New working environments at the National Army Museum

The administrative staff at the National Army Museum were operating within a rigid arrangement of office spaces, originally designed in the 70s. The inflexibility of the configuration of space was severely hindering organisational development and represented a barrier to the evolution of modern working practices.

Flexible environment and cultural shift

To provide greater flexibility and to enable an office environment to be created that would support a cultural shift towards modern ways of working required an entirely different mindset. A simple shift to open plan would not be sufficient, for the following reasons:

• The library dominated the central area of floor space, dividing the available space.
• Legislation required  a host of changes to improve the building’s efficiency
• More space was needed to accommodate all the museum staff, even if the research library could be relocated, as some had overflowed into other pockets of space in the building and currently were separated from their colleagues.

A key objective was that the new workspace should encourage a culture of collaboration and improved communication. A further requirement was to consider adaptability, allowing for future phases of development.

Creative and integrated solution

So a creative solution had to be found that would integrate:

• an understanding of the functional needs of the staff roles and existing work styles
• the behaviour patterns of public visitors to the library
• the processes and document journeys associated with secure manuscript management
• space efficient furniture and storage design concepts
• the new technology requirements and the design parameters which govern the performance of the mechanical services
• an innovative fully coordinated workplace design that would save space, support flexibility and deliver an enjoyable working environment.

A single design concept, incorporating the results of thorough investigations of all people, property and technology factors and how they influence each other, needed to be created to enable project time scales and budgets (both based of traditional expectations) to be met.

It was identified that if the research library could be made 40% more space efficient, it could be relocated to an alternative floor, replacing a small under used, poorly lit exhibition space. This was achieved without any reduction in document storage capacity and with additional functionality designed into the new facility.

Hot desk positions were incorporated and reconfigurable mobile furniture created a multi-purpose environment. The efficiency of the design did not compromise the visual appeal or comfort of the space and the activities of the library processes have been considered and assisted by the design. As a result the research library has become more popular with the public, with opening times extended, and the space is also used for hot desking, meetings and training when not open to the public.

Benefits

The project has brought benefits across a number of fronts:

• The New Research Library’s optional extra functionality provides additional training and conference facility
• The popularity of Research Library has rapidly increased, resulting in longer public opening hours becoming viable and increased revenue
• Despite facilitating the above and extra capacity for growing volume of records, the physical floor space required has been cut by 40%
• The new office space has allowed staff from previously disjointed office accommodation to be brought together into a single environment.
• The design of the new workspace has supported a culture change and modernisation programme, scheduled to coincide with the project.

Overall, it’s provided a more attractive and efficient working environment.  According to National Army Museum Assistant Director Mike O’Connor:

“The Peoplespace approach to design and project management has transformed the quality of our working environment and I am still amazed by the amount of practical attractive space that has been created”

Full case study available under CASE STUDY page

It means developing a strategy, setting up a project team, and project managing an implementation that may incorporate audits of current working practices, consultations, developing the business case, moving or refurbishing property, workplace design, deploying new technologies, training, culture change and developing new policies and protocols.

That can be challenging.  But partial approaches can be costly without delivering the benefits.  For example, an implementation that introduces flexible working time options but not flexible place options may have work-life benefits, but not deliver cost savings or environmental benefits.  Introducing homeworking and desk sharing without addressing workplace culture would probably be a disaster.

No doubt that good management played the majority part in this. But let’s take a peek at the technology part and see if it says anything more to us about how to shape our thinking going forwards.

The teams already had video conferencing in place. They used this regularly, every Monday and Friday, for team meetings. They also had extensive license access to conferencing tools – both Webex and LiveMeeting, as well as IBM’s Sametime.

Despite all of this their collaboration was laborious, consisting mainly of one-way broadcasts from Managers. Sure, they got the job done alright. Yet their team collaboration missed an essential component – interaction.

Once implemented at the end points and through software, these teams became transformed into dynamic collaborators. It impacted not only their meetings but also their time in the office and the time spent away from each project. After all, connecting remotely is easy, changing team performance so that remote connections are dynamic contributors to the ongoing project is something else altogether. And that’s what we should be asking from our technology. It should support the team performance, rather than clutter up our collaboration potential as tools for the virtual and physical meeting rooms of our enterprise.

Traditionally the world of office environment construction and refurbishment has been supported by separated disciplines operating with very different agendas and disconnected methodologies within ‘guarded’ knowledge silos.  These disciplines include architects, construction, mechanical and electrical engineers, human resources, interior designers, ICT consultants, technology providers and furniture suppliers.

Individual providers define themselves by comparing the benefits, services and value for money they offer against the competitors within their particular field.  Each organisation can point to case studies with evidence of the possible benefits delivered by the individual package of work they delivered at a particular stage of a project and within the limitations of their specialist knowledge.  Typically the project development ‘baton’ is handed on from one discipline set to next through the life cycle of the project, guided by the project manager.  When work packages do overlap the project manager may facilitate some coordinaion but in conceptual terms the disciplines largely work in isolation.

Consequently isolated pockets of benefit creation are offered to the client, each with a narrow scope for optimising the results defined by the tradional boundaries of each discipline and the gaps in understanding between them.

I have found that through experience of a combination of challenging projects I have developed the understanding and expertise to deliver a far mor integrated approach to workplace development projects with the ability to provide greater benefits over the traditional linear and compartmentalised standard.  The enhanced benefits included improved cost and space efficiency, more inherent ‘future proofing’ adaptability within the working environments created a faster project delivery.  This methodology soon attracted clients that required solutions to ‘mission impossible’ projects and invitations to contribute to ‘New Ways of Working’ think tanks. 

