WORKSPACE DESIGN AS A STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE.

Key Premise - Any workspace can be become a great strategic advantage for a business or can create challenges in company P&L. An intentionally and strategically people centric workspace design can lead to multifold ROI by improving both top line and bottomline metrics.

The space that we use for work has to be intentionally designed to support us in our endeavours individually and as a firm. Here I am going to touch upon the fundamental aspects of a workspace design from the point of view of a workspace being a place where we think, build ideas, create prototypes, strategise & collaborate on market strategies and much more. 

I am also going to touch upon the fact that a lot of times, we keep a very narrow view of the workspace and see it only as a rental cost on our business P&L. I will try to break down the effects of a great workspace and its impact on the broader aspects of a P&L. 

This article is primarily oriented towards the entrepreneurs who work tirelessly for a long time to build something they have dreamt of.

Intentional workspace design can prove to be a strategic advantage for any business if that lens is applied to see workspaces as just a piece of real estate where you go everyday to spend long hours to earn living. 

Let’s get down to fundamentals. Here we are going to take an example of the corporate workspace because I have living proof of such a space and tangible outcomes to fall upon for empirical evidence.  

FIRST PRINCIPLES VIEW OF A WORKSPACE

In any entrepreneurial venture, the business is run by selling products and services to people in the form of solutions to their problem statements. These solutions are ideated by people and at a large scale we need more people to handle various parts of the venture. We also need infrastructure, physical tangible structures and technological devices, gadgets, and softwares to get things done relatively efficiently. 

For everything required to run a business, we need a piece of tangible physical space where a system of people and machines can be built to create new solutions more efficiently and at scale. 

This is where the concept of workspace comes into picture. A piece of real estate where ideas flow, collaborations happen, deep work is done to arrive at meaningful solutions.

A workspace, by its design, can make or break the P&L of an entrepreneurial venture. 

WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity of any entrepreneurial venture is driven by net meaningful output per unit of head. Thus, any workspace that drives higher productivity at people’s front, drives better revenue figures per unit head and thus better margins. 

Returns on investments on the people front can be made really high if the net average output per head is higher. ROI on people is not about paying lower salaries but getting more output for the salaries and other costs deployed. 

ENERGY EFFICIENCY DESIGN

Energy bills from a workspace can create a big pressure on a business P&L. An intelligent design of placement of energy consuming devices can create a larger long term P&L efficiency as compared to unplanned or poorly designed strategy. Every aspect of technology adds to energy consumption of the workspace. The lights, air conditioners, purifiers, access gadgets, fans, laptops, phones, internet devices take up a part of the consumption. 

All of these combined with prudent behaviour of people can lead to high energy savings.  

In a workspace that we designed, we deeply considered the needs of various corners of the space and came up with an aircon combination and placement that is driving deep energy savings for the firm that occupies that space. 

The energy bills from this workspace has been almost 40% of the average energy bills of similar size offices in the same building. This gave us confidence that workspaces can be made more energy efficient just by designing the network of high energy consumption devices in an intelligent manner. 

This, in principle, is driven by mapping business activities in terms of human to human interaction, human to machine interactions and human to space interactions. 

The space that we designed is a living example of human centric design of a workspace. 

FLOW STATE DESIGN

If we look at any space in terms of flow, we arrive at a very unique perspective in design. In any space there is a flow of ideas within the head of an individual, there is a flow of movement from one place to another, flow of group from one room to another, flow of conversations from one person to another, from one person to writing board to another person, from workstation to a wellness area and back to the workstation. From workstation to the restroom and back to workstation. 

When these flows are considered individually and in the context of the working system of the workspace, we also come across the fact that each flow comes in the path of some other flow and gives rise to intersections and interactions. The intersection, when they increase in number or volume within a short span of time can give rise to frustrations in the workforce. 

Thus, it becomes really critical for any designer to take the human centric view of workspace flows and design the space in a way that leads to lower intersections of lower accounts of people coming the way of people. This indirectly results in improved productivity at the workspace.

Flow design of a workspace is a key area of research and interest to me. 

LONG TERM MAINTENANCE COSTS

Every business becomes a success when it is able to control the costs of its P&L on a long term basis. One of the key costs of business P&L is the long term maintenance cost of keeping the place running. Every time a machine breaks down, the maintenance cost comes into picture. Repainting costs add to maintenance. If workstations break down, we have to incur maintenance costs. There are many more areas but the fundamental view remains the same. 

One needs to design the workings of a workspace in a way that long term maintenance costs are as low as possible. 

Thus, the quality and durability of materials used in building the workspace has to be good initially. The usage of every aspect of the workspace should ideally be seen in terms of maximum stress that the aspect can withstand.

Best

Vinod K Meena