How Employee-Centric Approaches Are Shaping the Future Workplace | Oktra
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  • HR & Real Estate: How Employee-Centric Approaches Are Shaping the Future Workplace

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Patrick Isitt
Senior Content Manager
Content specialist in office design and build.

  • A lot of stakeholders are involved in commercial real estate decisions. These include investors, lenders, developers, designers, board members and managers. But should employees be on that list?

    According to research, the answer is a resounding yes. Or at least it should be. 80% of human resources (HR) professionals say they would engage with employees when looking at office moves.

    In this article, we’ll delve deeper into the findings and explore the growing role of HR in commercial real estate decisions.

  • HR and real estate – a burgeoning relationship

    Broadly speaking, human resources is the part of a business that deals with decisions about the workforce. They handle or assist with hiring, onboarding and offboarding when people leave. Additionally, many HR professionals are a middle party between staff and management. Employees can voice their concerns to HR, whether it’s about other team members or company policies.

  • This is the potential role of HR when it comes to selecting office spaces. For large companies, it’s impractical to give all staff a say on commercial real estate. Instead, an HR professional can act on their behalf.

    In other words, HR could become “the voice of employees, assuming a more prominent role in shaping the corporate conversation and, by extension, real estate choices,” according to Checkout.com’s Director of Real Estate and Workplace Transformation, Charles Mirisola.

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  • Benefits of HR when selecting an office

    To learn more about the potential role of HR when selecting office spaces, Savills surveyed HR professionals from various sectors, collectively representing over 150,000 employees.

    Four in five HR professionals said they would involve employees in their next office move. But why?

    To begin with, 90% agreed that real estate is an important tool in attracting and retaining talent. Additionally, three in five respondents agreed that greater HR participation in office relocations could enhance staff retention.

  • That’s not all. The report highlighted several areas of business where HR professionals are dissatisfied, despite acknowledging their importance. For example, 60% ranked productivity as a highly important factor, but just 28% said they were satisfied with their company’s performance.

    Similarly, health and well-being scored 44% for high importance and 21% for satisfaction, while amenity and facilities scored just 16% for satisfaction with the same 44% for high importance. In short, companies are underperforming across the board – and office spaces are playing their part.

     

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  • How can HR help?

    In the survey, 43% said that they could be influential when choosing the type of office space, while 42% said the same for the size of the office space. In other words, HR isn’t just there for hiring – they can represent the workforce when it comes to choosing and designing office spaces.

    Of course, it isn’t about guesswork. HR teams can gather data to answer key questions for business owners and managers, as well as office designers, such as:

    • Office usage – Which spaces are used? What are they used for? When are they used? Who are they used by?
    • Employee preferences – What kind of workspaces do employees prefer, such as open-plan and collaborative or quiet and enclosed? Which breakout areas are most popular?
    • Workplace satisfaction – How satisfied are employees with the status quo? What is missing from the current office? Are they happy with their work-life balance?
    • Performance metrics – How is the company performing in terms of productivity, employee wellbeing and ESG?

  • All of this allows key stakeholders to make more informed decisions when it comes to the right office for their workforce. After all, it’s the workforce who will be using the office day in, day out.

    Offices should look the part to impress clients and other visitors, but they also need to be functionally on point so your team can perform at their best and your business can grow.

    Giving employees more control over their workspace can result in better engagement, satisfaction and staff retention. HR plays a key role in this, but it’s up to companies to bring them into the decision-making process.

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  • Inclusive Workplace Design Report

    Download The Inclusive Workplace Report to discover insights from 1,000 full-time employees on how workplace design impacts productivity, engagement, and overall job satisfaction.

    Find Out More
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  • Employee-centric design examples

    Oktra encourages an employee-centric approach to all office design and fit-out projects. There are countless offices that have been tailored to how employees work and what they want – here are three outstanding examples:

  • Deliveroo

    Deliveroo’s London office is strategically designed to encourage movement with a central spine that opens up the central area.

    Employees have a wide range of workspaces to choose from, including acoustically protected call pods, meeting rooms, touchdown tables and long benches.

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  • YouTube

    YouTube’s Creative Studio enables agile working within a small floorplate. It uses mobile partitions to facilitate lots of different environments in an open-plan space.

    This allows employees to create a large meeting space or multiple, smaller rooms. Because the moveable walls are made from cork, they can be used to pin assets up for mind maps or presentations.

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  • Trayport

    Trayport’s office features a central breakout space that draws employees in to encourage social interaction. The large teapoint is paired with a central bar, allowing staff to socialise away from the main workspace. Crucially, they also have a choice of phone booths, Zoom rooms and meeting rooms with AV conferencing solutions to connect their hybrid workforce.

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  • What do your employees want from their workspace? 

    The verdict is in – employees are crucial when it comes to the design of the future workplace. Co-designing offices with their users enhances ownership, in turn boosting engagement with the space.

    HR teams provide a simple and effective way to gauge employee opinions, monitor office usage and measure performance, which can shape how you design or remodel your workspace.

    Oktra can work with your internal findings or assist you with workplace consultancy, before designing an office that’s tailored to your team. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help, don’t hesitate to request a call back from our team.

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