18th Nov 2022
How to Encourage Agile Working
Agile working is all about bringing people, processes and technology together to enable your business to do great things. It’s about increasing flexibility and adapting to the changing needs of your employees. And we all know that things change quickly in the working world these days!
It sounds brilliant, but it can be tricky to encourage people to embrace agile working.
The benefits of getting it right are worth the time investment though, and that’s why we’re sharing our top tips with you.
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Invest in your workspace
Investing in your workplace is one of the most effective ways to encourage agile working. Design your office to meet the changing needs of your team, and people will be more collaborative and productive.
Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all here. What works for one company might not work for another. To ensure your team benefit from the changes you make, it’s best to engage a workplace consultancy. So you can then create an office environment to support whatever that looks like for your people.
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Ensure a work-life balance
Wellness is an important aspect of any workplace. It’s especially essential when you want to encourage agile working. That’s because when you give people more flexibility, they could be in danger of overworking themselves if you don’t provide clear guidance.
First thing’s first, create a wellbeing strategy. This will help you ensure you’re doing things to make your team feel valued and supported, and in return, they’re more likely to work effectively.
A wellbeing strategy is about more than just allowing a day off for mental health or giving someone a gym membership. It’s about creating a good work-life balance for your team and giving them the tools and support to succeed. This counts for remote workers too. Make sure they have everything they need to work at their best from wherever they are.
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Embrace technology
Workplace technology empowers people to work how and where they choose (i.e. be more agile!). There are countless tools that you can install at your office to support both in-office and remote workers to work in more agile ways.
For example:
- Meeting spaces with HD video conferencing
- Digital interactive displays with remote connections
- Intuitive room booking systems
- Meeting pods of various sizes
- Flexible furniture
- Private spaces to focus
If you want to try out some of the latest office tech, you’ll find a lot of things on the list above in our office, WorkLife Central. Please do get in touch and book a visit!
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Make ‘agile’ part of the culture
If you do all of the things we’ve just talked about, you’ll be on your way to normalising agile working as part of your business.
To start with, you’ll need to give people guidance on what they can do to work in more agile ways. But the more people get used to it, the more it becomes part of the day to day culture.
Some of the benefits reported by companies that have successfully embraced an agile working culture include:
- Increased retention
- Higher productivity
- A greater sense of workplace wellbeing
- Reduced carbon footprint
In conclusion
Ultimately, to encourage agile working, your whole working setup should be geared towards what your people need to do, and how they need to do it. Starting with these things in mind from the word go will help you create an agile working environment where people are empowered to decide how and where they work best.
Encourage agile working at your workplace
If you’re looking to transform your workplace into a more productive, efficient and successful environment where your people thrive, we can help.
Get in touch to talk to one of our experienced workplace consultants about your office.