The work environment you create makes a huge difference to the success of your workplace. A poorly planned space can lead to lower productivity, demotivated teams, and unnecessary resource use, which in turn leads to additional costs. Optimising your workplace ensures you’re getting the best out of your team, your real estate, and your budget, maximising savings and productivity.
Office optimisation is the process of using your available office space in the most efficient way possible, in order to drive down rent, maintenance, and administration costs, whilst helping improve productivity, profitability, and the employee experience.
An optimised workplace is efficient and productive. It creates an environment that will be comfortable and welcoming. In this way, optimisation goes beyond just paying attention to office occupancy. True space optimisation helps build the best possible space for success. If you have a look at your business objectives, and the way you’re using your space aligns, that’s a good sign that it’s efficiently optimised, or on it’s way to be.
There are many different aspects of office optimisation, and as such, it’s important to consider what optimisation means for your business from a variety of angles. Here are a series of questions to ask yourself in order to discover how to best optimise your workplace and guide an optimisation strategy’s goals.
Are you using your office space as well as you could be?
If you have a hybrid work model in place, do your team need dedicated desks or could a desk booking system help get more out of your office space?
Do you have enough collaborative spaces, like meeting rooms, and are they managed well?
Do you see your staff using the spaces the way they were intended to be? For example, are they using the staff room? Is the dedicated quiet area always empty? Are people using the standing desks?
Are the work spaces available giving employees everything they need to do good work?
Is there a variety of work space types available, such as standing desks or quiet areas, to ensure everyone can find the right spot.
Is there enough space for staff to work efficiently?
Are staff able to work safely? For example, can staff socially distance themselves easily? Do they have easy access to clear safety information?
Is the workplace diverse, inclusive, and welcoming?
Do people appear happy whilst at the office?
Are there pain points that are bought up consistently?
Does the team see their workplace as part of the company and their job?
Does your workplace give an accurate indication to visitors about your business?
Are there spaces for your team to connect and relax together?
Are you paying for more space than you need?
Is your lease the best value for your team and bottom line?
What is the cost-per-head of your current workspace design and is there room to improve it?
Are you paying for resources you don’t necessarily need to be using?
Do employees have designated break or relaxation areas, and are these spaces nice to spend time in?
Is there enough room for staff to have personal space vs accommodations to collaborate well with others?
Is there enough space to navigate easily in your office? Is accessibility a priority?
Are the desk set ups ergonomic and able to be easily personalised?
Are you utilising the space to it’s maximum capacity or is there room to manoeuvre in times of growth?
If the needs of your staff and workplace evolve or change, are you able to support it with your current space and resources?
What’s your action plan if you find you need to reassess your space requirements?
Does your office have a recycling system? Do staff adhere to it?
Could you be doing more to minimise your resource use? For example, are you spending money heating, cooling, and lighting meeting rooms that aren’t being used? Or have your team transitioned from paper to digital documents as much as possible?
Is your management team leading by example?
Are all teams aligned on office etiquette and best practise hybrid work processes?
Is communication good and expectations clear?
Does management receive appropriate training on new technologies or other office changes?
The best office optimisation comes from considering as many variables as possible. Successfully assessing and actioning solutions means you can create a space that boosts business operations and future success, whilst looking after your people and potentially the planet.
Office optimisation affects every part of the business, from staff wellbeing to your financial bottom line. Optimisations leverage the workplace to its fullest potential in every way.
Office space is expensive; in fact it’s probably one of your organisations largest expenses. Optimisation efforts ensure that every dollar is being used efficiently and adding value. Reduced operational costs flow directly to your bottom line, whilst appropriate enhancements will go straight to your top line. Essentially, optimisation ties directly into your financial performance.
Your employees are probably ready and waiting for these changes. 86% of workers want flexible and hybrid work options, and 88% of workers are expecting their office design to change to best accommodate this shift. With this transition, the functionality and corresponding resource demand in office spaces needs to be reconsidered. With interest expressed for more collaboration spaces from 54% of those surveyed, and with 50% of respondents specifically wanting more bookable spaces, the time to look at your workplace and optimise it is now, both in order to meet your employees expectations, and to ensure the transition to hybrid working is efficient and valuable.
Consider optimisation as increased control over the two most important parts of your business: the workplace and your workforce. With well done optimisation, the workplace can become an intuitive, valuable space for your employees. Whether it’s the lowering costs or improved efficiency that appeal to you for your businesses success, different kinds of optimisation will yield benefits for both and are worth considering. By optimising the workplace, you’re elevating smart space usage to create an environment that supports operational excellence.
Basically, office optimisations mean you have more control over your workplace. Bringing in a workplace management system to help optimise will help streamline the employee experience, with Nura Space’s platform combining booking systems, safety and wellness features, along with using smart analytics to help you continuously understand and optimise better for your staff.
Understanding your people and your space enables you to build an environment that helps people work well. Staff that are engaged, comfortable, and happy have been found to be 20% more productive than unhappy workers. Optimising your office to provide them with collaboration spaces, desk options, and other forms of space optimisation helps maintain employee wellbeing. Data and smart analytics will help you understand what parts of your office space work well and which ones don’t, so you can tweak sizes, configurations, locations, or amenities as required.
Better understanding how your work spaces are being used will help you cut unnecessary costs or redistribute resources. Having a holistic overview of behaviours in the workplace via a unified working platform like Nura Space could lead you to discover that your largest meeting room is rarely being booked, or that only 40% of desks are being used on any given day, giving a clear indication of where space could be optimised and money could be saved, helping you to build a strategy to determine which spaces you keep, close, move, or refresh.
Space optimisation will benefit not only your employees, but the planet. Going green benefits your business, and using your real estate effectively helps make your office greener and more sustainable. Greater operational efficiencies lead to implementing more sustainable business practises, lowering your businesses carbon footprint. Businesses with environmentally sustainable practises benefit in many ways; happier staff, a better company reputation, and operational cost reductions due to not wasting money on unnecessary resource usage.
Given that 52% of employed adults feel their companies should be more environmentally aware, and that employees at eco-friendly companies are 16% more productive than average, optimising the office is a great way to go green at work and elevate your business.
Not only the planet will thank you, but your bottom line will as 30% of energy used in hybrid workplaces is due to inefficiencies in optimisation. Better understanding staff movement patterns and behaviour in the office can help ensure your resources are being used efficiently, saving the business time and money.
Prior to the pandemic, it was found that employers saved an average of $11,000 USD per half-time remote employee. A fully remote worker will reduce company costs around $22,000 USD a year. On top of this, employees themselves were found to save additional money as well, with research finding remote workers save $4000 USD a year by not spending money on petrol, coffees, food, and work clothes.
These savings can play a part in employees overall wellbeing, contributing positively to their health and happiness. People also reclaim some personal time by removing commuting. Apart from the fact no commuting keeps cars off the road, it also means staff can put those extra hours towards more sleep, a morning workout, or additional time with their loved ones throughout the week, leading to more productivity through fewer mistakes, better decision making, and reduced burnout thanks to a better work-life balance.
One of the first steps to effectively optimising the workplace is to understand the needs and behaviours of your staff. Workplace management software can help gain an insight into these, and the Nura Space platform can take it a step further, analysing the data on your workplace to provide you with smart analytics to best optimise your office.
If you’re ready to elevate your office experience and optimise your workplace, we’d love to chat with you about how Nura Space can help.
Stay up to date with the latest video business news, strategies, and insights sent straight to your inbox!
.jpg)
