In previous posts, we advocated for alignment between an organization’s workplace strategy and its unique combination of current realities and business strategies, as well as its brand, values and culture. We made the case for supporting worker effectiveness with through needs analysis processes to understand and appropriately interpret work function and behavioral requirements. And we covered efficiency, to make the most of space and other resources.
The last of the four keys is Adaptability: enabling the flexible workplace to evolve as the organization does, keeping up with the speed of the business.
When I was a young designer, the world moved more slowly, and not much changed between the beginning and end of a client’s lease. That is so not the case anymore. Economic, technological, political and societal shifts are coming at us fast and furiously, and organizations are hard-pressed to keep up, let alone make sense of what’s happening and where the next twist might take them.
The workplace must be designed to keep up. To be fluid and adaptable to change as it happens.
We believe this requires honing or developing new capabilities in three areas: To be truly user-centric (aligned and effective), to have the physical flexibility to easily adapt, and to have the operational processes of budgets and monitoring/evaluating and reconfiguring to trigger and execute the changes needed on an on-going basis.
Challenge: Budgeting for Continuous improvement
The third capability we outlined above is perhaps the biggest change to the status quo. We have historically thought we were done when an organization took occupancy. We tended to try to minimize the changes we made once we were years into a lease, and put off major changes until a new lease gave us more TI dollars to start over.
While lease terms are shortening in some markets and circumstances, and there are now several forms of variable spaces that give our clients’ organizations more spatial flexibility, we believe designing for adaptability is a virtuous circle: workers better understand the link between what they do/how they behave and their physical (and virtual) environments, which, in turn, enables them to continuously adjust and adapt their environments to their needs and preferences. Read more about the benefits of engaging and empowering workers in our whitepaper Worker Effectiveness and Role of Place.
Calls to Action
Organizations: think of the workplace as an ever-changing ecosystem to be tuned and tailored over time. Invest in building capabilities and continuous budgeting to monitor and evolve it over time.
Designers and workplace strategists: build in physical flexibility and inform and empower workers to make that ongoing evolution the new normal, and as easy as possible.
