eGuide: Stay or Go? Choosing to relocate of refurbish when making office changes

The ever-evolving face of the office

The workplace has been in the spotlight more than ever in recent years. Over the course of the pandemic, organisations rushed to implement remote and home working solutions, which over time gradually transformed into hybrid working.

The ever-evolving face of the office

The workplace has been in the spotlight more than ever in recent years. Over the course of the pandemic, organisations rushed to implement remote and home working solutions, which over time gradually transformed into hybrid working.

More recently, the office has seen a revival as a hub, not just for close collaborative working and visibility across the business for the management team, but also as a supportive space for workers, many of whom had become isolated over long periods of home working.

Younger workers in particular miss out on the social and mentoring opportunities the workplace provides, as well as the buzz of a shared space that provides a vital opportunity for businesses to embody their brand ethos and values.

There’s no doubt the office is here to stay –although the shape of it is continually changing. With these upheavals in working patterns taking place over the last few years, many businesses have exited the pandemic feeling that their existing workspace is no longer fit for purpose.

Harnessing new ways of working

Businesses have changed the way they work in the last few years, with many adopting models of hybrid and location-independent working and leveraging new technologies to enable people to work how, where and when they choose.

Although the rise in new ways of working has been driven in part by the pandemic, many have discovered a host of additional benefits, including improved collaboration and productivity, reduced operating costs, reduced time lost to commuting, and improved carbon footprint to name a few.

This provides a huge opportunity for organisations to rethink their physical workspace, with the move away from 1:1 staff-to-desk ratios towards agile and activity-based work settings meaning that the amount of space a business needs, and the way that space is used, can dramatically change.

All change

Rethinking the way you work and the spaces, technologies and work settings that support your business can help you become more innovative, competitive and adaptable. The question is –should you stay and remodel your existing space, or look for somewhere new? In this guide, we help you navigate that decision, weighing up the key drivers and factors you need to take into account.

Understanding the drivers for change

Organisations rarely invest in dramatic workplace change without a compelling underlying reason. Considering the time, resources and potential disruption involved, it’s a serious decision that is always driven to a large extent by necessity.

Workplace change is usually a response to a change in the wider business and the context in which it operates. These changes generally fall into one of three broad categories:

Organisational

• Property drivers

drivers

Financial drivers

Your reasons for change may fall into more than one of these categories, and it’s important to understand how these different drivers interact with one another.

Organisational drivers

One of the foremost reasons for workspace change is when the organisation changes, and the current space no longer suits your needs. This can happen when a business goes through a period of rapid growth or downsizing, when a merger or acquisition is taking place, or when the business restructures or adopts new ways of working – such as agile, activitybased or hybrid working.

Mapping the details of your organisational change is vital to enabling you to make an informed decision about how your workspace needs to change. There may be an imperative to move – for example if relocation is an unavoidable part of a merger or restructure. On the other hand, there may be compelling reasons to adapt your existing space – for example when transitioning to a new way of working that can’t wait until the next lease event.

Understanding the details of the required changes, being able to put different needs in priority order, and put a timeline to proposed changes, is the first step in the decision-making journey.

Financial drivers

Sometimes workspace change is driven by financial imperatives. If a business is looking to rationalise costs, evaluating property needs is one way to reduce unnecessary expenditure. What’s most important here is a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, taking into account all the implications of your decision.

You may assume that moving office will be more expensive than staying put and remodelling, but that isn’t always the case. There may be opportunities to move to a more affordable location that still provides everything you need. On the other hand, you may be able to reduce costs by handing back some of your existing space to the landlord, or even subletting or running a coworking space.

In this case, it’s worth speaking to commercial property agents to find out what your options are, as well as consulting with workspace consultants to weigh up the comparative costs of remodelling your current space versus the move to a new space.

Property drivers

Sometimes workspace change is driven by an external factor – namely, an upcoming lease event. Lease breaks or expiries represent an opportunity for both the landlord and the tenant to assess the situation and decide whether it’s still working for them.

You may find that changes to the property market mean a change in costs going forward, or that a lease break represents an opportunity to renegotiate more favourable terms. You may be prompted to take a close look at how much space you really need, and weigh up whether to take on more, give back some space, or potentially sublet to generate revenue.

In this case, the ideal timeframe to start thinking about your options is at least 18 months before your lease break or expiry – and preferably longer. You will need to take into account the costs and incentives for staying or moving, whether you need more or less space, and any changes being driven by the landlord. It’s also worth taking legal advice as to your rights and obligations.

You may assume that moving office will be more expensive than staying put and remodelling, but that isn’t always the case

The first steps of Stay or Go decision making

Before you dive into the process of analysing your workspace needs and priorities, there are a few basics that need to be established in order to provide a framework for your decision making. Here, we look at some of the key points to consider.

