Knowledge on Workplace strategy.
Strategic articles touching on workplace strategy, selected for boards preparing a workplace investment.
Workplace strategy answers a narrow set of questions before design starts: what the office is for, how many people it has to serve, which activities need to be supported on site and which do not, and how presence will actually be organised. Without those answers a design brief is a list of preferences, and a fit-out becomes an expensive interpretation exercise.
The work is mostly quantitative. Occupancy data, hiring plans, meeting patterns and travel times give a defensible basis for a space programme. The qualitative part, culture and behaviour, matters, but it should shape how the space works rather than how much of it is leased.
Independence matters here more than in any other phase. A party that also sells design, construction or furniture has a structural interest in a larger programme. Our only output is advice, which is why boards use us for the decision that sets the budget.
Find the right article.
Return-to-office strategy: beyond the mandate
Mandates produce attendance numbers and resentment, not a working organisation. A real return-to-office strategy aligns building, working model and talent on a single posture.
Multi-year housing strategy: the document the board should defend by
Most organisations confuse a lease overview with a housing strategy. A real strategy makes a decade of decisions defensible, and replaces ad-hoc bets with a coherent posture.
A life-sciences headquarters: where labs and offices share strategy, not just a postcode
Life-sciences headquarters integrate lab, office and regulated-process functions under one strategic frame. The default of separating them by building costs more, financially and scientifically.
Workplace strategy vs. office design: why the order decides everything
Two terms often used interchangeably, and one choice in their order that separates a workplace that fits from one that's merely beautiful.
Frequently asked questions
- How is workplace strategy different from office design?
- Strategy decides what the office has to achieve and how much space that requires. Design decides how that space looks and works. Strategy comes first, and a design process cannot compensate for its absence.
- How much space do we actually need?
- That follows from measured occupancy, activity mix and a tested growth assumption, not from a ratio per employee. Most organisations that measure properly find they need less space of a higher quality.
- How long does a workplace strategy take?
- Typically six to twelve weeks for a mid-sized organisation, including data collection, stakeholder sessions and a documented space programme.
Before the first decision is made.
A strategy session is the moment to clarify your context and the strategic choices around your workspace investment, before design and construction set the direction.