Here are some top tips, if you're looking to reimagine your current lease hold office space or planning to downsize your current office.

Think Holistically

- Avoid desk planning for your entire head count unless absolutely necessary.   Successful modern workplace cultures often foster collaboration and productivity through multiuse work environments. 

- Create multifunctional work areas.  Create brainstorming areas, hot desking zones, private spaces, open working areas for teams, formal and informal meeting rooms and advanced IT allow desk booking management and online working.

Do more, with less

- monitor your onsite access activity before planning.  It's very common today for employees to work 3 days in the office and 2 at home.  The typical office utilisation can fluctuate from as little as 15% on a Friday to 70% on a Wednesday.

• Empty offices are dull, cost money and are not generally productive and healthy places to work
• Ask teams to structure their weekly visits to balance out office occupancy
• Ask colleagues to use online meeting platforms like Teams or Zoom to fee up non-essential board rooms, saving you money!
• Look to adapt your current Job Descriptions to enable hybrid working and encourage homeworking, when possible
• Consider hot desk memberships or small cheaper satellite office spaces for those wanting to work near home.  Apps like NearU allow seamless access to desks, meeting rooms and offices nation wide.
• Review your working policies and ensure it is aligned to your recruitment strategies for hybrid and office working.

Enable a healthy and happy workforce

- Review your wellbeing strategy, healthcare policies and physical work environment.  Boost your staffs productivity by improving access to a verity of amenities and wellness programs.

• Look to add or adjust your private medical plan to incorporate free or reduced price gym memberships.  Schemes like Vitality Health are great for promotions like this
• Review the onsite facilities before taking a new office.  Look for wellness rooms, gyms, café areas, Zen rooms, Prayer rooms, Studio spaces, outside space and even the types of foods and drinks sold in onsite cafes
• Add more optional work perks, like charity work days off, offsite team building events, cycle to work schemes, appoint a mental health awareness person (check out Mind) or allow pets into work or certain days

Ultimately, there is huge amount of activity and work that you can do to improve workplace productivity and wellbeing.  Simply start with creating a productive and welcoming workspaces and ask your team what they'd like to see!