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customers for mutual collaboration, creativity and awareness reasons.


“Humans are social animals, and don’t work well 24/7 from home.


“But, buildings will have to become intelligent, with technology enabling not disabling business operations, and making the building’s workspace somewhere people want to be to achieve their success. Fourfront is all about providing that enabling workplace.”


Achieving the right workspace environment


A successful workspace is not measured in square metres, Stamatis points out.


Company culture, standards and employee wellbeing can all influence workspace effectiveness, notes the chairman of a company that achieved Sunday Times Best Top 100 SME Business to Work For recognition in 2013 and has been shortlisted again for 2016.


“Being a ‘Best Business to Work For’ involves having excellent workspaces to work from. That doesn’t mean everything has to be swish and stylish, but simply fit for purpose.“


Delivering spaces where people enjoy working


Stamatis says companies thinking of changing their workplace environment should start with the simple question: Why?


“You have to understand your workspace dynamics and what they are currently achieving. What are your actual workstyles? Do they enable or disable productivity? Do you need minor or radical change? Is your company willing and able to change? What are your objectives from change? These are all consultancy areas we regularly advise upon.


Increasingly, as companies understand the true value of a customised working environment, Fourfront is finding itself in a consultancy role, defining client requirements then creating and producing bespoke business workspace solutions.


“Every business and workplace is unique, yet equally there may be common features and needs, but our answers are always tailored to the individual client. We don’t have a cookie cutter approach at Fourfront.”


Forecasting the future, Stamatis highlighted that Fourfront is seeing the growth of village-like co-working environments; varied communities utilising short-lease workspace and non-traditional business models – meritocracies rather than hierarchies, or ‘concierge’ operations perhaps.


Aki Stamatis


Company ethos matters too. “At Fourfront, sustainability and quality remain at the heart of everything we do. We embrace environmental principles and encourage our clients to do the same.”


Fourfront’s environmental initiatives have resulted in the Group becoming carbon negative, gaining ISO14001 accreditation and being listed in The Sunday Times Top 60 UK Best Green Companies.


Other awards include Sunday Times Profit Track listings, ISO9001 accreditation for its delivery of customer service and quality, and a Women in Business Enlightened Employer 2015 Award for its supportive Women in Fourfront programme.


The Fourfront Way (a set of truths about the business as opposed to the usual mix of aspirational corporate values) underpins the company’s culture, which externally includes charitable and community activities. Other ongoing initiatives are the Fourfront Academy (training and upskilling), and Fourfront NextGen Programme (designed to attract and support new talent).


“The growth of concepts like collaboration spaces, relaxation areas and so on merely reflects the idea that workspace can be many different environments. We are certainly seeing more and more workplaces becoming socialised with spaces where people simply meet.


“With so many ways to communicate instantly today, all those enabling workspaces where people want to work need to connect digitally. Such wide-ranging technology brings security and information control challenges, although most big companies are now wise to that.


“Certainly, within this revolution, we are finding ourselves building less walls and more spaces that fulfill a specific function. He mentioned adjustable standing-up desks, telephone booths, ‘kitchen- table’ collaboratives, and coffee-laptop work areas.


“What was “unconventional” has become more established.” Internal leisure and refreshment areas, gyms, healthy menus, wellbeing spaces have all become accepted. “That non-sedentary ‘healthy mind in a healthy body’ approach, can often reflect the culture and image of a company, their intangible business spirit. In fact, workspace design should always reflect the culture of a company.


“Change and company culture has to be led from the top, of course. At Fourfront, for example, CEO Clive Lucking, James Cornwell, (both founding directors) and myself don’t have an office or allocated desk as such, because we believe in setting a tone of work informality and flexibility. It underlines that successful productivity can be achieved in various ways within varied workspaces at different times.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – FEBRUARY 2016


“More and more established businesses are now using co-working spaces for collaboration, project work or creative purposes. It is no longer a startup model.“


Ironically, Fourfront finds itself today as a typical co- working business model, successfully harnessing those three key aspects of work – people, space and technology.


Fourfront is a meritocracy based upon four collaborative co-working companies. “Fourfront is a family of businesses, an assembly of specialists, with each business having its own way of working. ‘Fourfront’ is the cultural glue of enlightened self-interest that holds those businesses together. If s had been one very large business, I don’t think we would have been successful; we would have exploded or imploded by now.


“The Fourfront concept has always been to align complementary businesses together – ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.”


Growing steadily, Fourfront is actually about to go through the litmus test of its own advice and understanding of modern workspace change – it is moving its London offices to new premises.


Boldly undertaking its own ‘journey into space’, you might say.


Details: www.fourfrontgroup.co.uk


www.businessmag.co.uk


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