6 tips for a successful move to agile working

1. Profile your workforce.

Assess how seismic the shift will be for different staff (baby-boomers, X-generation, millennials etc.) and plan how you will communicate the change.

2. Explain.

Communicate what’s happening and why, the benefit to the business and individuals.

3. Let staff touch and feel it.

Involve staff and give them a chance to see the plans, sit on the furniture, use the work settings, ask questions and seek reassurance.

4. Support it with training.

Don’t just expect staff to understand their new environment, or newfound autonomy, explain how to get the most from it.

5. Accept it’s not an overnight change.

Give your employees time to adapt.

6. Make sure your workplace is fit for the job.

The right tools for the right job, a well-designed workspace will support the shift.

8 Office Design Tips to Increase Productivity

If you’re trying to boost employee productivity, take a look at the environment they’re working in. A well-designed workspace can have significant benefits, and if yours isn’t quite up to par, a few simple changes can reap big rewards.

1. The Ergonomic Office

Human bodies come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, and there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to office furniture. Every employee should be able to adjust their desk and chair so that they can sit and work comfortably for extended periods, without suffering from common problems like neck, back, or wrist pain. This is an important thing to reinforce on a continual basis—it’s easy to slip into bad habits—so it’s helpful to display graphics that model the correct way to sit and provide information about furniture adjustment.

2. Reduce Clutter

Should you be enforcing a clean desk policy? It’s probably not necessary to go that far, but it’s definitely good to encourage employees to keep their workspaces well organized and free from clutter. Maintaining a reduced-paper or paperless work environment is useful too—the clutter-free concept can work well in the digital workspace as well as in the physical one.

3. Back to Nature

If making larger-scale changes to the office environment isn’t possible, the simple addition of living plants to a work environment is a quick and easy way to boost productivity, as well as improve the office’s air quality. All that’s needed is a small potted plant at each desk, and there are plenty of easy-care flowering plants that can thrive indoors.

4. Change the Colour Scheme

Colour has huge effects on emotion and productivity, but don’t just look at colour—saturation and intensity of colour is important too. Yellow promotes creativity, green calms, and blue is stimulating, but softer shades of these colours are more soothing than bright ones.

5. Let there be Light

Natural light can boost employee energy, creativity, and productivity, but that’s not the only benefit. In a retail or sales environment, it not only improves employee performance, but also increases the time customers spend in stores. While most offices probably aren’t going to be able to make the kinds of changes that involve adding skylights or windows, one thing you can do is maximize the number of employees who work near a window or have a window view.

6. Rethink the Open Plan Office

Open office plans have long been considered the gold standard, based on the idea that they promote employee collaboration and productivity. However, open plan offices also tend to reduce employee job satisfaction, largely because they lack privacy. In most open plan offices these days, what you see is employees wearing headphones to create the illusion of privacy—and little collaboration, because when the entire office can watch you and hear what you’re saying, conversation is somewhat intimidating. Again, an office redesign might not be possible, but employees should at least have access to private rooms or spaces where they can work undisturbed when necessary.

7. Provide Opportunity for Movement

It’s well known that most people perform best in spurts, and that the opportunity to take a five minute break every hour or so results in employees who are overall more productive. And yet, many managers still insist on virtually chaining employees to their desks, not realizing that they’re reducing office productivity in this way.

8. Remind Employees that their Work Matters

Working every day at an office job isn’t exactly glamorous, and for many employees it becomes a grind. They forget that the work they’re doing is important, they stop caring, and productivity plummets. This is where office branding can come into play—it reinforces your company ideals, reminds people of where they work, and can help them remember that while they might only be a small cog in a large machine, the machine still needs that cog to function.

How Agile Working can boost creativity and productivity

Open-office plans, popularized by tech giants like Facebook and Google, are believed to promote collaboration and creativity which is probably why 70% of all offices in the UK today are open-plan workspaces. In an office where everyone can see and hear each other, how do you make sure your employees are productive? A lot of this has to do with the design of the space. Little tweaks here and there can keep employees comfortable and boost productivity.

These innovations may be more expensive at first for employers, but, in the long run, could help workers be happier, healthier, and therefore, more creative and productive.

Moveable furniture.

