3rd Jan 2019

Agile working practices that will transform your workplace

Agile working is becoming a bit of a buzzword these days, and it’s no wonder. With advances in technology and design allowing for more flexible working styles and spaces than ever before, someone had to come up with a phrase to describe what was going on.

Businesses taking up agile working practices have reported benefits including increased productivity and a greater sense of wellbeing in the workplace. So, how do you go about introducing these practices into your own business? We’ve put together some of our favourites for you to try.

1. Make Your Space Work For You

Effectively, agile working ignores the traditional ‘one size fits all’ approach to office working.

If you want to become an agile business, you’re going to need to forget the notion that every workstation has one ‘owner’ and instead create spaces around their intended functions.

To give an example, call centre functions will want to encourage concentration and focus space, whilst a technical solutions area may be used for collaboration and innovation. The layout and furnishing of these spaces should be different to encourage these activities.

Designing your office in this way means that you’re providing a range of spaces that meet your peoples’ changing needs. They are ‘agile’.

When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense, and it also opens your people up to being able to work in a more collaborative, productive and shared way.

2. Liberate Your people With Technology

Desk ‘ownership’ came from the fact that people needed a place to sit and work with a pen and paper. And to point out the obvious here, people don’t work in this way anymore.

Laptops are now commonplace and mobile phones have replaced landlines. So why are we still expecting our employees to sit at the same desk all day?

Agile businesses utilise new technologies and allow their staff to work away from their desks or regular workspaces if they want or need to. When people are in the office, they give them access to the right supportive technology to encourage them to do this.

It may be that you think about providing your staff with a focus space and monitors to dock into for report writing, or a place to sit with colleagues and share information on a large display. There is no right or wrong answer here, except that the technology you use needs to assist your people in their work, not hinder them.

Adopting new technologies will allow your staff to work in a more agile way. And it’ll allow you to free up precious office space too!

3. Give Your People More Choice

In recent years there’s been quite a shift towards a more flexible working day. If your business is looking to become more agile, embracing this will definitely help you on your way.

There’s much more emphasis than there ever has been on wellbeing in the workplace, and allowing people to choose their hours of work gives them the opportunity to create a better work/life balance for themselves.

A great way to introduce flexible working into your organisation is to operate over a longer 8am-6pm working day. Your people can then choose which times they work their contacted hours and balance their personal priorities without impacting on holidays or other commitments.

Want to gear up your business for agile working?

If you’re looking to transform your workplace and embrace a new working culture, get in touch with our friendly team to start the conversation.