abw – simple.space

5 tasks crippling our workplace managers

Raf Gouel — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 17:36:15 +0000

5 Tasks crippling our workplace managers

Workplace culture, location, design, flexibility…

Employers are now more than ever competing with what they have on offer to the big pool of talent.

Almost as much as the talent pool is circling, waiting to pounce on an amazing workplace.

So what is the proverbial Achilles Heel of employers?
Why do so many struggle to retain staff or transition to a better work culture?

To answer this, we have to look at how our office and workplace managers gather data, analyze it and carry out simple routine functions.

Paper Floorplans

Most workplace managers continue to use paper floorplans as the go-to solution for managing office space, this includes:

⇒ plan where teams are and any relocations

⇒ determine how much space teams occupy

⇒ plan scenarios of staff moves

⇒ play with relocations of teams, staff or area (breakout, meeting rooms etc)

So what happens when these plans need to be shared, reviewed and amended?

Draw, Scan & Email Thread

With paper floorplans to manage the office space, there’s only one avenue for engaging stakeholders.

After the necessary meetings, drawing on the paper plans is the most commonly used resort whilst scanning and using Microsoft Paint closely follows.

Whilst stakeholders discuss approved and rejected changes to the staff or team relocations or point out any discrepancies with the data, email threads begin to grow.

In some cases, it is not uncommon to see email threads upwards of 70-100 replies when a big staff move or office relocation is required.

We are only up to our 2nd crippling task but there is an undeniable sense of…

“sounds like something we did 20-30 years ago, pre-tech era, surely we’ve moved on now?”

You’d be right in thinking this but wrong in assuming we’ve moved on, we will discuss why in our “Why aren’t we fixing all this?” section further down.

Spreadsheets

We are witnessing the rise of spectacular info-graphics, visual aids, analytics and amazing user interfaces through so many apps, websites and software solutions.

Our workplaces managers have Spreadsheets to turn to for data gathering, input and analysis.

There’s no doubt, spreadsheets can be quite powerful, just ask any financial department, but is this really where we want to see them used?

Take Space Usage data for example, hiring temps to roam office floors counting heads is still the preferred method amongst many workplace managers on a tight budget.

To gather this utilization of floor space data, having spreadsheets as your end result is quite limiting when trying to dig deep into the room of a problem or visualize where the problems are!

Highlighters

Highlighters are a workplace managers best friend.

Sure we all love to use them from time to time but we are not referring to highlighting text in an electronic document, we mean the real physical highlighter pen.

Without them, we can’t highlight team spaces on paper floorplans.
We can’t color code or make sense of any other spaces when engaging stakeholders.

So reliant on highlighters to carry a scenario and tell a story, it’s easy to get caught up in “that’s not so bad?”

The missing piece of the puzzle is what we’d call a modern Activity Stream.

No way, no method, no possible outcome other than the aforementioned long email threads to evaluate the ‘before and after’ state of an office scenario—

It’s easy much easier to grasp now why it’s remarkably important to move to a digital playing field.

Stakeholder Engagement

The crux of any workplace management role, engage the stakeholders.

To achieve some consensus, approval, rejections or any kind of discussion and agreement, stakeholders are mostly emailed all plans and details which build up as per the aforementioned, giant email threads! (no doubt some face-to-face meetings are held first).

Ultimately resorting to email thread stakeholder engagement, the picture gets blurrier and blurrier whilst goals slide away slowly, becoming harder to maintain or achieve.

What does this all mean?

With workplace managers struggling to stay on top of remedial tasks, we clearly understand why the problems begin to trickle down into the office space, workplace culture, staff retention, productivity and ultimately the bottom line!

Why aren’t we fixing all this?

There’s a remarkably pure and simple answer to this.

Few Solutions
Very few solutions exist out there for workplaces experiencing all these issues (yet!)
Complexity and Cost
Solutions that exist are far from affordable and rank relatively high on setup time, cost and a steep learning curve for all those involved
Visibility and Responsibility
Not all workplaces recognize that someone should be in charge of the office space.
If they do, they tend to have little resources and authority to make changes

With few tools, analytics and assistance, the matter of improving productivity, culture and optimizing space becomes much less visible to senior staff and ultimately C-Level.

Property costs are the 2nd (sometimes 3rd) highest cost for any business, it’s a rather strange phenomenon these issues are not being tackled head on.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though.

More workplaces are learning of Activity Based Working, Agile Working, Hot desking and other flexible work environments.

We are even experiencing how this affects other elements of our workplaces, including culture, productivity and ultimately, the bottom line!

