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Calling FDs: What would be on your workplace wish list?

Thursday 14th April 2005

Given the chance to rub a workplace Aladdin's Lamp, what would FDs wish for?

Given a chance to run a workplace Aladdin's Lamp, what would FDs wish for?

Workspace transformation experts Morgan Lovell have polled the FDs of 200 major UK businesses to gauge the attitudes of British companies towards business and the working environment. And according to the results, financial directors of medium-to-large British businesses have a number of workplace issues they wish they could resolve.

Upgrading technology may be predictable as FDs' first-choice wish but the second most popular wish is startling: one in six would choose to move to an entirely new building and location, regardless of the extraordinary upheaval such a decision would entail. Morgan Lovell believes this result reveals some home truths in terms of how companies understand and control the costs of the space they inhabit. The survey found that 87% of UK companies have taken no professional advice on the amount or type of office space best suited to their needs.

David Henderson, Group Managing Director, Morgan Lovell, said: "That so many significant UK businesses say they would uproot their office completely if they had one wish is startling."

"Often businesses realise after the first few years of operating that the premises they chose initially are unsuitable, for a variety of reasons. And whereas the common assumption is that companies usually underestimate the amount of space they need, the opposite is frequently more true: we've found that a considerable number of businesses are paying for too much space - which is why it is important to make sure more businesses are getting advice on space than the thirteen per cent who currently do so."

Tellingly, 82% of respondents also admitted they had taken no professional advice on managing the long term costs of their commercial premises and the research shows that companies frequently wait ten years before significant attention is paid to better managing their workspace costs. This apparent awareness gap could be costing British business millions of pounds per year.

David Henderson commented: "Occupying a volume of space that is not strategically necessary or operationally effective can be very costly over such a long period. Based on current rental costs, just one thousand square feet of excess space in London's West End - the most expensive commercial property location in the world - will cost a business one million pounds over ten years, for instance. It's a cost that is easily avoidable given the right advice. You wouldn't buy a bus to take two kids to school - why take on too much space for your business?"

With 28% of FDs saying they regularly review the planning of their workplace in light of the latest business thinking, ensuring the amount and type of space can satisfy both the need to minimise costs and the need for future-proof flexibility - to cater for technological change, for example - is critical.

David Henderson said: "In the end, whether the issue is having the right mix of work and break-out space, the layout or the capacity of the space to keep up with the technology within it, it all comes down to getting the type and amount of space right from the outset."

Other surprising trends were identified by the survey:

• More respondents (6%) said they would like to move away from an open plan environment than say they would like to move to an open plan layout (3%), indicating a degree of dissatisfaction with poorly-implemented ? and therefore noisy, messy and unproductive - open plan schemes.

• London-based businesses were twice as likely as the national average to wish to move an entirely new building or location, perhaps reflecting a growing disillusionment among FDs at the high