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We’re experienced workplace strategy consultants
We’ve successfully introduced radical workplace strategies at some of the world’s biggest companies.
What we do as workplace strategy consultants
We work with C-suite leaders to answer two questions:
- What is your business trying to achieve?
- What role does the workplace play?
We optimize the use of office space and technology to deliver improved workforce productivity and create enhanced workplace experiences for your staff, aligned to your overall strategy and vision.
How we deliver successful workplace transformation strategies
An evidence-based, tailored workplace strategy will make your business more effective. We’ll help you discover and implement the best workplace designs, technologies and practices that meet your business and workforce needs.
Develop the future workplace vision
Working with your leadership, we gain a clear understanding of the goals, opportunities and challenges your organization faces, in order to create a vision of what the future workplace could look like.
Understand what’s happening
The next step is to learn how your company currently operates. This involves analyzing day-to-day activities across the organization. We do this by conducting workshops and interviews with employees at every level. We use a range of tools to collect a wide range of data, including algorithm-assisted staff surveys, utilization studies and digital sensors.
Assess the workplace data
The combined information is analyzed to provide us with an understanding of how work gets done. The data is then entered into a space modelling tool to show how the workplace could be adapted, depending on your business priorities. This essential step not only accounts for peaks and troughs in staff attendance throughout the week, but anticipates how developments in technology, such as AI, will impact the size, nature and structure of your organization.
Visualize the future
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine the revolutionary effect of a newly refitted workplace, so our in-house designer provides concept drawings of the proposed layouts.
Principles for the future
In collaboration with your senior management, we produce company-specific playbooks so that our evidence-based results can be replicated across departments and across continents.
Why is it important to have a workplace strategy?
The workplace strategy process plays a crucial role in determining how successful your business will be. After all, an organization is only as effective as the people it employs. A holistic workplace strategy will build trust with employees and empowers people to be as productive as possible by enabling them to dedicate their time to achieving results, rather that overcoming internal obstacles.
A workplace strategy optimizes available space capacity to accommodate the demands of various teams and workstyles. For example, a workplace should not only include quiet focus zones for independent work, but collaborative spaces where people can come together to share ideas.
The battle to recruit and retain staff is more competitive than ever. A high-quality workplace becomes a key asset in ongoing talent wars.
Our approach to workplace strategy reflects keys industry trends:
- Before the pandemic, most workspaces were only utilized 50% of the time.
- The number of people working remotely, flexibly or hybrid will continue to increase in the coming years.
0
%
of workers think their home environment enables them to work productively – compared to less than 63% for the average office
- Empty offices are bad for business – they not only cost money, but erode team cohesion and productivity.
What makes us the leading workplace strategy consultancy?
At AWA, we’ve been helping organizations transform their workplaces for more than 30 years.
Scientific research and in-depth knowledge of neuroscience underpin our approach to workplace strategy. We use the six factors we have identified to matter most for high performing teams to assess how your teams, workplace and hybrid policies are working. We also run one of the world’s largest hybrid working indexes, tracking the evolution of hybrid working strategies and office rate attendance.
Traditional methods for modelling and managing space occupancy are limited and don’t address the complexity of the modern workforce. Hybrid working brings enormous opportunities, but these can only be addressed by ensuring that appropriate technology is in place for employees to collaborate from several locations at once.
Here are some more reasons why we’re uniquely well-placed to assist your organization:
- We understand the challenges your business faces, but don’t have pre-packaged solutions.
- We tailor our approach to align with the needs of your company.
- Our agile team are experts in the field with decades of experience.
- We are global yet local with associates and offices around the world.
- We deliver independent, industry-leading services tailored to local sensitivities.
- We are focused on revolutionising the world of work and our track record speaks for itself. For example, we saved WTW $100m per year. Learn about some of the workplace strategies we have successfully overseen by reading the case studies below.
Learn more about workplace strategy
FAQ’s about Workplace Strategy
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A workplace strategy is a comprehensive document that sets out how best to organize work and your workplace experience to meet business goals. Typically, a workplace strategy involves the following:
- Workplace Experience: defining a unique, second by second multi-sensory competitive experience that delivers on pre-defined purposes and missions.
- Utilization: Optimizing physical spaces to support employee needs.
- Work Models: Designing flexible working models (e.g., hybrid or remote).
- Employee Well-being: Creating environments that enhance productivity and wellbeing.
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A well-crafted workplace strategy can deliver multiple benefits:
- Alignment: Ensures alignment between work, workplace investments, and strategic business priorities.
- Increased Efficiency: Streamline operations and maximize space usage.
- Enhanced Productivity: Foster environments that support employee focus and collaboration.
- Cost Reduction: Optimize resource allocation and reduce unnecessary expenses.
- Flexibility: recognizes the degree to which work and workplace arrangements need to be capable of rapid change.
- Carbon: Defines the best ways to work and deliver the workplace in order to support sustainability and carbon reduction goals
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Offices are expensive, carbon-generating, inflexible investments. Before you decide upon your workplace investment it is best advised to work with a Workplace Strategist to define your workplace strategy. A workplace strategy is essential to:
- Ensure you are deriving the maximum business benefit from your work and workplace arrangements.
- Enable your business to adapt by staying agile in a shifting business landscape.
- Boost employee engagement by creating a work environment that supports employees’ diverse needs.
- Future-proof your business by ensuring your workplace evolves with your company’s growth and technological advancements.
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A workplace strategy consultant is responsible for maximizing the value that a business receives from its workplace. Typically, a workplace strategy consultant will use a combination of quantitative (e.g. desk-utilization stats) and qualitative (e.g. employee interviews)data to understand how well your current workplace is serving its function. They will then work with you to create an improved workplace strategy that better aligns with your business’s long-term needs and goals.
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There are a number of scenarios in which the services provided by a workplace strategy consultant become particularly valuable. These include:
- If you are looking to relocate: a workplace strategist will be able to 1) advise on the search criteria you use to select a new office space, and 2) help you design the new space so as to get maximum value from it.
- If you are looking to remodel your existing workplace: a workplace strategist will be able to evaluate how well the existing model is working and how it might be improved to better achieve your business goals.
- More generally, if you do not feel that your workplace is adequately set up to meet your business needs: a workplace strategist will be able to help you understand precisely where things are going wrong and how they can be fixed.