The additional ingredient of new workstyles provides the opportunity for even greater efficiencies and when include as part of the Integrated Approach the potential benefits ae multiplied to levels that can not be touched by the sum of traditional workstreams.

Technology is now a byword for change and new ways of working in both the public and private sectors. What was once the domain of consultants and psychologists, specialising in the people and process aspects of workplace design and style, the new raft of projects demand implicit understanding and implementation capabilities around technology. But what kind of technology can reshape the way to profitability for an organisation of 3-100,000 people?

Let’s look at 3 criteria for technology in the workplace:

It has to be easy to use. It has to have a walk up or a pick up and use interface. Simple as that. Like the iphone. No training required. Remember a couple of years back when Orange ran specialised workshops in their stores to teach us how to use our phones? Teach us to drill into the detail a couple of menus past the interface in order to get to some decent, useful functionality? 

It has to integrate. Simple as that. Make sure that the technology integrates with our existing buildings, people and processes. Like when you think about video conferencing and how for years the manufacturers didn’t integrate it. Instead they created specialised rooms that only a couple of your colleagues were comfortable using. In the end you usually made an audio call and talked the other side through your slidedeck. 

It has to be scaleable. Simple as that. Asking questions about scaleability in technology is the surest test I know to filter out the fads and gadgets that are about to come to production in the next three years, all with logical marketing claims to be the solution to your collaborative workplace issues.

 Easy to use, integrated, scaleable. Simple as that.

One organisation that has adopted an Integrated Approach to Flexible Working is Islington Council.  Like many councils, Islington has been under pressure to increase efficiency over a number of years.  The Smart Working programme began there in 2005 – delivering better services, more sustainablility and with fewer resources.  Flexible Working has ramped up from departmental initiatives to have an integrated framework that guides Smart Working throughout the Council.  2,400 staff are now set up to work more flexibly, working on a desk-sharing basis.

Starting from a portfolio of arund 40 office buildings, the Council has now released 12 of them, and refurbished 13 as Smart Working environmnets, where the focus is on collaboration rather than working at fixed desks.  This has led to a 10 per centre reduction in accommodation running costs.  According to Paul Savage, Smart Programme Manager at Islington “In an organisation like a Council, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.  So, while building up an integrated framework for delivery, the roll-out of Smart Working in each service has to take account of the particular needs of that srvice, and where they are starting from.”  Paul feels that Smart Working is more relevant than ever in the current economic climate.  “After salaries and property,  facilities are the the biggest costs to councils.  We need the people much more than we need desks, and the more we can cut our overheads, the better we can maintain services.”  Because of the need for integration, flexible work, or “smart working”, implementation is now perhaps emerging as a discipline in itself.

Extract from Flexible Working Supplement, The Guardian, 20.01.2010

I have recently been stuck at home, like many of you, unable to get to work because of the snow, and suddenly, with no warning we are absent from our workplaces.

So what did you do? Were you able to work flexibly? To seamlessly carry on as if you were still in your office? Did you feel the sudden fragility of the way you work? Requiring uninterrupted access to computers, files, and conferring with colleagues, was this all brought into very sharp focus?

It seems to me that only a few months ago we were in a similar situation (potential not actual) with Swine flu and before that Bird flu was an imminent threat. And this brought to mind an article I had read about what the Americans have decided the effects of a pandemic flu outbreak would mean to their country.
They were concerned that the nation’s telecommunications systems would be vulnerable if there was an outbreak of a pandemic flu. The Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, Greg Garcia, expected that 40% of the workforce would not be able to commute to work and that this would compromise the country’s telecommunications systems.

“And you don’t get to pick which 40 percent that could be,” he said during a speech at the New York Metro Infragard Alliance Security Summit. “Naturally, telecommuting (Flexible working) will be a key mechanism to keeping our businesses and government operational during a pandemic flu.”

And in Britain last year, The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that just one day of snow, where about 6.4 million people took the day off, the cost to our economy was a staggering £1.2 billion.

I suppose it is not just coping with outside events both large and small that impact our businesses, but also if the business systems are robust and efficient whilst keeping clients happy and content.

Is flexible working a perk? Something that is added to an employee’s package because it looks good, that the company is a considerate employer. That is just the aperitif, to get you ready for the main meal – the bit that saves your company when others flounder. The business can be more efficient and save overhead costs by using integrated approach to flexible working where people, technology and property are combined to bring the greatest FINANCIAL BENEFITS. It’s not just for the big boys like BT where 110,000 employees work flexibly and this is normal part of their work life. But it is for all. A different mix of the components that makes it work, maybe, but still a business that enables its staff to continue to work, receiving and making calls, meeting colleagues through conferencing and secure remote access to company computer system and not dependant on a particular location. But simultaneously, the office location should not be wasting monies through poor furniture design, layout and support office services, but rather with areas to provide new ways of working such as: collaborative working spaces, hot-desking and some desk sharing with furniture that works for you and not drain resources.

Is Flexible Working a necessity? My answer is YES – It can save money, it can be part of a business’ Continuity Strategy, but it is change and change requires thoughtfulness to those who will be affected, so that the outcome will be a positive collective response. What do you think?

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Total Flexible Working Even When Rock Climbing

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