Workplace Design Can Improve Bottom Line
May 19, 2015
- By creating workspaces that encourage spending more time on high value activities, companies can reap greater profitability than through cost cutting.
- A recent poll conducted by several large real estate and architectural firms in concert found that respondent companies were spending a mere 24% of their time on high value activities.
When companies think about how their corporate real estate strategy impacts their bottom line, they typically think of reducing the cost per square foot or increasing utilization rates. However, recent research points to a better way to use real estate to improve profits: designing the workspace so it best supports and encourages high value activities.
For example, the survey identifies generating ideas through brainstorming as a high-value activity. This suggests creating areas that enable groups to easily come together to brainstorm. Consider placing whiteboards in areas where groups can easily assemble and interact without distracting other workers.
Other high value activities, like thinking and focusing on solving problems is best encouraged by creating areas for workers to retreat, away from distractions like ringing phones and loud conversation.
Exchanging information with colleagues through talking on an informal basis produces higher value than formal meetings, emails or phone conversations. Creating informal hubs where workers can meet and talk on an informal basis without reserving a conference room or booking a formal meeting encourages such high value, informal exchanges.
All three of these examples focus on changes than can be accomplished easily by rethinking workflows, reconfiguring the current workplace and repurposing unused or underutilized space. This type of change can usually be implemented with a minimum business disruption.
Increasing the productivity of your workspace by encouraging high value activity involves these steps:
1.Identify the activities that take place in the workspace.
2.Determine the time spend on those activities.
3.Evaluate the total value the activities generate.
This information can be used to determine which tasks generate the highest ROI. Next, think about how workspace utilization can encourage spending more time on activities that produce the highest bottom line results.
Every successful business has to focus on the bottom line. Analyzing and using your commercial real estate strategy to encourage and sustain focus on high value activities is smart business.
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