DESIGN & INTERIORS A PLACE TO CALL HOME... AT WORK


With a new workplace epoch on the horizon, Tomorrow’s FM caught up with Gary Varndell, Director of Square Foot Design, to talk about the reality of agile working for the corporate and financial services sector, and why sourcing from British manufacturers like Crown Sports Lockers is the way forward.


The pandemic has sparked huge change in working cultures, as providers large and small adjust to the new normal and the reality that employees are focusing more on their work life balance.


Perhaps nowhere is the contrast with pre-Covid norms starker than in the financial services sector, where facilities and project managers face new demands to repurpose office interiors to accommodate flexible working.


Whether short or long term, the change in work patterns and practices is steering a transformation in the office environment.


“The 10-hour day, shorter working week is with us now,” says Gary Varndell, Director of facilities support agency Square Foot Design, which advises and co-ordinates work space projects for some of Britain’s corporations.


Lockdown accelerated existing trends, particularly in major centres such as London, as staff warmed to home working – realising the huge savings in commuter costs by spending even a couple of days a week away from the office.


Although the spectre of more restrictions seems seldom far away, corporates have acted decisively to reconfigure office interiors to reflect permanent repositioning of working cultures.


Competition among financial services providers is fierce to attract top staff to their headquarters, which in turn has sparked wholesale design changes to office interiors.


“London for example, offers fabulous environments to work in,” says Gary, who has project managed several huge rethinks recently among corporate clients.


“Accounting firms, banks and underwriters are frantically bidding to attract the cream of the crop of graduates to the finance sector and are prepared to take the necessary action to offer spaces that satisfy an increasingly demanding workforce.”


Everything from in-house gyms, cordon bleu food and bars to creative meeting spaces and `living` restful environments are the lure for aspiring employees.


Smaller employers too have bitten the bullet, introducing a new climate of corporate thinking and delivery.


“Working from home is no new notion,” Gary states, “but the idea has been growing in pace over the last 10 years, and Covid hastened it dramatically.


“The reality of agile working sees staff having to book desk space when they plan to come in, rather than having


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their own `domain` - a trend that in turn is raising demand among employers for providing personal storage space at work. A place to call your own.”


Corporates cannot afford to leave work spaces fallow as more staff stay at home to do their jobs. As office occupancy fell during lockdown, employers moved swiftly, working with in-house facilities and project managers and external advisers to deliver agile demand to ensure interiors provided highly flexible and welcoming work spaces that can be reconfigured to cope with the unexpected.


This is no mix and match quick fix, Gary stresses. “Facilities managers are clever people, who are crunching data to measure people flow and relate it precisely to office space requirements.


“Multidisciplinary teams are on call constantly to refine the model – facilities management, human resources and IT all collaborate to deliver it,” he adds.


Staff satisfaction surveys ease the process to ensure a consensus from day one “to give a deliverable solution, which can also take account of more extreme views of what staff want.”


Breakout areas form one of the big shifts to the new normal, Gary explains. “These can take a variety of forms, including indoor driving ranges and putting surfaces”.


Given heightened concern over the environment, and increasingly among younger people, working for an employer that is demonstrating a measure of responsibility can only be to the good.


Providing living biosystems within corporate settings has been well documented and delivered for some years.


But the day to day can prove less satisfying. “I’ve known companies who have installed living panels, even ponds, within their buildings but then discover that air conditioning damages or kills the vegetation, to add to issues of pest control, and treating stagnant water.


“Now there’s a shift to faux planting projects – essentially plastic greenery. The effect can still be stunning but maintenance is far less demanding when teams only have to tend faux foliage.”


The quality and realism of products has transformed the potential for going green indoors. “We have specified fake olive trees to decorate workplaces for one corporate client recently. They loved the look – even the cynics were won over,” Gary states.


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