Open-office spaces are believed to promote collaboration, but this is mostly helpful for extroverts who typically socialize more than introverts. For workers who need the privacy to concentrate, open-office plans can be distracting.

This is where moveable furniture is helpful. Desks and cabinets can be reconfigured so that employees can work individually or collaboratively. Today's workplace needs to be able to switch to different work modes, since we're all working with much less personal space than in past generations.

Seating alternatives.

As we all know sitting at your desk all day is not only tedious but very unhealthy. So what should you do instead? Provide areas for employees to stand while working, or encourage individual standing and treadmill desks. Yoga balls and kneeling chairs can also be better alternatives than traditional chairs because employees are able to get a bit of exercise while working. Even if the exercise isn't strenuous, it can still boost energy and productivity and contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

Small spaces for thinking.

There will be times when employees need areas to put their heads down and concentrate on a problem or strategy. An open-office plan can hinder the progress of this individual work. How do you create private spaces in an open-office plan? Use furniture and designs that can easily be turned into other spaces. For example, employers can position couches, moveable walls, and desks in a way that prevents employees from seeing one another — a big distraction — while in these private spaces.

Areas that promote collaboration.

A lot of people like working in a coffee shop because they enjoy the sea of people and comfortable furniture all around. Employers can create a similar vibe in their office to promote all kinds of interactions whether that be socializing, brainstorming, or collaborating. 

No assigned seating.

Employees who are able to sit wherever they want may be more productive and collaborative. Flexible seating arrangements enable workers to find where they work best. For example, some people prefer sitting next to a wall, while others like to be in the middle of the room. Some people want to sit next to quiet colleagues, while others want a more talkative neighbour to bounce ideas back and forth with.

If you would like more tips on how to make your workplace more creative and productive get in touch with us!

Beyond branding - How we incorporate a culture into the workplace

When it comes to the incorporation of branding and identity into a workplace, there is a simple option, which is to produce a design that faithfully incorporates the firm’s logos, colours and straplines in the interior. There’s nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that it is literally superficial and so may miss the opportunity to create an office design that scratches beneath the surface to reveal what lies beneath. When you get past the layers of branding and identity, you uncover something that we call culture. This can take things to a whole new level because the challenge becomes how to create a workplace design that communicates and fosters both the identity and the culture of the organisation. The benefits to the organisation can be enormous, not least because this approach bridges a number of disciplines such as human resources and office design and so drives a number of strategic objectives.

One of the most obvious examples of this is with the issue of employer branding, a subject that from a human resources perspective at least is about both the recruitment and retention of staff as well as the creation of a universally understood working culture, a subject that is of growing interest to organisations as they adopt more agile working practices.

A multi-faceted challenge

Of course, the issue of how to convey organisational culture and identity is complex, multi-faceted, fast moving and demands a multi-disciplinary approach. It is certainly likely to require input from HR and IT and will attract the interest of managers across the organisation. It incorporates a wide range of factors from working culture, working methods, interior design, technology and the physical environment.

Addressing all of these cultural issues is all inherently good for the business and there’s growing evidence to suggest that a clear focus on culture is important to the outside world too, including investors.

Moving beyond branding

So whereas branding the workplace may once have focussed on replicating a corporate identity, there is now a far greater focus on reflecting culture and values to staff and clients. Where once you had logos in the carpet, we now have visualisations of how the company addresses business and environmental issues, the intelligent use of colours and materials to convey ideas and emotions, cultural imagery and manifestations of the outside world. For workplace designers, this all represents a twofold challenge. Firstly they must understand the culture of the organisation and secondly they must find a way of conveying it in the spaces they help to create.

A multi-faceted solution

Developing an understanding of a business’s culture cannot happen unless there is a great deal of trust between the designer and client combined with the capability of the designer to ask the right questions, listen carefully, observe minutely and gather information from a number of sources. This is not simply a matter of taking a brief then responding to create the physical embodiment of an organogram overlaid with manifestations of the firm’s mission statement and values.

It is also about understanding how the firm is perceived and wants to be perceived, how information and ideas flow and develop, how the workplace fosters creativity, how individuals relate to work and how they find the balance between work and their personal wellbeing. It is about understanding how technology integrates with both the physical environment and the firm’s processes and channels of communication.  It is about understanding how the firm wants its working environment to serve visitors as well as employees. It is about all this and more.

