace. You encourage a cross-pollination that breaks up the cycle of group think and breathes new life into the organization.

Next week we’ll continue our discussion about designing the workplace of the future with a look at some specific strategies you can use to encourage workplace collaboration. Don’t miss it!

Download a guide to creating an activity based working strategy today.