To learn more about how simple.space can help alleviate all these crippling tasks, stop gaps and help your business be on it's way towards a more modern way of managing the workplace, send us a quick email!

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Tip #2 Finding your solution – 5 Tips on cost effective Activity Based Working and Flexi-Desking solutions

Raf Gouel — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 16:48:10 +0000

Tip #2 – Finding your solution

5 Tips on cost effective Activity Based Working and Flexi-Desking solutions

Welcome to our series of tips on how to move your workplace to flexi-desking or activity based working (ABW). Tip #1 explained why its important to know your space before you start your move.

Tip #2 is about how to find the right solution to assist you in moving towards ABW.

There’s no such thing as the ‘standard’ business with a ‘standard’ office. With such a wide range of businesses operating through varied office locations of all shapes and work styles, your needs are unique. Some staff stay at their desks all day. Some staff are on the road. And some are in meetings, working with clients or get in and leave early each day to pick up the kids.

Your business may be experiencing dynamic and rapid growth or perhaps it’s more sustainable and static in nature. You may have a budget and mandate from the Executive to cut costs, improve office culture and ultimately productivity through a better work environment. But after trying a few Google searches, looking for guidance on the best way to move forward – you come up short.

One thing is certain, you are already involved in the space management cycle. Moving desks, running out of space, trying to move or wanting others to move is now definitely part of business as usual (BAU). Managing this cycle in a simple, quick and effective way is the real challenge.

There is no established solution to help us transition to a flex-environment. This is due to the varying requirements from different business. But we can offer you some tried and tested guidance on the key things to take into account.

Set up a trial

The next step, once you understand your space, is to set up a flexi-desking trial. Moving to flexi-desking is the first step to moving to ABW. And starting with a trial is the best way to start the cultural transition towards wide-spread flexi-desking.

Before you set up the trial, we want to stress how important it is to know what and who makes up the workspace – you need to know the desks and spaces you have to work with, which staff won’t be suitable (for example, those with unique needs or workstation set ups) and so on.

Use the 70 / 30 Rule to support your trial justification

Sick leave, Annual Leave, Personal Leave, Carers Leave, Working out of office, Working from home, Offsite meetings, Part time, Casuals, Contractors… the list goes on!

Recognise is the 70 / 30 rule: For most businesses with a headcount around 100 and up, a general rule of thumb is that at a minimum, 70% of your staff will be in the office and that means only 70% of your work space will be used on any given day.

The outtake is that in most cases, 30% of your space is not used. This gives comfort that when you set up a trial and when you move to full blown flexi-desking, you will have the desks and space available to do so and no staff will be wandering around desk-less!

Create a stepping stone

To gain traction for your trial space, while long term you can set your sights to 70% desk utilisation, you can start to journey small at 90% desk utilisation (or 95% if you have to!). This means if you have 100 staff, you want to find 5-10 desks that will be used for flexi-desking only.

A stepping-stone of 90% desk utilisation would be a milestone and creates sufficient breathing room to transition into more flexible environments. If you have already achieved this, well done – it’s time to work your way towards 70%, again in small increments following the same guidelines set our in this article.

If you’ve read and followed our first article, you should have sufficient knowledge of your work spaces. You can now find 5-10 candidates for a sample trial of flexi-desking. It won’t be easy and you may find yourself with only 5 candidates – but this is still a better option than none. We recommend no less than 5.

What to look for in candidates

It’s hard to know where to start, so here’s a some help to get you underway.

You will want to look for staff that:

1. Don’t have special software on workstations

Any staff requiring unique software to be installed on their workstation are not the most suited candidates for a small trial. These are usually tech staff like IT and developers or creative staff like designers and artists.

Who to look for: sales, marketing, customer support, legal, comms, management staff who don’t have to be at a particular desk.

2. Work offsite or aren’t full time staff

Staff continuously away from their desks will be prove to be the best candidates for hot desking

Who to look for: contractors, temps, casuals, part-timers

Once you find your candidates then stay tuned for our next article where we will highlight the exact steps and checklists to help you get started in moving to a better environment

Next week – Tip #3 One step at a time

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Tip #1 Know your space – 5 Tips on cost effective Activity Based Working and Flexi-Desking solutions

Raf Gouel — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:38:48 +0000

5 Tips on cost effective Activity Based Working and Flexi-Desking solutions

Tight budgets coupled with limited tech support come stock-standard with most departments in workplaces today.

We all need to do more with less

C-level and execs are open to new ways to innovate the traditional office environment and transition their workforce towards new modes of working. Aligning with the increasing desire towards flexibility and trending away from cubicles and towards open plan is on everyone’s mind.

