Workplace strategy

“Architects can sometimes be guilty of starting off with space design as opposed to human centric design,” says Annelie Xenofontos, Senior Workplace Strategist at Axiom Workplaces.

Xenofontos studied interior design and communications at the same time and it is this background that gave her insight into the discipline of workplace strategy. “When you weld those two things together, you always look at workplace culture and human beings that work in space and then decide exactly what you should design,” she says. “When it comes to the workplace strategy section of the approach, it’s looking at the organisational structure and the business vision.

“What are you trying to achieve as a business? Who are the people helping you achieve that goal? And how do we design space to best support the business roles, the way people need to interact and the spaces they need to perform at their optimum?” Axiom oversaw the workplace strategy for AC3’s recent move, which led to the whole Sydney team co-located on the seventh floor of a pre-existing building in the city’s CBD.

Coming in with what was essentially a blank slate, Xenofontos and her team were able to execute many of the initiatives they have seen work elsewhere, including a large number of straight bench workstations to allow for expansion and cater to the growth curve the company is experiencing, while also reducing single office spaces. “I think we ended up with only four offices across the whole floor,” she says.

The space instead incorporates smaller huddle spaces with technology affixed to the wall so teams can easily interface with it.

It was also important to remember the importance of the non-workspace places.

Axiom added in a pool table, table tennis table, gaming console area, some vending machines and a hack shack, where “like-minded people can come together and play on tech”, says Xenofontos. “They are very lucky, as they also have access to two balconies, so they have outdoor social space as well.”

Aiding success

Like Step Change’s Ashton Bishop (‘Communicating Change’ page 34), Xenofontos’ first tip regarding the implementation of any new design and strategy is to make sure everybody is on the same page. And it starts with the C suite, she says. “If you’ve got the top level leadership team across the line and sponsoring a new way of working, believing that it can work, you’ve got a much stronger success rate at the end of the day.

“If your leadership team are not on board, you will struggle.”

And this isn’t a ‘set and forget’ option, she adds. It needs regular review and reinforcement. “Even if you’ve got a progressive team, it takes some time for them to feel confident to use new spaces. Leaders should constantly go out there and spruik the new way of working by doing it themselves.”

This is particularly true when new systems mean desk sharing and relinquishing the attachment to a single workstation. “They might be in it for the first four weeks or so, but then they start falling into bad habits. A lot of software engineers are very hesitant to embrace the whole thought of ‘I’m moving around and I don’t have my own desk’. So, it’s shifting their thoughts to being ‘the entire office is mine’, versus ‘my desk is mine’.”

If the leadership team encourage the use of team groupings with ‘D’ end tables that enable flexibility and the opportunity to scale up and down as required, a successful strategy is much more likely.

With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting just a few weeks after AC3’s move, Xenofontos hasn’t been able to thoroughly gauge the AC3 teams’ reaction to this particular project, but says it can be some time before new routines and methodologies really become embedded in an organisation. Although Axiom generally solicits post occupancy feedback around six to eight weeks after project completion, Xenofontos recalls once bumping into the CEO of a client firm nine months after their strategy had been implemented. “In passing, he said to me, ‘Gosh, I only now can see that my team have got it’.”

Listen to your people and provide a customised response to their requirements. Some crucial elements to include are:

  • a fully functional kitchen – with multiple microwaves not all in the same location and plenty of benchtop space, so staff aren’t queuing up for their lunches
  • easy connectivity – in the meeting room and breakout spaces, and
  • private spaces – for workers to duck into to concentrate on projects, or to have private conversations, in person or on the phone.