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Office rental represents a significant cost for businesses. Indeed, offices represent the second expense item behind salaries.
These are fixed costs that can hardly be optimized. However, the increased use of teleworking has freed up workstations within companies, which are now vacant.
With teleworking, all employees are no longer present every day of the week. They intersect according to their teleworking days.
As a result, many empty workstations and workspaces are often noticed in companies. They are therefore tempted to reduce the size of their premises in order not to pay for empty posts. This is where flex office comes in.
This method of organization makes it possible, by no longer allocating an office to a single employee, to optimize the workspace. Thus, the flex office is on the rise. This is even more true in big cities like Paris. These business centers are very concentrated, and where renting office space can quickly represent exorbitant costs.
How to set up a flex office in your office in a city like Paris?
What is the relationship to teleworking within your company?
The first question to ask yourself when trying to set up a flex office is the number of workstations. How many positions should I keep so that my employees can work in good conditions when they come to the office?
The answer depends on 4 criteria. Indeed, does telework take place on fixed days in the week? Are there work-from-home quotas per week/month? Mandatory attendance days? And above all, what are the preferences of employees?
Once these questions have been answered, we can then calculate an office occupancy ratio that corresponds to the number of available positions, divided by the number of employees in the company. Generally, this rate varies between 0.5 and 0.8 depending on the preferences, objectives and requirements of the company.
How to organize the space and the various workstations in your offices?
Once you know the number of offices you want to keep, the question arises of their organization. Indeed, it is good to segment and divide the different spaces by pole (HR, marketing, product...) or “territories”.
This segmentation promotes team synergy. It makes it possible to maintain the social link between the various employees, who tend to rarely intersect with teleworking.
Dividing by competence center also makes it possible to group together employees subject to the same constraints. This allows, for example, the customer relations team, which makes a certain number of calls per day, to stay away from the finance team, which is generally quieter.
In addition, it is also necessary to anticipate that some office positions will remain fixed. This may be the case for some employees who do not work from home. This is also true for those who handle sensitive data on their desk, and store paper documents there. This is often the case with management teams.
Finally, it is strongly recommended to set up unassigned and flexible spaces. So that any employee - regardless of their team - can work or organize a meeting from this location. This can be done through a reservation system.
In addition to these unassigned spaces, it is appropriate to dedicate a space to rest or to the reception of customers.
An example: the implementation of the Flex Office at BNP Paribas
Known for its spirit of innovation, BNP Paribas started implementing flex offices in its offices in 2017.
This desire to adopt the flex office is part of a long-term strategy. BNP Paribas foresees a significant increase in its payroll in and around Paris. Indeed, the group now represents more than 40,000 employees in Île-de-France alone.
The transition to a flex office has allowed BNP Paribas to rejuvenate its real estate portfolio and to develop eco-responsible buildings that are more energy efficient.
To this new organization of workspaces, there was added a new way of working for the group's teams.
The flex office has encouraged the use of digital technology and collaborative tools. But also the creation of larger spaces for meetings and exchanges. It offers employees greater freedom when it comes to choosing where to work.
Use a space reservation app
In order to fully benefit from the advantages and virtues of flex office, it is recommended to adopt a tool for organizing and reserving spaces.
Excel or Google sheets are in fact quickly limited on these subjects. In addition, to save employees time, offering a tool integrated into your existing IS is crucial. This is what m-work offers, a hybrid work planning and flex office app integrated into your tools.
The tool allows teams to organize themselves collaboratively, and to easily visualize the presence of colleagues, in advance, in real time and depending on the office.
To find out more, meet someone from the team!