Establish your timeline

The first thing to do when deciding whether to stay or go is to map out your timeline. When is the date of your next lease break or expiry? At what point do you have to serve notice to your landlord? How urgent are your workspace change needs – can it wait until your next lease event or not?

The importance of location

You will also need to understand whether location – the one you are in now, or a proposed move – is central to your reasons for change. It may be that this factor alone dictates whether you stay and refurbish or move to new premises – although in reality the decision is rarely that simple.

Know your budget

Regardless of the medium and long-term cost implications of a move or refurbishment, you will need to establish a ballpark figure for how much you can commit to the process in the short term. Whether you choose to move or to stay and remodel, there will be a significant financial outlay, and understanding where the business stands on this will help to focus your efforts and rule out unviable options.

Top tip

It’s worth noting that in the case of financing your workspace project, you may have more flexibility than you realise. Office Workspace’s innovative Workspaceas-a-Service offering allows you to fund your workspace over time with a simple monthly payment, rather than an unwieldy upfront cost – helping you protect your working capital and mitigate risk.

Find out more at https://officeworkspace. com/workspace-as-a-service/

The case for staying

There are various reasons why staying put might appear the most attractive option – but you should beware of making assumptions and falling foul of common misconceptions.

In the next section we’ll look at the role workspace consultancy plays in making an informed decision, but it’s worth first listing some of the reasons why businesses choose to refurbish or remodel rather than moving out.

Familiarity

You’re already familiar with the space you occupy and are likely to be in a good position to determine how best to remodel it to best meet the changing needs of your organisation. However, you shouldn’t let this blind you to the potential that a new space might offer.

Logistics

Staying in your current location is likely to be logistically easier than moving your whole company – people, technology, equipment, files, etc. – to a new location. However, refurbishing in occupation can present its own challenges, as you will need identify a swing space for your people to occupy while work is carried out, and it may also need to be done in phases.

Flexible timeline

If remodelling rather than moving, you don’t need to worry about lease events, notice periods or similar contractual constraints. This can take the pressure off the process, allowing you to make changes when best suits the business, rather than being driven by external factors.

Financial considerations

Moving requires dilapidation costs, legal costs, logistics costs, and acquisition agents’ costs among other things. However, these are short-term costs and may be more than offset by financial gains made over the long term, whether moving to a cheaper location or choosing to occupy less space, among other things. The financial case needs to be looked at holistically in order to determine your genuine best interests.

Challenge your assumptions

A decision as important as whether to stay or move premises needs to be based on a holistic, evidence-based view, rather than on intuition or what you think you know. It’s worth engaging with a commercial property agent to do some market research on alternative options, market rates and incentives offered by landlords.

Most importantly, you will be best served by engaging with workspace consultants, who can help you analyse your business needs and drivers for change, use of space and technology, and provide a blueprint against which to benchmark your options.

The case for moving

If you’ve definitively outgrown your space, or feel the location or amenities are no longer fit for purpose, then the appeal of moving presents an attractive blank canvas and the chance to start a ‘new chapter’ for your organisation.

As with choosing to stay put, you need to be aware of getting swept up in the vision without interrogating its practicality. Here are some of the considerations businesses contend with when deciding to move.

A better deal

Moving presents an opportunity to negotiate a new lease, which may mean you can secure better rates and terms than your current premises. This isn’t guaranteed however, and you need to be aware of changing conditions in the property market, levels of demand and occupancy, and also keep in mind that not all locations are of equal value. You may also have an opportunity to renegotiate with your current landlord if a lease break is immanent.

Reducing floorplate size

Many businesses have undergone dramatic changes in the way they work in recent years, with the move to hybrid and location-independent working providing an opportunity for businesses to work with a lower desk-to-staff ratio, saving considerable property costs. However, you may be able to take this route in your existing premises, either by handing back some of the space to the landlord, or by choosing to sublet, or set up a coworking space to generate revenue.

A world of options

Moving represents a chance to leave behind all the bug bears and imperfections of your existing space, with a range of options on the table for your new premises. It can be easy to think the grass is greener, however you need to make sure you don’t get carried away with the promise of the new, and take time to identify potential issues and imperfections with the new spaces on offer. Nowhere is perfect, and you want to make sure that your move genuinely represents a step up before you commit.

The importance of objectivity

The decision to move offices isn’t one you have to make alone. You’ll need to work with property agents and your legal representatives to discuss your options. Most importantly, it will reap dividends if you engage with workspace consultants early in the process to help understand your real workspace needs, rather than relying on preconceptions.

Taking the time to analyse and build your ideal workspace blueprint will put you a firm footing for any decision you make

The value of workspace analysis Busting the workplace myths

The best workspaces are ones that are closely aligned to the real – not assumed – needs of the organisation and its people. This requires a clear understanding of people, processes, space, work settings and technologies, and the way these all interact, to build a true picture of your workspace needs.

