Intelligent pruning vs. slash & burn

There’s a wide spectrum when it comes to the quality and expense of fitting out a work place.

The design, atmosphere, and efficiency of a work place is important when it comes to having a great work culture that attracts the best staff and underpins high levels of performance and productivity.

In today’s volatile economic conditions, a lot of rethinking about commercial and industrial space is going on.

Suppliers tell me quotes for new office products and fittings have dropped off 30 per cent. Many businesses are taking a red pencil to their lists of needs, and many items are shifting off the “must-have” list and onto the “one-day-maybe” wish list.

This is where I urge business leaders to pause and think for a moment.

We need to keep spending, but get more creative in our selections. We don’t always need to shift from the Lamborghini model all the way down to the Morris Minor! There are many options in between.

Slashing wildly with the red pen and buying the cheapest options can be a lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Maintaining desirable workplaces to attract good staff and maintain productivity is not going to happen if we’ve slashed too deep.

There’s no doubt about it; best workplaces attract best staff.

So we might not go for the top end ‘name brands’ but there are a range of options available if they are thought through.

Likewise, when it comes to office design and layout, if we get too DIY about it and let a non-professional staff member go to town with redesigning a space with some DIY software, the result will be less than superb. It is a very specific skill to get right and can make all the difference between a workplace just functioning, or really humming.

Right now, businesses in leased space are finding themselves in a number of positions. There are those who are shrinking and not filling or using all their space and need to consider subletting, or even getting out of their lease altogether.

And there are those who are hardly noticing a ripple, often with long-term government contracts in place.

In between, a good many need to do some serious thinking about moving on to a space that fits them, or staying put and redesigning their layout.

My advice is not to panic and slash spending, but take a measured approach and prune, while taking the best affordable advice from professionals; particularly in the area of design and fit-out and space needs assessment.