How Do You Implement An Alternative Workspace Strategy
Here at Your Office Agent we believe that before working out how to implement your
alternative workplace strategy it is firstly important to understand what an alternative workplace strategy means to you. The easiest way to start on this journey is to ignore your physical real estate for a moment and start with your people, your product and your process and take out a blank piece of paper (or a new file in your Ipad). Your objective is to draw a perfect balance between maximum employee efficiency and perfect employee work life balance. To achieve this we have to move from the dark ages of just having 99% of our work space a concrete or glass box of square feet to now embracing solutions such as hoteling, reverse Hoteling, , traditional space, executive suite space, Hotdesking, Telecommuting, teleworking, Virtual presence, Desk Sharing, Touchdown Space, Shared Space, Work shifting, Nomadic Workers, web commuting, mobile workers and home workers. What a delightful menu from which to build your future jedi company.Although this salivating list of options looks very appealing there are some challenges out there which need to be dealt with proactively or they will rear their head just when you are not ready for them. Some of these potential challenges are that some of your office staff feel like their office is a sign of status. Many of your managers dont trust their staff to work remotely and dont have measurement tools to be smart with this. Also some senior management just dont buy in to change. Others feel that its only for a temporary cost saving measure and in general there is little accountability to reinforce a plan which is treated like an all or nothing solution. Also in recent surveys done only 25% of organizations said they had a flex work program in place and most of those who dont have one in place say their biggest challenge is that they dont really know where to start or how to overcome these challenges.
So how do we defeat these demons countering our perfect workplace future. All we want to do is reduce our workspace cost and increase workspace productivity. How bad can that be and although Darwin is often misquoted as saying that its the strongest who survive, he really said that its the most adaptable who will be future kings.
Before a company embarks on a new strategy they need to really decide why they are doing this (work life balance, retain top talent, save money or all the above). Dont decide that this is an all or nothing solution and quantify the result you want to achieve. The new road you are building also needs to fit into the company culture that you want to have. It must be bespoke to your company and discussed and thought through by all the stakeholders, who must all be made accountable for its success. You also dont need to do it all at the same time as its as easy to do it piece by piece. Once the destination has been decided then the road can be built.
So what is the first step? You really have 3 options depending on the level of resistance in the company (including yours) plan according to this resistance. If its high the maybe just start with some gentle reverse hoteling or create a hot-desking or kiosk area that people can book via outlook and see how this goes. If you are feeling more bullish you can have a mini pilot program which will be a bespoke project which deals with the very real concerns that you know are out there. The last and mostly preferred option is to have a larger pilot where you involve all departments (HR, IT, C level, Facilities, Finance) and create a change management plan. this starts with Identifying your team, establish goals, identify requirements and resources, configuring the environment (open plan or individual offices), train participants (make sure they know what is coming), launch program and analyise the results.
Without question this will be the biggest change you can implement in your company but back then Darwin did not know much about alternative workspace solutions but he did know about survival. We are in the economical fight of our lives and never have flexibility, adaptability and efficiency been so important for our survival. In summary, let us help you embrace these new possibilities or we will be left behind.
by: The workplace expert