Try and imagine for a moment that you are considering moving with your family to a new apartment or house. You will probably start by taking into account haw many of you will live in the new home, what rooms you will need and what your family will use the individual rooms for. You will certainly think about how a new sofa would look in the living room, and you won’t be able to resist looking at the website of your favourite furniture producer. However, you also well know that a new sofa alone is not going to guarantee the satisfaction of your family with a new home. True satisfaction comes from listening to your family; ask and take an interest in their opinions, and try to incorporate their requirements into the final result. Only in such a home, built on firm foundations, will you all be happy and content in the future.
The same approach should be taken when moving into new offices, but unfortunately in practice this generally does not happen. Yes, the first step regarding the number of people and division of space is done almost every time, but it is interesting how often firms then have purely symbolic discussions and work primarily to sort out the visual aspects of the whole office. Instead of firms devoting sufficient time to people, their motivations and requirements they unfortunately march quickly into the future forgetting that they are committing the standard “about us, without us” mistake. The satisfaction of people with anything they do not understand, don’t believe in or don’t agree with is always going to be low.
Firms must not forget that a new office should serve the purpose of enabling people to do their work as best they know how. We help firms deal with the transformation of office spaces. We start with the needs and requirements of people, and then analyse the company as a whole – its long-term vision and strategy, organisation structure and main processes. As is the case with a family choosing a new house, there are bound to be some disagreements in the company environment regarding office space, and within the company it is also necessary to find a common solution. We look for areas of agreement and synergies; we know how to bring people together and solve with them their requirements, and we engage them in the whole process. We don’t just listen to employees, but we also use our know-how and best practice to interpret user requirements into a brief for the architectural study, which will therefore have firm foundations. Our mission is simple – an office must be adjusted to suit people and not the other way round.
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