Hybrid working is more than a workplace strategy. It provides employees with a sense of freedom and flexibility to structure their working week in a dynamic and personal way. This flexibility can improve work-life balance and supports productivity and overall health and wellbeing at work.

Because of this flexibility, the way we use the office has changed. The home workstation may be well-suited to activities that require concentration or privacy, such as focused reading or writing, webinars, private telephone conversations and other similar tasks. Still, the past few years have demonstrated just how effective a well-managed office can be for those more collaborative activities, the social side of work life and building culture.

Creating memorable workplace experiences

Considering this shift, organisations are increasingly recognising the value in transforming offices into destinations that encourage connection and experiences where social interaction sparks workplace creativity. And there is data to back this up. Research by workplace experience and measurement expert Leesman has found that 82% of employees feel more supported collaborating on creative work in the office than at home. The more opportunities and environments employees have for collaborative work in teams with a shared outcome, the more engaged they are likely to be.

In the office, facilities management providers play an important role in supporting the connections between employees. By ensuring the spaces where employees work are exceptionally maintained, accessible and fully equipped with the technology and resources to support daily activities, facilities managers can make sure the day in the office delivers the best and most productive experience possible.

Creating the office as a collaborative working destination

Employees who have chosen to come into the office often arrive with a plan for their day. Their diary is set for collaborative meetings, one-to-one sessions over a coffee or group presentations. And at the end of the day, they might stay for a game of table tennis or a team workout class.

It is important to have a variety of well-maintained spaces that suit different activity-based work styles and cater for individual needs. Offices need well-lit collaborative working spaces with enough chairs and AV equipment at the ready for teams to get together and thrash out ideas. They also need spaces for individual-focused work with enough clean and tidy hot desks to work from, soundproof pods for telephone calls and quiet zones for reading.

But it isn’t just about the physical workspace. It’s about the experience employees and visitors have. At Anabas, our small decencies approach considers every aspect of the office experience and takes ownership of the finer details of soft FM services to elevate the experience of a building and its services from good to exceptional. By relentlessly focusing on the details and continuously evaluating the space and what employees need to perform their best, in a welcoming and engaging way, our facilities managers are helping to improve our clients’ workspaces for a five-star experience.

Anabas ensures that when employees come to the office, the environment inspires collaboration and productivity across the team; and like any tidy, well-appointed environment, this is where culture thrives. The home workstation can help bring people together virtually, but it can’t replicate human interaction or replace our innate need for it.

Retrofitting to encourage collaboration

Much of the focus on retrofitting is rightly about the need to decarbonise buildings by upgrading structures, systems, and components. But it also presents an incredible opportunity to enhance the comfort and effectiveness for employees and other occupiers who are using the workplace.

Retrofitting provides an opportunity to upgrade and re-evaluate an office space and what employees need to work effectively in it. Upgrades to building systems that improve the indoor environment, including air quality and comfort related to environmental factors, for example, add significantly to employee experience.

Implementing smart technology to track workplace usage arms facilities teams to take a proactive approach to operations like cleaning and hygiene, too. These insights provide operatives with patterns in footfall and can enable them to monitor things like when refills are needed, and when spaces are empty enough for deep cleaning. Retrofitting buildings and using data to drive the facilities operations within them can help businesses realise a range of benefits including cost and energy savings, as well as creating more comfortable and enjoyable workplace experiences for employees to collaborate.

Managing this broad range of spaces and activities is at the heart of what we do at Anabas. Our operational team creates engaging and inviting workspaces that do what home spaces can’t – bring people together and create a sense of community at work that people want to be part of.

Next week, in the final chapter of our Finer Details blog series, we explore building relationships at work.