Most organizations today are facing rapid change: hybrid work, new employee expectations, rising real estate costs, and increasing pressure on productivity. Workplace Strategy services help companies respond to these challenges through a simple objective: aligning the workplace with the way people actually work.
A workplace strategy provides a clear, data-driven understanding of employee needs and helps the organization make better decisions about its workplace. It can improve productivity and employee experience, reduce the risks associated with relocation or transformation projects, and prepare the company for future changes. In practice, the office becomes more than an operational cost, becoming a tool that supports organizational performance.
At the core of Workplace Strategy lies a simple principle: the office should be designed around people and the activities they perform, rather than solely around standard layouts, densities, or design trends. To create an effective working environment, employees need to be heard and involved, so that the organization can better understand how they work, how they collaborate, and what conditions help them perform at their best.
For many decades, offices have been planned around a simple question: how many people need to fit into the space? The result was usually a fixed number of workstations, standard meeting rooms, and support areas sized according to the available floor area.
Instead of designing space exclusively around the number of employees, we recommend designing it around the activities that generate value for the organization. This shifts the focus from assigning a permanent desk to every individual towards creating an ecosystem of spaces that supports different ways of working.
This approach underpins the concept of Activity-Based Working (ABW) – organizing the workplace around activities – which is based on the premise that different activities require different environments and that people achieve better results when they have the ability to choose the space that is most appropriate for the task they are performing.
Although ABW has become extremely popular in recent years, the principles behind it are far from new. The roots of this way of thinking can be traced back to the 1970s, through the work of Francis (Frank) Duffy, one of the most influential architects in the field of workplace strategy and office design.
When organizations start designing the office around activities rather than the number of people, something surprising often happens: they need less space than they thought.
Unfortunately, one of the reactions we frequently hear at the beginning of projects is:
“We know very well how our people work.” or “We don’t want to ask employees. We already know what they need.”
Our experience, however, shows that in most organizations there are significant differences between how leaders believe their teams work and how they actually work, or how they would like to work. There are also important differences between departments, generations, functions, and ways of working.
We have frequently observed situations where management considers the main issue to be a lack of collaboration, while employees report a lack of spaces for focused work. In other cases, leaders believe that more workstations are needed, while the analysis shows that the real issue is a lack of small meeting rooms, phone booths, or spaces dedicated to project work.
Any analysis of space requirements, any Stay versus Go analysis, or any assessment of real estate options should start with the conclusions of the Workplace Strategy phase. Unfortunately, in many organizations, the process is reversed. They begin with test-fit plans, density calculations, financial comparisons, and an assessment of available buildings before fully understanding and validating how employees work, what teams need, and what the organization’s objectives are.
Based on our Workplace Strategy projects and international studies, several recurring reasons emerge as to why people choose to come to the office and remain with an organization.
1. The ability to choose. People need to be able to choose the right place for the activity they need to perform.
2. The quality of the working environment and access to amenities. Natural light, acoustics, ventilation, thermal comfort, and access to amenities directly influence how people perceive the value of coming to the office.
3. The existence of a coherent hybrid ecosystem. The design needs to support real hybrid working scenarios, not just statements of intent.
4. The office needs to support people in their work, collaboration, learning, and professional relationships.
5. Organizational culture. Spaces that encourage learning, mentoring, networking, and collaboration are perceived by employees as genuine investments in people.
We have seen people come to the office and wonder why they made the journey there only to spend the entire day on video calls.
The truth is simple: if the office makes their work more difficult, they will avoid it. If the office supports their work, collaboration, learning, and professional relationships, they will use it.
Too many organizations continue to approach workplace transformation as a design project when, in reality, it is a strategic project. Many companies focus on aesthetics before functionality, layout before behavior/activities, and space before purpose. As a result, they end up creating offices that look modern but do not truly work for the people who use them.
It should be intentionally designed around the activities it is best positioned to support – not around activities that can be done more efficiently from home. An office designed solely for “presence” will fail. An office designed around the reasons why people come to the office will work.
Based on the experience gained through our client projects, our international studies, and the conclusions drawn from Workplace Strategy projects, the patterns are remarkably similar: people are more motivated to come to the office when three conditions are met: they know who they will meet, they understand the purpose of their presence at the office, and they trust that the space will enable them to perform their work effectively.
Perhaps the most important lesson of Workplace Strategy is that offices should not be designed around square meters; they should be designed around people.
And if people represent approximately 60–70% of a company’s costs, while space represents only 5–10%, then it is difficult to justify why we spend so much time optimizing the cost of rent and so little time analyzing the factors that influence the performance of the people who work there.