1. To know the needs of your employees
Offices more and more frequently meet the needs of employees. Companies have realized that effectiveness of their employees is important and actually many factors have an impact on that. A well-arranged office can influence employee’s creativity and allow them to relax for a while, which definitely enhances effectiveness of their work. Modern offices depart from arranging space in a standard way, because people can work more efficiently in a place where they feel comfortable.
Hence the question: how to know the needs of your employees? Companies have conducted many research for that purpose. The example is Aviva, which rented 12 000 sq. m of space in the 8-floor building realized within the Gdański Business Center complex. The change of office was preceded with research, including the analysis of employees’ needs. Long before termination of lease contract in the previous office, we had decided to conduct a professional analysis of needs and detailed poll among employees. The decision about location for the following years was made on the basis on results of these surveys and analyses. Our ambition was not only to make the office space more modern but also to introduce a new and flexible model of work – says Monika Kulińska, People Director of Aviva.
2. Engage your employees in arrangement
Employees are more and more engaged in the process of designing and arranging their offices. They are to be the main users of such areas and thus their opinion can be extremely important. Employees know what facilitations are needed in their work place; they know what distracts them and what motivates them. The submitted ideas can be not only interesting in respect of image but also due to functionality.
For instance, Deloitte used the engagement of employees during co-designing of office space in the Warsaw Q22 office. We wanted our office to respond to the needs of employees. We invited employees of different departments with various experiences to work in the discussion group to suggest their ideas on planning the space in their new office. Additionally, we invited all people to co-design the office and to share their own ideas on special virtual platform of ideas, which was prepared for that purpose – says Krzysztof Kwiecień, HR Director of Deloitte in Poland and Central Europe. The platform allowed employees to share with their own ideas on, for instance, arrangement of space, kitchens, or meeting rooms; 337 people benefitted from the platform and 95 ideas were submitted within three months.
The opinions of employees were also taken into consideration at arranging the new office of Aviva in Gdański Business Center realized by HB Reavis. They helped to plan the space and chose themes on certain floors. Employees made a decision about their names such as Las (Wood), Miasto (City), Niebo (Heaven), Morze (Sea) and Góry (Mountains) and thus design of rooms refers to them.
- 1
- 2