How this is then translated into a workplace design that is unique to the organisation is down to the ability, creativity and experience of the designer. We are fortunate these days to be able to draw on a wide range of working models, interior elements and technologies that free designers to create genuinely tailored solutions. The days when the choices were generally limited to either open plan or cellular office design are long behind us, and we are now able to apply a variety of work settings and working methodologies which, when combined with the right branding and identity, create a that reflects and supports the firm’s culture.

Designing an Office for All Generations

Today, it isn't unlikely to have three different generations toiling together in the same workplace. With varying work styles and mind-sets, Baby Boomers along with Generations X and Y are working side by side. To overcome these differences, managers are increasingly turning to design to accommodate their needs while also harnessing the potential for cross-generational interaction.

In the 1980s, Boomers had a need for things that were more hierarchical and formal, and these are still needs that we have to address. As we moved into the 1990s, there was a shift to more flexibility, defined technology, and non-hierarchical spaces. In the 2000s, design became transformative. There was leverage on humans and their interaction with space so office designs provide spaces that are branded, mobile, and more interactive with a sense of openness. As we look at the next generation coming into the workplace, Collaborative and Agile design is the key.

By providing areas that people can personalize, younger generations want to put their mark on the space whereas older employees are used to the more corporate and formal feel.  Usually it often depends on the managerial style or direction that the business allows. If you work for a startup, the freedom and the flexibility is greater because you often have multigenerational teams. At its worst, if the brand is established and has very little flexibility for mutigenerational types of differentiation then it becomes a very standardised space.

We try to introduce environments that are collaborative, flexible, and technology-driven. The challenge is to attract and retain workers who are very used to spaces that shift, change, and transform. So companies who want to better position themselves are going to provide that kind of flexibility and agile working environment.  However there will always need to be some type of mix between environments because of different personality types in the workplace. Regardless of age, more introverted workers want the privacy to concentrate and complete their work tasks whereas the extroverts are comfortable working in more open environments.

We design a lot more open areas that have multiple functions; there are still the tea points, sort of the central hub on every floor, but by migrating these areas closer to the major exit of the floor, we can help to promote collaboration within the generations. Work places are becoming much more mobile and compact so offices won’t require all of the square footage that they are utilizing today which will obviously save business’ overheads as well and producing more productive staff. 

How to find an office that’s right for you

We often help clients find their perfect office space and know it is one of the most important challenges any business faces. Not only will rent likely be your second largest expense after salaries, but your office will also be your second home and becomes reflective of your company, team, and culture. Your office has a significant impact on hiring, retaining talent, and keeping employees engaged. For growing companies, price, location, size, and timing are all crucial to the search.

The right time

It’s time to consider an office when you are going from a team of five or six and plan on at least doubling within the next year. Most landlords require at least a three-year lease, so you’ll need to have a good handle on your growth projections, accounting for any setbacks or breakthrough that may alter these projections

The right size

Generally, you should be looking for 100-150 square feet per person, and even though almost every company plans for some growth, a more realistic growth projection is essential. A start-ups need 2–3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This means most companies grow more slowly than they think. Let’s suppose your team has 10 people and the plan is to be at 30 people in 18 months. You should be looking for 3,000 square foot office space on a three-year lease.

The right lease terms

How long should your lease be? As a growing business with a lot of moving pieces, signing a multi-year lease can be daunting. Most landlords are looking for a 3-4 year lease, and it can be difficult to find a shorter-term or flexible but this need not frighten you.

Consider that the longer the lease term, the more willing the landlord will be to do additional work to the space. You’ll also be locking in a lease rate now, saving yourself from extra costs if lease rates climb. All leases should have sublease clauses allowing you to sublease your space should you outgrow it faster than anticipated. Shorter leases offer flexibility at a cost but come with more limited options because landlords are probably not going to pay to have any work done in a space. A tenant often has less leverage in a short term lease so it often becomes a deal where you have to take the space “as is.”

The right price

Tight budgets are always inevitable, but there are a few things you can do to make sure to get the best price. First, you should always look into numerous properties so that you have some leverage when negotiating a deal. Having a second choice takes some pressure off of negotiating for your first choice. You also want to account for the total cost of renting a space. Total cost is more than just rent, often including maintenance, taxes, and other fees. Don’t forget to budget for utilities, office furniture, and cleaning as well. Finally, location and amenities will affect the price, so it’s important to analyse the costs versus the benefits of these factors.

