How to get the best from your head office design

When designing a new head office for fit out or refurbishment, critical factors to a successful project outcome include the creation of a space that reflects your brand, helps you achieve your future goals and will make effective use of your investment of both time and money.

A big part of getting head office design right is to ensure that all user groups – such as the reception, maintenance, visitors – customers and suppliers, departments & account teams, the board – have been carefully considered and catered for, including the outcomes and needs of the overall business function.

Research what your employees need from their head office

Happy employees are more productive and more engaged so you’ll need to create a head office design that takes into account what employees want from their workspaces.

Understanding the restraints and restrictions within their current space can help you identify how to create a better working environment. When working on the McColl’s head office fit out, we held workshops with the board to further understand the strategic direction of the company while also consulting with McColl’s teams, to ensure that their wants and needs were met as well.

Plan for the long-term

A head office design and fit out can be a timely and costly project so you need to ensure the work that gets done holds up in the future to save you more expense in the long-term. This includes ensuring quality materials and building processes, are employed during the fit out so that they can handle the daily use by employees without breakages or damage.

Similarly, you should consider the upfront cost of equipment compared to what they may cost you in the future e.g. a more expensive air conditioning system may cost more upfront but be more efficient when it comes to energy usage, making it cheaper to run each month.

Planning your head office design and fit out for the long term all comes back to improving the sustainability of your business. We can work with you to help you ensure you develop a workspace that is good for our planet, our economy and our society.

Accommodate post-pandemic needs

Ever since the pandemic, head offices are viewed in a different light. One of the elements that has been sorely missed by many remote workers is the ability to connect and collaborate with co-workers. Even those who have been able to keep socialising have reported that they’d like to have the opportunity for in-person collaboration upon returning to the office.

While your pre-pandemic office may have had one or two meetings rooms for people to collaborate in, your post-pandemic workplace will need to consider how you can facilitate more collaboration within a safe office environment.
Many employees will continue to work from home, at least on a part time basis, so even if they won’t be present all the time, your head office design needs to take the needs of these workers into account. E.g. do you have the right tech set up to accommodate video calls between employees and do you have hot desks or workstations ready to welcome remote workers, when they want to come in?

Use your head office as a flagship for your brand

It’s important to remember that head offices are not just there to serve employees – they’re an investment from businesses to build strong relationships and showcase the brand to suppliers, new and existing clients as well as future talent. Head offices need to act as flagship spaces to provide great experiences, create memories and form bonds with visitors.

You need to create a sense of belonging by showcasing your brand identity and using colour psychology to influence emotions in employees and visitors.

Streamline the head office fit out process

Once you’ve got your head office design ready, you’ll want to make sure that your fit out provider has effective streamlined processes and a quality control system, knows how to minimise disruptions to all end users and neighbouring parties, and ensure the highest standards of health & safety practice to keep everyone safe – otherwise you could end up with a lot of stress on your end.

We collaborated with our sister agency and design management service, Field, to provide a full turnkey fit out solution that was an efficient, hassle-free process, from client brief to completion, for the McColl’s head office project.

At Resolution Interiors, we’re ISO 9001, ISO 27001, CHAS, Safe Contractor, Constructionline gold and EcoVadis gold accredited which all help us to have efficient quality procedures in place, work well with other contractors and maintain excellent health and safety standards across our projects.

Manage change proactively

A new office design (whether a fit out of a new location or a refurbishment of your existing space) represents a significant cultural change, so keeping employees involved throughout the whole process gives them a sense of ownership and leads to a more positive adoption of change.

We understand how crucial it is that your new head office can be used from day one which is why we go beyond just getting the, ‘place ready for the people’ ensuring that we also get the, ‘people ready for the place’. In many of our commercial fit out projects we provide both move management services, as well as comprehensive training to ensure that the boots-on-the-ground user groups maximise from the benefits of their new office space immediately.

At the heart of a head office redesign is ensuring that you have considered the needs of and impact on everyone within the business – not only the senior management and board-level employees driving financial decisions.

We are adept at working across entire organisations to balance the differing needs of departments, and provide commercial design and fit out solutions that work for your day-to-day business functions, and investment while also helping to achieve your long-term business goals.

Get in touch with one of our team members to learn more about our commercial fit out services.