How to get started with Hybrid Office Design

Hybrid, by its very nature, supports multiple working environments. To succeed, you need to create a seamless experience between remote locations and offices so your employees feel supported to be flexible and empowered to collaborate with colleagues from anywhere.

So, let’s unpack the five steps you need to take to redesign your office for hybrid working and some examples of organisations leading the way. 

Speak to your people

To ensure any change in your workplace will succeed, you first need to understand your people, the way they work and what is important to them. You can do this through surveys, interviews and observations.

The average workplace is only utilised to 35-50% of its potential. Without an understanding of your office, and how it is currently utilised, it is impossible to know if you are making the right decisions and receiving the expected ROI.

Then you need to get buy-in. Studies show that 40% of office workers waste up to 30 minutes a day searching for space to collaborate, so you’d hope they’d be keen for change. 

Calculate the value of your space

To effectively plan and work out the most successful hybrid workplace, you need to know what value your space has and the potential costs. This way you can reinforce your plans with a robust business case and highlight key recommendations for the future.

Understand how your spaces are used

Knowing whether a space is occupied or not is essential, but it’s not the complete picture of hybrid office design. To create a workplace that empowers your people and hybrid working, you also need to understand:

• Space utilisation rates – knowing when spaces are used, and the availability of that space assists you in making decisions about the type, number and size of facilities needed.
• Resource usage – looking at the resources your people are using and the tasks they help to achieve lets you plan which investments to make.
• How your people work together – understanding the way your people communicate allows you to identify the location, number, size and style of spaces needed.
• When workspaces are not used – tracking indicates whether you need to look at different options such as the introduction of collaboration zones or the development of new processes like ad hoc booking systems.

Make a plan and execute

Once the research is done and you understand your people, process, technology and workplace, it’s time to make a plan.

First, take the data from your occupancy study and answer each of the following questions:

• How many meeting rooms do we need?
• What types of meeting rooms should we have?
• What booking system should we install?
• What other resources and technology requirements are there?
• How will we measure and report on utilisation?
• How can we communicate through our office space using digital signage?

Review your approach

Once you’ve rolled out your changes, you should introduce regular opportunities to review your workplace and look for improvements. These reviews should consider key metrics like employee engagement, retention, cost savings and occupancy.

Contact us

If you would like to chat about Hybrid Office Design and how RICOH spaces could help you, find out more or visit Ricoh today: RICOH Spaces | Workplace Services | Ricoh | Ricoh United Kingdom

Ricoh is an awarded supplier on our MFD and Managed Services frameworks.