Having worked in their cellular council offices for over 50 years, Crawley Borough Council had lost touch with how workplaces have transformed over time. The public sector especially has been instrumental in researching and promoting the ‘working without walls’ philosophy in an attempt to encourage a more efficient and collaborative working environment.
The existing building had reached the end of its useful life and with a very limited floor-to-ceiling height and restrictive 3 x 3m structural grid, the Borough staff had become fragmented and insular, with poor facilities, no communal spaces and some entrenched behaviours.
We were asked to share ‘best practice’ and ‘lessons learnt’ from our experience in the public sector, analyse their organisational structure and utilisation/vacancy statistics. We worked closely with the senior management team, HR and customer services directors to undertake a staff consultation process in order to enable us to create a new brief for a re-imagined and consolidated workplace.
Delivered over the pandemic, we adjusted the final workplace solution to reflect cultural changes that had occurred: providing more collaborative settings, better focus workstations as well as incorporating more of the council’s existing furniture. The final outcome produced a modern and flexible workspace encouraging integration and staff wellbeing.
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