Our client was a major Global Bank with a significant Investment Banking unit based on London. As part of their London Property Strategy our client was to relocate their back office activities to a building more suited to their activities. As part of this relocation our client wished to implement Advanced Working to enable 4,200 staff to occupy a building providing 3,600 workstations using a pre-existing set of spaces and furniture. AWA undertook a series of studies to establish the feasibility of achieving the change involving:
- Detailed Workplace Utilisation studies 4 observations a day over a 2 week period covering traditional desks, meeting rooms, social spaces, restaurants and cafeteria
- Business Needs Interviews with senior Business Managers to establish future business and workplace needs including business appreciation, headcount forecasts, specific needs etc.
- On-line Workplace Effectiveness Questionnaires in which all staff were invited to provide quantified information covering: perceptions of existing workplaces, workstyles information, perceived IT mobility constraints, attitudes to work flexibility.
- Job Needs Analysis to assess the detailed workplace needs of specific communities of jobs.
- Infrastructure Reviews (building, telephony and IT) - to establish the appropriateness of building infrastructure (Power, Air conditioning, Fire evacuation, toilet provision, structural constraints) to support the intense occupation of the building and IT (applications access, file storage, hardware, networking, remote access, mobile technology, printing) to establish enablers and constraints to mobility.
From the studies, Workplace Propositions were developed setting out for each group:
- The number of spaces needed by each occupying group.
- Furniture and storage solutions.
- Sharing ratio's (occupiers to desks).
- Proportion of staff in each of 4 Workstyles.
- The relative need for co-location of each group leading to a stack plan
For each building:
- The technology constraints and changes/workarounds needed to enable mobility (IT, Telephony)
- The constraints the building infrastructure posed and potential solutions to overcome them.
AWA worked with the Project Leaders and other senior members of the Group Property function to secure the understanding and commitment of senior business leaders of occupying groups and their teams.
AWA designed and facilitating a Workstyles Change Management programme that made sure that all staff were fully prepared mentally for the change and that morale remained high and business disruption minimised. AWA worked as a prominent member of the project team providing guidance to workstream leaders (IT, telephony, interior designers) to ensure their solutions met the spirit of the Workplace Proposition and that project processes and timescales took recognition of behavioural change programmes.
