Birmingham
Money Advice Trust
360 Workplace case study
Scotland
AAB
The Brief
AAB (Anderson Anderson & Brown LLP), a prominent Scottish accountancy firm, enlisted the services of 360 Workplace to optimise their office space in Aberdeen. Our team were tasked with conducting a thorough workplace strategy exercise, empowering AAB to make informed decisions to rationalise and redesign their space.
AAB is the lead tenant and occupies a significant share of a 45,000 sq ft workspace in Aberdeen, spread over three floors, with a 1:1 desk ratio of over 200 workstations. Their existing workplace was no longer optimised for a hybrid working environment, with many choosing to work from home rather than in the office due to a lack of collaboration areas where they could sit with their own team. Working on such a large footprint, there was an opportunity to reconfigure and remodel the space to create a range of workplace settings that addressed the needs for virtual, face-to-face collaboration, and concentrated work
About:
Workplace Strategy, Change Management, Workplace Technology, Workplace Wellbeing
Where:
Aberdeen
Size:
45,000 sq ft
What We Did
The 360 Workplace Consultancy team kicked off the process by organising a leadership visioning workshop to gain insight into AAB’s goals and aspirations. This helped set the tone for the project and ensured that the final outcome would align with AAB’s vision for the future. To gather a complete understanding of AAB’s current workspace usage and employee preferences, we also conducted extensive consultations with various departments through workshops and surveys. This included analysing the existing office layout, desk utilisation, meeting room usage, and overall employee satisfaction. Our analysis was focused on understanding what made employees productive, why they would come into the office, what didn’t work at home, and what they liked about the physical workplace.
We also conducted day in the life workshops where we asked employees to walk us through their day from the moment they arrived at the office. We wanted to know what type of meetings they attended, who they interacted with, and what their requirements were in order to put together a bespoke solution that would work for each team.
The Outcome
The consultation process highlighted that AAB’s various departments would benefit from interacting and collaborating face-to-face more frequently. As such, we recommended creating neighbourhoods within the workplace to encourage more social interaction and teamwork. The data collected also revealed that employees aspired to have better areas to relax and socialise, making it one of the most significant and critical aspect to this project.
Working in collaboration with Area, we created smaller meeting spaces throughout the building to cater for different team sizes and added them to the existing booking system that allowed employees to book a meeting room with just a few clicks. We installed additional technology that allowed for more virtual meetings, which made it easier for employees to connect with colleagues working from home.
We have designed and delivered AAB with a dynamic working platform that inspires collaboration and productivity. The newly designed workplace provides a range of work settings, including formal and informal meeting spaces, quiet work zones, and breakout areas, enabling teams to work in their designated neighbourhoods or collaborate with other teams.
Overall, the new design has transformed the office into a destination that employees want to come to, inspiring innovation, creativity, and enhancing team collaboration.