Activity Based Working (ABW) and flexi-desking (or hot desking) offer a great way to improve desk utilisation and optimise work spaces while reducing running costs and increasing productivity. However, not many businesses are ready to invest in this culture and workflow change despite obvious benefits.

Many business owners have a solid understanding of the basics of ABW or flexi-desking but lack the practical knowledge to implement their plans. Because of this, a desire to improve staff-to-desk ratios often sees businesses make decisions mean staff quickly lose confidence in the solutions due to the rough ride throughout the transition period.

With this in mind, we will be publishing 5 practical steps to take in transitioning towards ABW over the coming weeks.

Tip #1 – Know your space

To implement ABW, you must be in tune with your work spaces.

As with any major project or cultural workplace change, it’s easier to break things down into smaller steps for staff acceptance and stakeholder buy-in. Other teams, departments and managers are interested but not usually ready to commit or don’t want to be the guinea pigs of the office. Most organisations believe ABW or Flexi-desking requires entire organisational buy-in or a wide array of stakeholders for a solution to take effect but this is quite the myth and it is much more common practice for leaders to allow a sample trial in favor of such major production and financial benefits.

Where to start?

Perform a quick analysis of your space or contact someone who knows the most about your workplace to answer some of the following questions:

What teams / departments does your organisation have?

(Directors, Tech Support, Legal, Comms, Customer Support… )

Where are the teams / departments located?

(Do you know the allocated spaces for each team on your floorplan? Which seats or space does each team use – remembering that some desks might be allocated for contractors or other non-permanent staff)

Who are the people that make up the space?

(Who’s responsible for the space? How many staff in each space? Is the department broken down into teams? Record who’s included in these teams and find out if there are business processes that impact on how they use their space – for example, in the call centre one team might take the calls, another might handle correspondence and a third might handle mail)

How many of the desks in the team are locked down?

(This is usually because of a health case, unique software on the workstation or geographical proximity to a filing cabinet, secure location and so on)

A good understanding of your space is key to implementing your solution as you progress.

Next week – Tip #2 – Finding your solution

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3 ways data visualisation can revolutionise your workspace

Raf Gouel — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 11:41:07 +0000

3 ways data visualisation can revolutionise your workspace

Data visualisation is everywhere these days. Stunning infographics, gorgeous scatter graphs, insightful pie charts and beautifully designed tables bring to life the vast swathes of data that our society produces every day, hour and second. A modern take on the idea of visual communication, data visualisation is about making complex data more accessible and useful, helping us understand and analyse data quickly to gain deeper insights into the relationship between things.

Humans are visual beings. We retain about 70% more information when it’s presented to us in a visual format. One of our missions at simple.space is to connect and enable humans in workplaces to be more in-tune with the space surrounding them.

How does this relate to managing your workspace?

To quote Dr. Thoralf Sundt of Mayo Clinic, “If I can see it, I can fix it.” The reverse must also be true – it’s hard to fix what you can’t see (Lean.org have said this so succinctly elsewhere that we can’t take credit for this insight). To support and sustain growth in your workplace, you need to be able to identify the problems in the way you carry out your work in a the physical sense – the desks, chairs and computers that allow your human capital investment to carry on (or cramp) your business. And to get back to Dr. Sundt, the most effective way to do this is using data visualisation techniques.

Here are three things you didn’t know about data visualisation and how it can benefit the way you manage your work space

1. It can empower your employees

Traditional data modeling is the empire of the geek, the bailiwick of the excel wizz. This means many of us – the average HR or office managers who don’t get their kicks from crunching out a VLookup – can’t get the insight we need to make evidence based decisions on staffing and space management issues.

2. It helps you see what’s around the corner

Office relocations and new seating arrangements require multiple scenarios to be planned, ongoing collaboration and layers of approvals to deliver great outcomes – and comparisons between the old and new are a must in defining the new world order.

But It’s hard to evaluate the current and future state with a set of paper floorplans and some highlighters. Just like a map is for driving directions to your destination, visualising your work spaces helps you understand how to reach your desired outcome much more quickly and simply.

3. It creates a sense of community in a workplaces that are becoming more screen-based and less people-focused

Most of us have lived and worked in office environments with little visibility on who is who and just where they might be sitting. Staff directories are usually dated, you’re unsure who to contact, or perhaps there’s more than one “Steve” in the legal department. Once you’ve worked out it’s Steve-from-Sydney, not Steve the dragon boat racing enthusiast, directions to find where Steve sits are scarce and it’s hard to know which desk belongs to whom or why no one is sitting in that corner. Data visualisation gives you a new way to put a face to a name, a desk to a person and useful directions to find them both.

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