The right look and feel

It might seem like a minor factor in the early stages, but a great office space is critical to hiring great talent. Clients will judge your business by your offices and employees want a space that is both aesthetically pleasing and conducive to productive working hours. The look and feel of an office also extends to your office’s neighbourhood, but not in the ways you might think. It’s more important to focus on being located in an easily accessible area, than it is to be located in a cooler part of the city.

Pulling it all together…

There are a number of agencies that can help you with all of these starting points, ourselves including!  We can help you get in at the right time and have a plan that accommodates growth so that you neither waste space nor outgrow your office. We can help you with a lease that fits your company strategy and timeline so that you make the best use of your time in the space. And last but not least, your office must feel right – we can design a space with the right aesthetics to promote company culture and working.

If you need our help please get in touch and in the mean time take a look at our handy guides to moving office here

What is Agile Working?

We are all very familiar with the term flexible working, it has dominated the media we ourselves have wrote many articles covering it. Over the next coming weeks however we are going to be focusing on the new buzz word ‘agile working’ within the workplace. We think it’s a defining factor to workplace design so we want to share our understanding of it and positive effects it has on productivity and wellbeing.  

Defining Agile Working

Flexible Working is used as a general term to describe working at times and places away from the traditional full time 9-5 office based employment. Flexible Working has two dimensions of flexibility:

Time i.e. when employees choose to work. There are many examples of this dimension: employees can work at different times of day on different days of the week.

Location i.e. where employees choose to work. Again there are many examples of this dimension: – in addition to the office, employees can choose to work at, a fixed desk, at workhubs, cafes, while travelling or at home.

Agile Working introduces a third dimension of flexibility, autonomy i.e. how people choose to work. In an organisation adopting Agile Working employees are empowered to choose how they work in order to meet the goals set for them to the standards required. So by this definition a way of working that uses the same processes and practices outside of normal working hours and/or at different locations is not Agile Working as it lacks this third dimension of autonomy.

Clearly some job roles will more easily accommodate this freedom e.g. sales roles traditionally have a large degree of autonomy they are set targets and are typically lightly supervised. Whereas operational roles can be more challenging as they are often prescribed by detailed processes. It is more challenging, but not impossible, to introduce agile working into operational roles.

Flexible Working is generally regarded as largely a benefit to employees it’s a way of working that suits their needs". However, when implemented well agile working should provide benefits for both employers and employees. The goals of organisations in adopting agile working are to create a more responsive, efficient and effective organisation, which improves business performance and increases customer satisfaction. By empowering their employees to work how, where and when they choose there is evidence that they increase their productivity and provide service improvements by working in a way that suits them best. There is the very real prospect of a win-win situation. Organisations become more responsive and effective and their employees gain more control over the way they work.

Over the coming weeks we will be showing you how to implicate this way of working into your workplace by showing you how we incorporate it into our ‘Discover, Design, Deliver’ approach and what new products engage the autonomy dimension. 

Discover, Design, Deliver - Understanding the client

In a perfect world, every workplace would fit, hand in glove, with its workers: desks would be occupied in an optimally efficient way; meeting rooms would never be under- or over-booked; no one would be too hot or too cold and that statement staircase would produce those “chance encounters” to boost the productivity of collaboration-hungry knowledge workers.

It’s a great idea but is it always the truth? Outcomes don’t always match expectations, and people don’t always use buildings in the expected way. To minimise this, however, many practices like ourselves are now taking a more rigorous, practical approach to workplace design, which relies on extensive front-end research.

Hi Design, whose clients include BBA, Handelsbanken and Heathcoat Fabrics, work differently. We focus on space usage – the creation of environments for optimum business effectiveness. This is what most workplace designers mean by EBD – systematic up-front research that takes a lot longer than the typical amount of work needed to fulfil a brief, but which results in a space based on what’s actually happening, rather than what the CEO might tell you is happening, or what a designer might be able to glean from a few walk-throughs and staff interviews.

