The Holy Grail of real estate strategy is developing a way to tie your real estate and workplace design directly to operational productivity. In so many ways, it is obvious that the design of a workplace has a direct impact on productivity:
- If space is in the wrong geography, you can’t hire the people you need.
- If space doesn’t include the basics needed to do the job, the job doesn’t get done.
- If people feel unsafe or unwelcome in the office, they don’t do great work.
- If people feel uncomfortable, they don’t do great work.
- If there aren’t enough seats, it is difficult for people to work together.
- If there are too many seats of the wrong type, you can change the culture.
It’s easy to see how the workplace can impact culture. But the challenge is in separating the impact of the workplace from the myriad of other variables that influence the equation:
- Corporate culture and its alignment with the workplace.
- IT and technology to support productivity.
- Collaboration and the ability to work with the people you need to work with.
- Shifts in the business or commercial opportunities.
- Business product maturity and changes in the sales cycle.
You quickly get into a correlation/causation debate on what caused the impacts. Over the past decade, I have come to the conclusion that it is quite impossible to directly measure the impact of the workplace on business productivity. What you can do is determine if the workplace is having a positive or negative net impact on productivity. You can tell this by surveying the users and understanding what is and is not working for them. Compare their scores from before and after a change.
What you cannot do is tie actual business improvements or declines to the workplace. The only thing you can count as a direct contributor is the cost reduction/increase of a space to the net costs of the business and its impact on operating costs. Outside of that, be wary of anyone who says you can do more.