Can your next desk pay for itself?…………………………………………..with Smart Working it can
> Halbyn Rich is the lead consultant and innovator specialising in a uniquely integrated approach to workstyle and workplace transformation. He is the Managing Director for Peoplespace Consulting Ltd and a Director of Flexibility Ltd. Read more from this author
Making the most of your office space is a core driver for all of us now
We need to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The good news is that making savings does not have to mean compromising the look, feel or flexibility. An Integrated Approach to workplace design can enable you to cut costs and can be self funding.
There is the bigger picture of Smart Working which I will get to at the end of this article but today, I am just going to focus on one small example that can make your office space work harder for you but always remember to gain the most benefits. Not just the warm fluffy qualitative benefits but proven property release or using floor space more efficiently and reducing ongoing costs what follows is only part, a small slice of what is possible.
Desking
The best selling desk in past years has been the crescent-shaped corner desk and now, there has been the move to flat panel monitors, which do not require the extra depth of the crescent desk, but the old desk design still remains the standard in many offices despite the fact that it was designed to accommodate the cathode ray tube (CRT) computer monitor. So simply selecting furniture designed around today’s technology and today’s work styles will make a huge difference to the space utilisation of your office.
For those of you who are interested in the backstory:
The traditional 800mm depth work top came about as the metric update to the previous 30″/762mm depth but neither was established with computers in mind. The recent arrival of the 670mm deep worktop, just 5″/127mm less than 800mm or only 3.5″/76mm less than the 30″/762mm, is perfect for many modern work styles. This slight alteration can make a big difference to what can be achieved with layout designs.
What to consider:
The productive work surface area (the area the average user can comfortably reach) of a typical traditional crescent desk is 1.5m2. The required floor space for a crescent workstation is 3.2m2. The same amount of productive surface area provided by a modern solution only require floor space of 2.6m2.Even where smaller desk foot prints have been used, if one looks at the actual depth required for the comfortable use of a flat panel monitor or laptop and observe the way the desk is used, it is immediately apparent that the old style desk designs are often not the most effective solution.
To ground this with a realistic example – in small office of say 1200sq ft this could mean a difference between being able to accommodate 19 desk positions or 22.
A difference of 21 per cent
Take a look at the UK office rental costs (2009) for your area and you will see how you could start to make savings. Add on the other costs associated with supporting every square metre, such as, rates, heating, lighting, maintenance etc. To give you an idea of total office costs for a typical (traditional) workstation range from 7K to 22k across the UK.
These new designs can also have a significant positive effect on the sense of space in the work place. Think about moving teams that communicate regularly closer together. If it is not workstations you require but a collaborative team meeting areas these should be possible from the extra space that has been released. Also there are other opportunities to save money – have you thought of work surfaces supported by shared under-frames? These are often cheaper than an individual desk.
So we see that the size and type of desks used can have an immediate effect on making the office area more cost efficient and if this was connected to flexible working or desk sharing or utilising new technologies or part of a strategy to release property you can now envisage how an ‘Integrated Approach’ to Smart working can start to develop.
Let me take you a little deeper into the thought process behind Smart Working if you are new to this concept.
Imagine your business as a body and what keeps your business thriving is the brain. Our business brain is required to do more with less, it has to cut its usage of valuable assets. It has to work smarter making more connections to work more efficiently and using valuable assets more wisely. Just as there is many interlinked neural connections in the biological brain feeding information to the core. We too can use the same principle for an optimal ‘business neural network’, so that we can make the maximum savings as our central ‘core’. What’s my point here – one cannot look at just one or two areas of data imput of how your business functions in isolation (such as – only technology or only changing the desking/furniture) just as in a brain, it is not the size of the brain or the number of neurons within it that makes us smart. It is the number of connections that neurons make with each other which makes us smarter. The connections between multiple pieces of data/ knowledge will and can save a company money, as well as make create a robust business case for Smart Working.
The schematic below shows a neural network showing the process of Integrated Approach as an “Integrated Costs & Benefits Analysis” used in Smart working .
I want to finish with an example that will give you tangible evidence of the benefits. This example is from English Heritage which has introduced new flexible working environments and saved a significant amount of money. The new office arrangements include desk sharing, touchdown areas and flexible meeting spaces designed for more collaborative working.
“with the support of consultants Peoplespace, we have not only saved £1 million of public money over five years in simple accommodations costs, but we have also comfortably achieved more workstations on one floor than we used to have on two. We’ve also created a platform for further flexibility in working practices in the future. The office is brighter, friendlier and altogether a better place to work”.
Dr Andrew Brown the Planning and Development Regional Director of English Heritage
All this in 50% less space and the cherry on the cake is that this project had a return of investment of within one year, and did it cost a fortune ?
No, only about 100k and can be summed up as a particularly good example of a Self Funded Project.
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