The Friction-Free Engineering Office – Secrets to Success

As an engineer you can appreciate precision; you can describe the difference between perfection and imperfection, but, chances are, you might struggle to describe  the office design that would drive profitability, reduce overheads and empower your staff.

At Rhino, we’ve been working with accomplished engineers like yourself for over a decade, helping them to solve unique, highly specific workplace problems. 

We help our clients reduce overheads by lowering hiring and recruitment costs; improving their working day (and therefore wellbeing) and driving up profitability. How? By building workplaces suited to the unique needs of your people.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how you can better identify the needs of your engineering office, helping you take the first steps towards creating a friction-free workplace – a space that brings together the different facets of your business into one successful machine. 

Using the creative process to design in a better workflow

As your organisation grows, factory floors and office spaces become segregated; factory workers often report feeling as if they don’t belong in the office and vice versa. This often results in lowered levels of collaboration, frustrations among teams that aren’t communicating properly and, eventually, increased levels of employee turnover. It’s essential that you identify where friction exists in your engineering office so that you can address it. 

The first step towards building a better engineering workflow is to map the flow of information; who owns it at the various points through your different departments, how it is shared, et cetera. Identify where the existing friction is in your process. It’s important that you identify where recurring issues are by discussing this with your teams. 

Here are some common examples of friction we find in engineering workplaces:

“We have no communal meeting/collaboration areas”

Successful engineering offices facilitate the rapid exchange of knowledge. Engineering/manufacturing organisations often report that their people have no dedicated spaces where teams can come together and truly collaborate. 

We find that people tend to stick to their designated areas, rarely venturing beyond their borders. This can often result in cliques forming, which is never good for an organisation that wishes to continue growing. 

“We have no impressive spaces to bring visitors”

If you’re demonstrating or final testing demoing a cutting-edge piece of tech to a potential customer or investor, your offices and factory play a significant role in how well your innovation and competence is perceived. 

Remember: they’re not just investing in your product, they’re investing in your business, meaning that how you treat your workplace (and by extension, your people) is incredibly important when forming first impressions. And don’t forget – they are likely to visit the canteen and washrooms too!

“We lack dedicated remote meeting areas”

Working internationally, or on sensitive or military contracts necessitates soundproof meeting rooms and pods for private video calls. 

This often means extra thought needs to be given to the AV/IT architecture. You’ll often be presenting or screen sharing large files during critical design meetings. Rapid, reliable infrastructure is key to smooth remote meetings.

A great engineering workspace addresses specific and underlying needs

At the core of any successful engineering office is knowledge exchange. Does your existing workplace facilitate knowledge exchange between different teams? What types of knowledge exchange happens in your environment? 

Kitchens can become focal points

Over the years, we’ve learned that you can designate meeting spaces as much as you want, but nothing quite beats a good kitchen when it comes to breaking down barriers and bringing people together. 

At its core, a kitchen is for food prep, but it also acts as a buffer zone. A kitchen is not owned by anyone; it is quintessentially communal – nothing stops your people from meeting there and it is one of the most important areas in any organisation for encouraging the organic exchange of information. 

In decades past, kitchens were hidden from view, tucked away somewhere private. However, kitchens are now becoming a focal point; organisations are proud of their kitchens and the experience they provide. Investing in a quality kitchen with quality applications demonstrates (both to your people and your investors) that you are caring for your staff in ways that go above and beyond what’s expected. 

If you want to work on improving staff retention, a fantastic kitchen is a great place to start!

Here’s a kitchen we built for advanced electronics experts, Pektron. The kitchen has become a hub of activity, connecting their office staff with factory teams in a seamless, beautiful space. Equipped with a cutting-edge coffee machine, boiling water taps and other essentials, Pektron’s people don’t want for anything when it comes to lunch time. Pektron report that, on some days, more work gets done in the kitchen than anywhere else in the building!

Quality meeting spaces allow for easy knowledge exchange

Whether you’re after a traditional sit-down meeting room, or a ‘quick and dirty’ stand-up meeting room, it’s incredibly important that you offer spaces that are available to all; spaces that are conducive to productivity; spaces that bring people together. 

Take Invertek Drives, for example:

Invertek needed a space that was multipurpose – it needed to impress guests that were travelling from overseas while helping to bridge the gap between teams across their production facility. 

It was essential that we incorporated their branding, innovation and actual products within the space. Your products are a significant part of your brand identity – your workplace should show them off!

“Rhino have completely transformed this from an empty industrial space to the vibrant destination that it is today.” – Nigel Evans | Marketing Manager, Invertek Drives

Discretion is essential when clients and suppliers visit

One key consideration that many of our engineering clients struggle with is discretion. 

You might be working on highly sensitive components for high-value clients, or perhaps you’re developing new technologies that aren’t yet ready to be revealed. 

Having an impressive space for clients, investors or suppliers is essential, allowing you to host while keeping sensitive information secure. 

Is investing in a better engineering office a sound decision?

Much of the above might seem like nice-to-haves, but with engineering firms reporting significant staff shortages, and the cost to replace lost staff being ever-present, talent retention should be at the forefront of your mind. 

A quality engineering workplace, one that suits the needs of every member of your team, that improves efficiency, encourages collaboration and reduces friction, is the key. 

Failure to invest in your workplace is a failure to invest in your people. Talent will leave eventually if you do not meet their ongoing needs. 

Consider the costs involved following an engineer’s resignation. On average, it can cost somewhere in the range of six to nine months’ salary once recruitment costs, training expenses and other losses are accounted for. 

Your costs will vary, of course, but replacing an engineer is incredibly difficult. Make your workplace an irresistible prospect and people will find it significantly more difficult to leave. Even a 10% boost in employee retention can have a significant positive impact on your bottom line. 

The first step is to identify your employees’ daily pain points and what your people want from your workplace. 

You achieve this through dedicated, tailored Workplace Consultancy. Designed to get to the core of what your people need from your workplace, Rhino’s Workplace Consultancy delivers insights that allow you to drive profits, streamline costs and empower your talent. 

You’ll never be able to provide a workplace that suits your varied and unique teams without insights into what your people want and need. Let us help you to determine a plan of action, aligning your property with your people and ensuring your organisation has the space it requires to thrive. 

Talk to our specialists today and let’s get the ball rolling. 

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