BUSINESS 101

planning workspace All you need to know about...

Jeremy Myerson is director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, London. He explains why designing and delivering a better work environment for your employees involves a complex array of processes – creative, technical, logistical and political. Here’s how to perfect your workspace

Jeremy Myerson is co-author (with Jo-Anne Bichard and Alma Erlich)

of New Demographics New Workspace: Offi ce Design for the Changing Workforce, published by Gower

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ET LEADERSHIP from the top: It is the role of the chief executive and other senior directors to create the climate for change in designing a better workspace. They should be prominent in promoting benefi ts. So ensure there is leadership from above. This is different from a top-down approach. Bosses who are active and vocal in championing workplace change – but sensitive to local context – will head off most opposition at the pass.

EST YOUR MODELS at the periphery, not the centre: Take one fl oor, division or department to model a new style of offi ce environment fi rst and monitor feedback carefully. Seek out the most open and receptive group of employees to trial the changes. Once the pilot has been well received, the model will be easier to sell to the rest of the company. A small success can be skillfully publicised and scaled up – a large failure will never be forgotten.

UPPORT REDESIGN with cultural change: Too many companies make the mistake of reconfi guring their environments without proper user engagement to explain how people should behave in the new space. Establishing new protocols of behaviour is essential to ensure that new environments and ways of working take hold within the organisation.

O FOR a radical approach: Don’t scale down your ambitions for a better workspace. Ernest Hall, the British entrepreneur who founded the Dean Clough Centre from the dereliction of Halifax’s 19th-century mills, once said that the more audacious the ambition, the more achievable it becomes. Organisations that have compromised to win over reactionary opponents often regret their timidity later. A total revolution is sometimes no more diffi cult to achieve than a partial one. So, wherever possible, go for a radical approach.