In any business, it’s not unusual for workplace myths and preconceptions to spring up, which may not always fit with reality. It may be assumed that you’ve run out of space, when in fact space is underutilised over the course of the work week, but with bottlenecks on certain days and at certain times. You may think that you don’t have enough meeting rooms, when in reality some meeting rooms are oversubscribed while others are underused, or that the booking system doesn’t make it easy to cancel or reallocate bookings.

Separating fact from appearance requires a systematic approach, which is the goal of workspace analysis.

The workspace analysis toolkit

Workspace analysis brings together data from a range of sources to give a true picture of how your organisation currently operates and how space and technology is consumed. It combines quantitative and qualitative information to build up a holistic picture of your workspace needs and the beliefs and attitudes of your people towards the workspace.

Occupancy survey – quantifies the real usage levels of desks, meeting rooms, breakout spaces and other areas versus perceptions

Space utilisation – looks more broadly at how the space is divided up between individual desks, meeting rooms, breakout and social spaces, and other kinds of spaces and furniture, and how effectively this maps onto the day-to-day activities of the business

Storage audit – measures how much storage space you have, both shared and allocated to individuals, and how much of it is in active use

Process mapping – understands the different activities your teams undertake, how they interact and aims to build a picture of dependencies between departments and teams

Employee questionnaire – analyses the specific needs of different users and user groups, the work settings they use, their work styles and preferences, and the level to which they feel supported by the workspace

Stakeholder interviews – gather qualitative information about the attitudes and opinions of different users towards their workspace

Technology analysis – builds a picture of the technologies and devices currently used, how effectively they’re deployed, how easy or otherwise they are to access, and what might be missing from the technology overlay

These sources of data and insight are then combined to build a complete picture of how the workspace is used now, what is working and what’s not, and where the biggest opportunities for improvement are. This information is combined to create your ideal workspace blueprint.

The workspace blueprint

Your ideal workspace blueprint

The results of the workspace analysis process feed into your ideal workspace blueprint, which defines the ideal amount and combination of spaces, work settings, tools, technologies and furniture for your organisation. This blueprint highlights where your current workspace falls short, and what needs to be improved. It also helps you prioritise your needs, using a performance v importance matrix to highlight the biggest gaps between your current and ideal workspace.

This information is then used as a benchmark for evaluating different workspace options – including whether your current workspace has the right amount of space and attributes to be effectively remodelled, or whether your business will be best served by moving to a new space.

Building analysis

Your chosen workspace consultants can take this process to the next stage, helping you to build comparative evaluations of different options, including remodelling your existing space, and benchmarking the possibilities of other office spaces on the market. In some cases, they may also be able to help you negotiate with landlords and ask the right questions when reviewing alternative spaces.

Ultimately, the decision whether to refurbish or relocate will depend on a variety of factors, including financial drivers, the specific spatial and operational needs of your organisation and your people, the importance of location to your business and brand, not to mention the impact different locations will have on attracting and retaining talent. But working with experienced workplace consultants will ensure you make the decision armed with the best information and insight available.

Summary

Choosing to move premises, or to remodel your existing space, isn’t one that you make that frequently. You need to make sure you make the best possible decision, as you will have to live with the outcome for years to come.

Experienced workspace consultants can help you quantify how the changes happening in your business affect your workspace needs, and identify the ideal combination of space, technologies and work settings to optimally support your people, processes and business goals.

The resulting workspace blueprint can be used to help you compare your existing space with potential new spaces, inform negotiations with your landlord, and act as a brief for professional partners, from property agents to interior design and fit-out partners.

Whether you’re growing, downsizing, restructuring or adopting innovative new ways of working, your workspace is one of your most important assets, and taking the time to make sure it optimally supports your people and the work they do will ensure it drives productivity and performance, both today and in years to come.

At Office Workspace, we have over 40 years of experience helping clients create their ideal workspace. From workspace consultancy, through to design and build, furniture, technology and ongoing support, as well as helping businesses find the right space for their needs and negotiating with landlords.

We can help you start on the journey

Whether you choose to stay or go, making the decision based on analysis, insight and engagement with all your key stakeholders will ensure you make the right decision.

At Office Workspace, our goal is to enable your people to achieve more – to be more productive, more connected, more engaged, more creative. To work better.

We create workspaces that deliver on these promises, bringing together the latest insights in workspace psychology, evidence-based design, innovative workspace technology and proven change management techniques, to help drive improved people performance.

Modern workspace strategies are all about people. By providing choices in where, when, and how people work, we empower them to find the best way to achieve their goals, enabling them to flex and adapt to the opportunities and challenges they face.

Successful businesses recognise the value that a future-ready, people-centric workspace can bring. At Office Workspace, we can help guide you and your people to a better way of working.

To find out more about how we can help your business to perform better, get in touch today on +44 (0) 20 8309 0000 or email hello@officeworkspace.com.