How to balance increasing flexible working expectations from employees and company strengthened expectations to high attendance rate in the context of the office move to the center of London.
Business Case:
Ipsen decided to close 2 Sites in the UK ( Slough, Oxford) to open new Global Hub in London, Paddington with the objectives:
- • Optimization of office space following recent hybrid working trends.
- • Closer to Talent and key business stakeholders.
- • Create a modern piece of art facilities to contribute to our culture of collaboration and excellence.
Challenges:
- – Quite short timelines;
- – Minor consultations as less than 25 miles between the new and the previous site;
- – Comparison with Partis Global hub office move( longer timelines and with consultations driven by legislation);
- – Change of way of commute: from cars to public transportation, thus impact on cost and time of commute;
- – Global Hub – the office became popular (colleagues from other locations – regular visitors) thus challenging availability of the places for London assigned employees for work;
- – Global Hub – 320 employees with all the divisions presented, very often the teams of our employees are located in other countries;
- – 150 line managers with 60% not being based in the UK;
- – Capacity of the office define: 50% of workplaces from the target population;
- – Hybrid working policy with expectations of 60% in face-to-face collaboration.
Solution:
- Fail fast
- – Travel financial support initially suggested didn`t reflect the needs, thus fast adjustment of travel subsidies (differentiate long-distance employees with higher impact) and extension for additional 18 months.
- – Extension of space to accommodate more desks.
- Adoption of Change management trends
- – Engage with Change champions – informal leaders of the organisation for them to inspire others
- – Co-create with change champions on how the office design and the new ways of working will look like.
- – Engagement of line managers for them to support and care for emotions.
- – Taking enough time for listening and living through emotions, adapting, adjusting communication
- – Pilot initiatives before fully adopting it.
- The decision is to create a space where people want to come:
- – A piece of art facilities with a welcoming facilities team.
- – Free lunch, snacks, beverages, London-chosen coffee blend.
- – Building a community on-site through the different weekly events (networking, CSR, Wellbeing, celebrations of launches).
- – Demonstrate listening and communicate on your learnings regularly ( change champions, managers drop-in sessions, employee engagement survey, post-move survey, suggestions portal, emails, Townhalls).
- – Available action plan on Continuous Improvement of the new Site (Facilities, Communications/Events, Wellbeing pillars) – well communicated during Townhall.
Outcomes:
- – Attendance of site – 50%.
- – Surveys demonstrate a high satisfaction with the new facilities.
- – Turnover – 14 (tbc), almost at benchmark.
- – Success as Global Hub – global colleagues enjoy travel for meetings on-site.
- – 2024 GPTW certified just 6 months after the move.
- – Glassdoor UK score – 4.1
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