Optimising Space

The most effective way to determine your office requirements

Reviewing your office spaces

With over a third of offices left empty every week across the world⁷, many leaders are considering downsizing their workplaces and replacing them with carefully curated spaces that suit new ways of working.

If you know how your people are using office spaces, or collaboration software, you’ll be better placed to meet their evolving needs and provide frictionless experiences. Sometimes, the barriers to a seamless workplace experience are unknown to business leaders and can be as small as finding quiet spaces for concentrated work or reserving a car park spot.

Basically, you need the insights from your people to ensure you’re making the right decisions and investments.

⁶Opinion Matters & Ricoh research, “Prioritising fulfilment to power productivity”, February 2024
⁷Insurance Journal, More Than One-Third of Desks Globally Sit Empty All Week Long: Report

Maximising the use of smart technology

Gathering insights on what your people want out of their workplace is essential to help you start planning an optimised environment.

One way to do this is to use data-gathering technology to map out space utilisation, employee behaviour and environmental impact, such as room sensors and air quality scanners. This data can then help you fine-tune your office spaces, introduce new workplace policies, or make new ESG decisions that benefit your people and business. Ultimately, it will help you make the right investments to meet your employees’ needs.

Being able to support flexible working

Rather than treating working from home and office work as two separate entities, creating a consistent experience through your hybrid workplace is key. For example, ensuring remote collaboration tools and hardware are equally accessible whether remote or in-person.

The move to the new office was a physical change, but significantly it was a change in working practice and business structure. The impact of Ricoh’s expertise and experience was enabling us to make that jump painless and smooth. It meant we could move from the old, small-office, limited-communication environment to an open-plan office that is far more conducive to collaborative working.

Duncan Brown
Finance Director
______________________________________________