DESIGN & INTERIORS
BEYOND BRICKS AND MORTAR
Debra Ward, EMEA Strategy & Growth Director at JLL Corporate Solutions explains how to unlock your building’s true business potential.
Workspaces that put people at the centre will thrive in the new world of work. Results from our latest global study ‘Workplace, powered by Human Experience’ show that organisations will benefit measurably by simply looking beyond the bricks and mortar, to understand what makes their business tick.
Our findings reveal that both employers and employees see human experience as the main factor in determining the shape and structure of their workplace for the foreseeable future. But this is no ‘box-ticking’ exercise in trying to achieve work-life balance. It goes far beyond that.
Virgin, for instance, launched a colleague consultation for the redesign of its offices to ensure that employee experience was at the centre of the workplace design. With this innovative process in mind, what role does the workforce itself play in deciding the blueprint for a new workplace?
The answer is yes, but, contrary to popular opinion, it is not simply a case of wheeling in a pool table or installing a novelty slide. In fact, we found that only 12% of the respondents to our survey felt that their office should facilitate games, and almost 70% thought that focusing on the overall team’s wellbeing would create the best workplace ethos. Driving productivity at work, then, requires a change of mindset that transcends the traditional physical realms of real estate: human experience, which comes from a combination of Human Resources (HR), Corporate Real Estate (CRE) and Investor Relations (IR) teams, should be at the centre of office design, helping to harness the true potential of real estate and what it can do for its occupants.
Only 12% felt that their office should facilitate games.
To start, companies need to be attuned to what their colleagues actually want from their workspaces – though this sounds like an obvious place to begin it is surprisingly overlooked. Globally, only 52% of employees consider their workplace somewhere they can work effectively. Significant numbers of workers around the world want to drop into spaces designed to aid concentration (47%), find places to recharge their energy levels (40%) and escape their desks (37%).
There is no one-size-fits-all approach for fostering productivity and effective working. It requires businesses to be aware of the changing needs of its own diverse workforce and what they want and need. Whilst some
40 | TOMORROW’S FM
colleagues are prepared to let go of their allocated workstation for a hot-desk environment (37% in the UK), not everyone is prepared to make such a change. Certain groups, such as millennials or managers, tend to appreciate communal spaces more than others, whereas other groups appreciate secluded spaces that enable them to meditate and switch off (43% of German workers). In this vein, the new Sky campus in Osterley, London, replete with a gym, dry cleaning facilities and hair dressing salon, reflects the diversity of its team’s interests and places their wellbeing at the heart of its design.
The research also highlights a relationship between workspace density – or how many people are working together in one space - and employee effectiveness: open plan offices with a density of fewer than 50 people per shared zone, allow people to work effectively. Above that, effectiveness begins to drop. Bearing this in mind, an ideal workplace should contain a mix of collaborative space and support services to drive employee effectiveness. According to our study, on average workers across the world spend a staggering two-thirds of their workday at the same desk and work remotely just a few days a month.
Truly flexible and agile work settings that offer a choice of working environments under one roof remain the exception in the world’s offices, rather than the norm. Ensuring the design and functionality expectations of your team are met, whilst maintaining the practicality and professionalism of the workplace, will result in a productive workforce.
www.jll.co.uk twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56