Plan B Solutions: Independent Workplace Consultants
Workplace Solutions
The workplace services we have been offering clients for 15 years are ideally suited to developing working, and workplace, strategies for the post-pandemic period.
We are working with clients across the UK to answer their key questions:
1. During the COVID-19 pandemic we all saw that for most staff home-based working works. For your organisation, how much home-working should be made to stick and for which staff groups?
2. What does the new, expected level of home working mean for the size of the office which is now necessary, and what mix, and type, of work settings will be required for an organisation with a 'hybrid' workforce
3. How should the 'new' workplace operate in order to:
(i) maximise staff productivity levels and
(ii) optimise the amount of workplace which can be surrendered, sub-let or reassigned for other purposes?
4. Staff behaviours will inevitably evolve as they become used to increased location flexibility and as they are influenced by the choices made by their peers and managers. How can we best track and react to the changes to ensure that we shape the workplace to the people, rather than shape the people to the workplace?
Evidence-based Solutions
We've taken more that 11,000,000 individual work space utilisation measurements - and all those have been done by visual inspection. We've collected and analysed many more using desk and room sensors.
We know an awful lot about how individuals and organisations use workplaces and work settings.
Plan B Solutions calls on these learnings in addition to measuring the specific demands on, and the effectiveness of, your own workplace - to inform the necessary changes to adapt to the ever changing requirements of your workforce.
Workplace evolution is only just beginning
Workplace changes put in place for the end of the 'work from home' directive are only the beginning.
Post lockdown workplaces and post-lockdown working is new to everyone.
No matter what staff think now - about how they will work, what spaces they will use in the office and what activities they will use them for - this will change. It will be affected firstly, as staff preferences evolve as they become more used to their new-given freedoms and secondly, as their own behaviours are affected by the work behaviours and choices made by team mates, peers and managers
Our role as workplace consultants is to ensure that we shape our clients workplaces to their people rather than shape their people to their spaces.
To achieve this requires Workplace Performance: Tracking and Evolution
Workplace Performance Appraisal
By measuring the performance of your current workplaces, we understand how your staff work and how well the workplace supports them. Our analysis ensures we can work with you to evolve areas where improvements are possible whilst retaining what is already working well.
An appraisal may include a number of analyses including a:
- Workplace utilisation study
- Staff satisfaction surveys - including productivity indicators
The performance appraisal may identify that significant benefits can be realised for both staff performance and property costs by working differently.
An advanced working programme will identify how that can be achieved - in terms of the physical workplace and the underlying principles of operation
The best workplace solutions in the world won't work unless the staff are engaged with the change, understand why it's necessary and feel they 'own' the solution themselves.
Participating in the development of their own solution gives staff the best possible incentive to make it work.
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