5 Key Benefits of Workplace Consultancy You Need to Know

Designing a great workplace isn’t just about the stylish features within it, it’s about creating something that flows efficiently and supports your employees. As the challenges around making offices compelling to staff and attracting them back into the workplace during the week, the need for workplace consultancy is becoming increasingly essential.

Workplace consultancy provides an accurate look into your business and offers detailed analysis of your environment and how your people interact with it. Capturing data on the operational, emotional and functional aspects of your workplace will enable you to see what is working, and what isn’t.

There are a number of business advantages to engaging with a consultant to carry out a workplace consultancy. The workplace consultancy process is an opportunity to get an outside perspective on your working environment and gain a greater understanding of how it can be optimised. These benefits are some of the ways that a workplace consultancy can help your organisation.

When should you consider Workplace Consultancy?

There is no specific time that you have to consider workplace consultancy but typically workplace consultancy is considered by businesses when they are looking to optimise their office space, improve efficiency and/or reduce costs.

While a workplace consultancy can be conducted at any point, it is recommended that it is carried out with a goal or intention in mind. Gathering workplace data without a clear goal behind the process will make it difficult to apply the findings of the study into your environment.

5 benefits of workplace consultancy

From gaining valuable insights on how individual teams work to improving space efficiencies and reducing costs, workplace consultancy removes guesswork. Depending on the type of office project you are planning, workplace consultancy can add value in a number of ways and typically links back to People, Place and Process or a combination of the three.

Data-backed facts

No matter which sector you work in, the most efficient workplaces are all built on the same thing – data. The process of capturing workplace-specific data about the way your space performs and how your staff operate within it is the missing piece of the puzzle for so many organisations.

Data-based facts about a specific workplace is invaluable to designers and architects as it gives them an insight into business operations beyond assessing the physical environment. From observation surveys to online questionnaires and smart data capture, there are a number of methods to generate workplace data.

The most crucial part of this process, however, is not just about the methods used to capture the data. A workplace consultancy will create lots of data points and enable consultants to develop a digital image of your requirements. This importantly informs the office design brief and because all the recommendations are backed by data, the decisions behind certain features in the office are made with specific goals in mind.

Reduce costs

On top of informing a more efficient workplace and new ways of working, workplace consultancy programmes can help organisations save money and reduce costs.

As flexible ways of working have enabled more distributed working, the typical trend for the amount of real estate that businesses require has decreased. However, the space that is being underutilised or is simply no longer required still costs money. Workplace consultancy can help reduce costs on surplus space by analysing utilisation data and occupancy studies to see how much space a business actually needs.

Like any asset, it requires maintenance and investment to ensure it still performs at its optimum level. By opting for a workplace consultancy, you are investing in your office space in the short term to reduce operational and rental costs in the long term.The key consideration for cost saving is to view workplace consultancy as an investment into your office.

Understand your space

When a business outgrows their current office, they face the scenario of whether to refurbish their existing office or relocate to a new one. While the option to move to a new office and start fresh is appealing, it isn’t always necessary.

Without fully understanding the way your space is utilised or even knowing how much space your business needs to operate successfully, any decisions you make about your real estate will be made without all the information.

A workplace consultancy will tell you what you need to do to optimise your office space as well as build recommendations based on your current usage and occupation. If an office relocation is the right choice for your business, workplace consultancy will tell you the types of work settings you require, how many meeting rooms you need and your optimal desk layout plus other information on key spaces within your office.

If you don’t understand how your space is being used and how to use it more effectively, it can lead to unnecessary decisions on your office space which can be costly and may still not get to the root cause of any friction in your workplace.

Enhanced experience

The success of a workplace can’t be judged solely on enhancing productivity. The workplace experience is a topic that is becoming more popular within office design and workplace consultancy can help to create impactful experiences at work.

Experience can have an impact on employee productivity but also their desire to commute to the office and spend time with their colleagues. One of the benefits of a workplace consultancy is that the working behaviours and patterns of your employees and the way specific teams collaborate can be monitored.

By developing a greater understanding of the way employees interact with spaces, there is a blueprint for how to improve the workplace experience. From better adjacencies for teams that work together frequently to incorporating more flexible spaces and where to locate specific spaces in the office, understanding the experience your office creates for your employees is really important.

Attracting (and retaining) talent

While talent attraction and retention may not be a direct benefit of conducting a workplace consultancy, it is still a core part of creating an inspiring environment that resonates with employees.

One of the main ways that workplace consultancy can support talent attraction is by helping to curate specific ways of working. Younger workers in particular are looking for more diverse workspaces that don’t look like traditional office environments and enable greater levels of choice. You can utilise a workplace study to get a better understanding of the types of spaces your employees want in their office, this can be helpful in attracting talent in specific roles. If you have an office that feels outdated or unable to support movement and flexibility, it could cause disengagement in current staff and put off prospective talent from joining your business.

Candidates now have a greater range of choice and working arrangements due to increased remote working policies. This means that the office has to promote a value beyond just having a desk to work at. By designing a work environment that enables people to work in a variety of ways or feel part of an energetic company culture, the office can be a valuable tool in convincing talent to commit to your business long-term.

Workplace consultancy can improve your workplace

There are lots of different advantages of conducting a workplace study but the focus will always be to find ways to improve your workplace. Workplace consultancy programmes are designed to understand where inefficiencies and friction points are within your business and current operations. These findings form the foundation of your design brief for a more optimised space that enhances the way your people use their environment.

For businesses that want to invest in their physical workplace and create an environment their staff want to return to, workplace consultancy is a key stage in developing a refined office design brief which can also help shape your workplace strategy.

If you want to learn more about how a workplace consultancy can help your business, get in touch with our specialist team.