Workplace Consultancy

Workplace consultancy is a practice used to help identify and support your ambitions regarding ways of working and how your space needs to be designed to reflect that.

Workplace consultancy is a key stage in brief building to most effectively capture and prioritise the most important aspects in the office environment. It is a useful tool in ensuring that the design of the office is inclusive to everyone and ensures that there are opportune moments for employees to engage with and have a say about the forthcoming workspace transformation.

A mix of research methods can be used to help develop spatial and cultural requirements: qualitative (individual or group based discussions and workshops) and quantitative (surveys). Sometimes feasibility studies, where we conduct ‘test fit’ space plans are incorporated to assess whether existing or potential workspaces will adequately support desired ways of working.

Workplace consultancy can work quite differently for different clients based on their goals and needs. Often we cover the following steps:

• Research and analysis of your business culture to uncover key opportunities and establish the overall spatial strategy

• Schematic layouts to test opportunities

• Potential pilots (testing opportunities in partial areas of existing space)

• Provide research & findings on which to provide data backed concepts that serve as a business case for implementing the new proposal

Our first point of call is to sit down to discuss what you’d like to achieve. We can then advise on the best course of action to take.

Workplace Consultancy as defined above is useful in that it helps to establish the Design Brief and goals for the project before any spatial design occurs on either a workspace refurbishment or fit out. It is the upfront piece of work to happen either a) with an existing office space in need of improvement/ transformation; b) a short list of buildings ready for feasibility testing; or c) when a final building has been confirmed and requires a detailed design brief to be landed before design commences. It should help to understand ‘ways of working’ amongst different teams alongside the overall objectives for the project and stakeholders' vision.

Workplace strategy provides a response to either running out of space, having too much space, or wanting to introduce organisational change. It tends to be a deep piece of work that could include research studies to ascertain if a company should change location, or assessing how hybrid working or other models could be implemented. The workplace strategist can also be involved in assessing what type of design partner could fit your requirements and making recommendations to the Board of Directors. The workplace strategy and its implementation quite often occur at an opportune moment such as a property lease break or a company merger or acquisition so we are experienced at working alongside or in conjunction with such consultants.

We have excellent Workplace Strategist recommendations for you if you feel your project needs to undertake a greater depth of work and understanding before moving forward with your Design Brief, contact us for further discussion.