“We would normally do a study of 4 to 8 weeks, where we don’t do a single design move; all we do is assess who the client is. By the end of it we have a better understanding of how these people work than the people themselves,” says Susan, Director of Hi Design. This encompasses interviews with those at management level; an online staff questionnaire that includes questions about which of their colleagues they interact with, how much of their day they spend in meetings or out of the building; and standardised, structured observation about how many people use the tea points, for example, or are at their desks at any one time. Susan says that it was initially hard to persuade clients on tight budgets and timescales that it would take weeks just to assess their needs, but with a portfolio of successful projects our three stage approach - ‘discover, design, deliver’ simply works! 

Managing the Changing Work Environment Though Office Design

Susan Whittle, Managing Director of Hi Design explains how office design needs to adapt to change:

The pace of change to the global economy is unrelenting, and it’s now harder than ever to predict the future shape of the working environment. However what is clear is that the way we work is also constantly evolving, so office design needs to adapt to this change.

The best designs are always the ones that mould to a business’s culture and dovetail smoothly with what works efficiently already. What seldom works is a ‘one size fits all’ template design, imposed without a proper understanding of what makes the business tick.

Although office design varies from client to client and by market sector, it is fair to say there are a few key points that should never be overlooked when considering any office refurbishment:

• Need for flexibility for multi-functional spaces and furniture solutions

• Importance of controlling costs and specifying ‘best value’ products

• Need for employee and visitor comfort

• Need to attract and retain the right staff

• Need to reflect the client’s brand, ethos and vision

• Promotion of better internal team communication

• The ability to adapt to changing technology

• The environmental impact the project will have

Gone are the days when simply specifying a design because it looks aesthetically pleasing will suffice, and every product chosen must now earn its place within the design. Each must be competitively priced, flexible in use and robust enough to stand the test of time.

The need to embrace changing technology and work practices (such as hot-desking and home-working) requires offices to be adaptable and to be quickly adjustable to whatever’s coming next.

Using desks and meeting stations that can be swiftly and easily reconfigured facilitates changes to the work-space that match the business’s needs, be it growth, downsizing or other change, without having to buy new furnishings or fixtures. For example, Senator’s Core furniture range is constructed in a similar way to a Lego set. The legs and beams may start life as part of a wave desk, but can be dismantled and re-assembled to form a 120 degree cluster. This flexibility not only helps the environment but also saves clients’ money.

With the increased popularly of home-working and ‘hot desking’, bench style furniture provides the ideal solution. These large 'dining table’ style desks have set back legs and fewer dividing screens. The availability of desktop power and data along the run of desks means that staff can sit anywhere and as numbers increase, people simply move along the bench to accommodate them.

Under the prevailing economic climate, the need to keep overheads to a minimum is critical, and clever space-planning can help avoid unnecessary expenditure on additional square footage. Therefore, today’s spaces are created to be multi-use: kitchens become informal meeting areas and boardrooms become staff recreation areas. It is important that offices do not become too static and inflexible as the new age of coffee shop meetings and ultra-mobile staff becomes the norm.

When deciding how to plan office space, its important to think not just about how the business works now but how it might need to work in the future. If meetings can take place in a more relaxed environment then why not accommodate additional informal areas? With the prevalence of wireless technology, these areas become more widely usable and accessible.

The phrase “work is something that you do and not a place where you go” echoes this new thinking about flexibility and mobility. It’s about using technology to enable work from many different locations at times that suit the individual and the business. Working from home is now an everyday reality for many types of workers, including full-time employees who are positively encouraged by many business owners to do so.

Whilst working from home has its obvious benefits, it is vital that staff do not feel isolated and the need for close colleague collaboration remains. We can work from home or in a coffee shop, but it is rare that we can each do all the work alone. So the only way we can support teamwork is to create places where people can come together. The new trend in office design has seen a dramatic growth in clustered office space; rows of cubicles have been replaced with non-linear, organic layouts that group staff together.

There is a trend even for senior staff to be accommodated in such cluster layouts rather than private offices, as team-led working cultures are fostered, with companies encouraging staff to learn from and inspire each other. The main advantage of such an approach is its appeal to employees, especially younger staff members who tend to prefer a more open and collaborative workplace landscape.

