Unleash talent with engaging workspaces

How far can the work environment drive corporate values and attract and retain staff who engage with those values?

The Culture Beyond the Physical round table, sponsored by Ultimate Commercial Interiors, dove deeply into the multifacted relationship between workspace design, organisation values and employee experience in creating a thriving, productive and cohesive culture at work.

The group met at Ultimate Commercial Interiors’ Hive facility in Cross Hills, Airedale – an award winning £4m facility that houses Ultimate’s offices and showroom.

Before the discussion, the group enjoyed a guided tour of the Hive, which showcases state-of-the-art office design emphasising flexibility and varied working environments, from variable-height desks to darker rooms to a variety of soundproofed work pods. Much of the furniture was wheeled to enable easy rearrangement.

The tour set the scene for the subsequent discussion.

One of the key discussion points was the commercial necessity of modernising an office – and overwhelmingly the group agreed that firms had to offer modern facilities.

Anjon Mallik, partner at law firm Hill Dickinson, spoke of his pleasure at the firm’s new offices in Wellington Place, Leeds.

“I’m so enthused when I step into that place – and in terms of attracting people from outside, it almost does the sell for you.”

Part of Hill Dickinson’s approach to its new offices was to give staff a say in what they wanted. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever worked in before,” Mallik said. “It’s amazing. We moved in in January, and I think I’ve worked from home only three days since.”

Paul Fox, partner at property managers Fox Llyod Jones, said that while specific needs depended on sector, “Fundamentally, the pace of change in the last five years has exceeded anything in the 20 years prior, in terms of people’s understanding of what’s important to their staff.

“In the old days we used to relocate people based on where the decision makers lived. Nowadays it’s about how we get staff into the business. What do the staff demand in terms of amenities, and how do we tempt them to come into the office?

“It’s a whole science now. It’s a complete industry based largely around staff demands and retaining and attracting the best staff.”

Marie Brasnett-Mellor, senior facilities manager at Switalskis Solicitors, which has offices across Yorkshire, worked in HR before her current role.

“For me it’s always been a case that happy staff work a lot harder and you retain them better,” she said. “If you give them a good environment then your productivity goes through the roof – in theory, anyway.

“Since lockdown much has changed, and it is great to see things changing and improving. Now it’s not about how many desks you can get into the office, it’s about how you can make this a great workplace. It has to be a great place to work, both physically and in attitudes and the way people treat each other.”

Ben Parkes, senior building surveyor with Bruntwood SciTech, which specialises in supplying office, lab and event space to knowledge-based businesses, said his firm has also been forced to reevaluate its offerings to attract tenants.

“We’re seeing a big transition in our business in what we need offer as a landlord, to effectively make more of a community.  Welfare, gyms in studios, cafes, more immediate space, more networking.

“As a business we’ve done a big U-turn. We’re looking at how we can adapt to changes in the economy, and how people are working, because the next generation are bringing about the next change.”

Nothing illustrated the necessity of modernising office space ore than the experience of PFF Packaging, which lost its state-of-the-art innovation centre when it acquired a new factory site in the North East.

Chief executive Kenton Robbins said, “We’d invested very heavily five, six, seven years ago. We’ve left that and walked back into the 1970s and ‘80s. Having seen the effect on the staff who moved with the business, it’s been eye-opening for us.

“We’re manufacturers. I’m a lean business. I try to spend as little as possible on everything – it’s a thin-margin industry sector – and we have probably neglected the needs of the people in the business.”

The loss of the innovation centre not only saw the firm lose one of its unique selling points to customers, but also had a noticeable effect on staff morale and retention.

“It’s been tough in manufacturing in the last two years. Trying to retain staff, motivate them, get the best out of them and inspire them to do innovative work in our industry sector, that’s very mature, is hard. Ultimately, they focus on their own needs if they’re not driven and inspired in the workplace. We’ve found we have never had so many requests for pay rises as in the last two years, because they’re looking around.”

Andrew McLean, director of architects TP Bennett, took a wider view. “I actually want to see the North grow. That’s something I’ve been banging on about for years. But I think the only way that can happen is if we have really good workspace in the North that big companies – and I always talk about firms like Meta and Google, who don’t tend to have spaces up north.

“We’ve got loads of talent in the North. And people from the North who’ve gone down to London, they want to come back. For me, that’s the next big challenge.”

Nora Jones, head of culture and engagement at workspace provider Wizu Workspaces, said as much effort went into providing Wizu’s staff with modern workspace as it did into providing client with it.

“Traditionally it was grey carpet, white desks, a few houseplants. Now people want to see the collaboration space, they want to see where the teams can go. The wellbeing side is very important these days, and high up on people’s agendas.

“We want to make sure that Wizu team members have a nice environment as well, because that’s really important if we want them to give good service.”

With the advantages of office modernising established, discussion moved to address the costs of redesign, and whether investment in office space represented good value for money.

Clare Danahay, director of workplace at workspace design and strategy firm WILL+Partners, said firms typically spent around 70% of their budget on staff – far more than they typically spent on their property.

“Property is a really, really small expense, and yet it’s often neglected and overlooked. If you create a space where people are happy, it’s so important to be able to retain and attract, to support their needs and to be productive, because that’s what organisations really need, for people to be at their best so they can be productive and make a profit.”

Eamon Fox, partner at property consultants Knight Frank, said companies could offset could investment in modernising offices against their staff retention and attraction budgets.

“Statistically, we’re seeing occupiers downsize by 35% to 430% across all sectors, but they’re upscaling the rent by 25%, so the cost per square foot has increased. The space has reduced, but its better.”

Dan Platt, chief executive of Ultimate Commercial Interiors, said he had had to invest not once, but twice to make the Hive the modern showcase of best practice.

“We designed it pre-Covid, we launched it, and then everything changed. So we had to invest again to make it on point.”

Ultimate’s experience is perhaps unusual. They wanted the Hive to be a destination – a site that highlighted the very best of what can be achieved. It is a showroom to demonstrate possibilities as well as Ultimate’s own workspace.

The end result not only won them TheBusinessDesk.com’s investment award at this year’s Business of the Year Awards but contributed to their winning the Sunday Times’ Best Place to Work award.

“Clients come in and they say ‘We want what you’ve got. We don’t know what it is, but we want what you’ve got.’ And it’s the culture, it’s the buzz. It’s more than nice furniture and a nice floor. It’s everything together – and it’s options.”

Samantha Brook, group HR director at steel construction firm Severfield, said that firms should allow some time for people to adapt to new working spaces.

“When we moved to a new space with all the pods and booth, people didn’t know how to work in that space. There was an education period. People would come in and automatically move to a desk, then be in and out of meetings. We’d have to say, instead of takig the desk all day, why not move to the pod around the corner.

“We’ve really had to coach people into using spaces in different ways.”

The end result, she said, was well worth it.

“When you get all those policies tied together, it’s really powerful around productivity and engagement, retention and general wellbeing.

“People go into a space and feel good about it.”

This is the first of two reports from the Culture Beyond the Physical round table.