The Three Key Components of Workplace; People, Place and Process

The conversations around creating great workplaces and supporting fast-evolving working environments are all fundamentally shaped by what people expect to see in their offices. Regardless of location, size of business or the sector you work in, many organisations have found themselves with spaces that need to evolve or realign with modern expectations. As people search for the silver bullet to solve the workplace conundrum, there are some fundamental components that underpin most workplaces.

These components can be broadly grouped into the three areas of influence which the survey focuses on: People, Process and Place. Getting these elements right starts with listening. Engagement and input aren’t just useful — they’re essential. Creating a space that works begins with understanding how people work, what they value, and how their needs are changing.

At the heart of any workplace strategy is its people. Understanding how employees work, what motivates them, and what they need from their environment is crucial. To help us provide detailed and insightful feedback to our clients, we created our People and Place study which is a process we use as part of our workplace consultancy offering. In this article we will share the details behind each component of the process, as well as looking at how it can benefit your company.

How does this process benefit your company?

There are a number of ways a People & Place study can benefit your business but the primary reason for carrying out this process is to understand and learn the ways in which your workplace could be doing more to benefit your people.

Engaging in workplace consultancy offers numerous advantages:

• Enhanced employee engagement: By understanding your team’s needs and preferences, you can design spaces that improve employee engagement levels.
• Optimised space utilisation: Knowing how you use your space and where you can reduce costs through data-driven insights is one of the key benefits to businesses.
• Future-proofing: Organisations are forecasting 5-10 years in advance so designing adaptable environments will ensure your workspace can evolve as your business grows.

Before making any design changes to your workplace, it is important to know what, and why, you are making those decisions. Workplace consultancy studies are the bodies of work that underpin these decisions by providing the relevant data and insights. From the sessions we host during this process, we build a blueprint of how companies can move forwards and accommodate challenges as they arise. For instance, our collaboration with Jerroms led to a strategic redesign that improved company culture and supported their growth trajectory. 

The People & Place Study

We find that each particular use case will find that the order of benefit is slightly different but typically revolves around these three components. Each of these areas is explained in this article and highlights the importance each one plays within a People and Place study.

1. People

The people element of your workplace is much more than just creating a culture and offering attractive benefits. Understanding the way individuals interact within your working environment is becoming increasingly important when creating effective workplaces.

Workplace benefits linked to your people include:

• Talent attraction and retention
• Strengthened company culture
• Improved employee wellbeing
• Enhanced collaboration
• Better communication

There has been a lot of focus placed on collaboration in the workplace and this is always going to be a key component of a successful workplace. But with enhanced flexibility and employees obtaining more control in the conversation of where and how they work, the office has to be finetuned and detail oriented to provide an exceptional workplace experience.

One of the big development areas within workplace design is the talent attraction and retention strategy. Hiring top talent will always remain a competitive aspect of business and this means that the office has to demonstrate real value more than ever before. Not only do workplaces need to appeal to new staff that you are attempting to hire but they also need to encourage and entice employees to want to work from the office.

2. Place

The requirement for understanding Place within your business is much more of a functional and operational requirement than an experience-led one. The cost of commercial real estate is one of the main overheads for a business and being in a position to optimise your physical environment comes from knowing how much office space you need.

An area where we find we can offer the most support to businesses is through the space optimisation and analysis of existing office space. Workplace consultancy assesses space usage and identifies potential improved efficiencies, leading to better layouts and typically this presents opportunities to make cost savings. This can be done in a number of ways but in the post pandemic workplace, there have been numerous shifts in working patterns that have left companies with too much office space and even though that surplus space isn’t being used, it still costs money.

The people element of the People and Place study is all about future-proofing the office by designing adaptable workspaces that accommodate hybrid working and business growth. This requires a holistic approach for each use case but this process provides valuable insight into how to best accommodate growth and/or flexibility based on a specific company.  For example, a company with a growth by acquisition policy will need a different type of space from one which is growing organically.

The desired outcomes of a successful People & Place study are varied but usually we would expect to identify cost savings and other cost reduction measures relating to your physical office environment. Reducing real estate and operational costs by ensuring efficient use of space and resources is a key step in developing a robust workplace design and strategy.

Additionally there may also be the opportunity to assess the environmental impact of your office and how sustainable the physical office and the office building is. While this is not necessarily a cost saving measure, more companies are beginning to redesign their workplaces to support sustainability initiatives like Net Zero goals or ESG commitments.

3. Process

The roles of your people and your physical environment are two of the most significant components of your workplace. However, while you can formulate a solid office design brief based on these two components alone, where we have helped businesses to go to the next level with their office design and workplace strategy is by helping to inform their processes.

While the task of enhancing business processes is not always something we can influence as consultants, what we can do is create the blueprint that helps you to align your workplace strategy with your company objectives.

As part of the project we delivered for shoe business Pavers, we helped them navigate a shift to new ways of working. To ensure we implemented this successfully, our team hosted a variety of workshops that enabled us to manage this change with their people and communicate how these new ideas would benefit their working practices. This engagement piece was influential to the adoption of the new space and adaptations to their business operations. 

A key thing to note here is that adapting your workplace can help to improve productivity and engagement is important but our goal is to help you move beyond collaboration and productivity gains. Our goal is to help you develop a truly meaningful shift to your process that is synchronised with your office design, layout and overall operations.

For example, we can help you to facilitate a smoother transition to your new office or adapt to new ways of working through intelligent change management processes. Even if you refurbish your existing office, there will be significant changes to your processes if you are adopting hybrid working patterns or shifting the amount of days you spend in the office.

The method we use to make these process and organisational changes is all based on the use of workplace data. Any assessment that we make is driven by data that we have captured about your workplace and then ensuring that it is strategically sound.

Understanding your people

Designing workplaces that respond to the people that use them is crucial to productivity and performance but more importantly, it’s essential to making the working environment a beneficial, attractive place to be.

Taking the time to listen the needs of your people and assess how those needs align with your business operations and your real estate is a reliable way to build a comprehensive picture of the way your business runs. There is no shortcut to understanding your people and the way they interact with your office, workplace studies and data helps to build the picture of your workplace as well as the employee needs and behaviours that go with it. A People and Place study delivers a balanced approach, ensuring that all the components of a business; the people, the physical space, and the business processes all work in harmony to create a productive, efficient, and engaging workplace.

 As more workplaces start to want to attract more staff into the workplace, they will begin to cater for a broader range of users. In order to make good judgements on the types of spaces and environments employees want to see in the office, it will only become more crucial to align people, place and process.

If you need advice on how to engage with your people through surveys, workshops or feedback sessions, get in touch with our experts to begin your next workplace transformation today.