High dividing panels are giving way to open environments with lower partitions that are easy to scan over and around. They help staff feel more connected with colleagues and give access to natural light and outdoor views, both of which have a positive impact on wellbeing and productivity. The direct connection between wellbeing and productivity now informs and shapes office design in ways that would have remained unconsidered until relatively recently.

However, open plan offices will not suit everyone. Some departments such as Finance or HR (or at least their senior staff), will require separation, particularly where privacy and quiet space are essential to their function. Again, by careful space-planning, a good office interior designer will ensure that each department’s needs are met and sensitive teams are strategically located.

When considering design, the emotional, physical and financial needs of a business each have to be considered carefully, and just as no two clients are the same, so no two designs are the same. Any interior design needs to be flexible, easily reconfigured, cost effective and must suit the needs of the individual business.

As a practice we always use our experience to suggest new ways of working and alternative products, but ultimately it is our client’s space, their staff and their money. We are simply the conduit to bring all of their needs and wants together in a creative way to deliver an inspiring working environment which supports the business and help it to succeed.

For more information, free downloadable guides and advice on how to get the most from your space contact click here

How Office Furniture Design Leads to Better Business

If you run a business, you’re concerned with keeping your employees as focused, efficient, and productive as possible.  The design of your office space can play a bigger in role in this than you may realize. Old design approaches had rows of cubicles, with workers all toiling away at their desks. When employees spend day after day in a maze of little cubicles, it’s easy to become demoralized. It also leads to wasting time looking for co workers, trying to find a meeting room, or being distracted by the people chatting in the adjacent cubicle.

Modern office design trends aim to open things up, for the benefit of employees and management alike. Workers will be happier with a more vibrant, open workplace, and management will be more pleased with more productive employees. Here are some tips on how to design a more effective workplace.

It’s not all about the desk

Workers today don’t need to be chained to their desk all the time. It’s not healthy for the human body to be seated in the same position for eight hours a day – our bodies were made to move. Variety also makes people feel better about their day, reducing the tedium that can set in from spending a full day at your desk. You can use an assortment of different spaces in your office, designed for different purposes.

Open up the cubicles

Cubicles are depressing, and can really make employees feel like a rat in a maze. It’s hard to be inspired and creative when you’re sitting in one of a hundred identical grey cubicles. The artificial lighting in these cube farms also dampens people’s mood and fosters a negative attitude. If you make the move to an open workspace, it creates a more vibrant environment with greater natural light, which increases employee satisfaction and may help your recruiting efforts, too.

Reduce interruptions

Another downside to cubicles is that there are almost always interruptions and distractions.  Either a co worker is stopping by your cubicle to chat, or they’re having an impromptu meeting in the cubicle next to you. Having a flexible office design means people can pick their own environment for the task at hand. When they need to collaborate, they do. When they need some uninterrupted heads-down time, they can move to a quiet zone and work hassle free.

Provide spaces for collaboration

Many companies have a shortage of conference rooms, because most of the floor space is allocated to cubicles. When people can’t find an open meeting room, they end up chatting in their cubicles, which disturbs everyone around them. When you open up your office space by dismantling cubicles, there’s more room for people to work together. Employees can choose to work in a quiet zone or a collaboration zone, whichever they need at the time.

Create special purpose spaces

Cubicles are identical, and generally each person is carefully allocated the exact same items – a small filing cabinet, a white board, or whatever the company standard is. If you want anything special, such as a flip chart or extra computer, it’s difficult to arrange. You can solve this by providing special purpose spaces, such as presentation rooms with audio visual equipment, or brainstorming areas with walls of whiteboards.

Make room for socializing

When employees are allowed to interact informally, they bond with each other, and tend to feel more supportive of each other and shared company goals. They’re also more likely to share ideas and help each other solve problems. When you offer social spaces such as a dining room, employee lounge, or even a game room, it helps foster these important employee interactions.

Does proper office furniture design lead to better business? Absolutely; people work better in modern-looking spaces. Companies are willing to do a lot these days to please their personnel. Famous enterprises like Amazon and Google have already started providing their people with a different work space. Relaxation room, vibrant office colours, lounge areas, interactive games during breaks, and advanced technology for them to work with are several important aspects that boost productivity.

Creating a cool office space doesn’t just boost morale; it helps your company look innovative too, so you might want to have that aspect in mind the next time you think of implementing dull cubicles in your company.