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Offices in a Flexible World

In this section we highlight creative approaches to office design and use. We also look at the opportunities for reduction of office costs. We provide guidance on how to find out if your property costs are excessive, and how changing work practices can lead to both improved productivity and cost reduction.

Articles:

Shrinking the office
For many employers, one of the most sought-for benefits of flexible working is to create the potential to reduce office costs.  But moving from aspiration to implementation can be tricky.  How do you know what can be achieved, what are the steps you need to take to maximise the benefits and how do you get everyone to buy into the process?

Sharing space - the final frontier?
Desk sharing - often characterised or caricatured as "hotdesking" - is often a concept too far for people who otherwise want more flexibility.  As they say in Switzerland, "Love your neighbour - but don't tear down the fences yet".
Here we look at the arguments for desk sharing in the context of flexible work, and how to get it right.

Flexible work needs flexible workplaces
We profile the Guildford-based Worklife Centre, which specialises in advising on and kitting out flexible working environments.

Do computers have to look so ugly? Not if they look like this!
Style on the outside, technology on the inside. This is the motto of PowerDesk, a company producing "intelligent furniture" for the office and the home office. If you want a bit of class and more elbow room in the office, one of these should do the trick.

Hot-desking in your part-time office
Your staff have a variable need for space.  Maybe it doesn't make sense any more to add to your fixed costs with property that may be vacant half the time.  We profile a third-party serviced "hot-desking" solution.

Know your space: measure for change
HOP Associates has developed an online tool to help those responsible for office accommodation make the most of the space available. Using this tool in the context of a flexible working programme can reduce dramatically the demand for office space, with the case for change built on solid data.

Property, facilities, output and productivity
What impact does your investment in property and the way you manage it have on business output and productivity? We profile the work of Occupier.org who are building up an online knowledge base of studies looking at the relationship between property and facilities on the one hand, and corporate output and productivity on the other.

Fun in the office
The recruitment firm Office Angels surveyed 1500 workers and employers to find out what would make offices better to work in. Football, pets and more natural air and light featured in the list.

Guide to flexible facilities
A mini-series this - 7 pages looking at how to develop the flexible office.

Tomorrow's Office
Review of a book illustrating innovative best practice and advocating an holistic approach to workplace redesign 

The office is dead?
Flexibility takes an unfashionable look at the history of the offices and assumptions about their future

The case for 
Flexible Offices

Your staff are working more efficiently and flexibly, from a variety of locations. You've introduced teleworking from home, from touch-down centres and on the move. 

But what about the office - is it still geared to yesterday's style of work?

New ways of working allow - or should we say require? - office locations to be looked at afresh. There will still be a need for meetings, for creative human interaction, for specialised activities which cannot be undertaken remotely. But are the premises set up for it?