How long does a move to a flex-office last?

On Thursday 25 November 2021, the results of the Parella 2021 Barometer were presented.

This year, more than 500 people were interviewed for the 5th edition of our annual survey on new ways of working and new spaces. Among them: managers, employees and young people.

At the end of the presentation, questions were asked. We come back to them in 3 articles.

To begin with, you asked us about the duration of a project to move to a flex-office.

How long does a project to move to a flex-office take?

Parella offers project study phases lasting two to three months. Our methodology is based on 4 main complementary stages. Understanding your context, co-constructing your real estate strategy and translating your ambition into your future spaces.

1. Get to know your historyyour organisationyour methods and working environments and your your ambitions for the future (interviews with key people, site visit(s), development and administration of a questionnaire, additional documentary analysis, ...).

This framing stage is the basis of our thinking. It allows us to understand your ambitions, your operations, the degree of maturity of the organisation with regard to the new working methods, as well as to understand the resistance of the various stakeholders.

At the end of this stage, we deliver our first recommendations.

2. Co-constructing your real estate strategy based on our analysis of your business profiles and practices. We conduct interviews with the teams, collect their needs and share their feelings about the evolution of working methods. This reflection covers, among other things, the experience of employees, visitors, uses, types of space and the specific needs of the various professions.

3. Translate our analysis into the main development principles and, finally, produce the plans and immersive visuals as illustrations.

At the end of these three stages, we propose several scenarios, each involving a different degree of transformation. After this initial three-month study phase, you are in a position to launch the project, provided you quickly decide in favour of one of the scenarios. However, on a number of projects, a period of appropriation and iterations may be necessary, depending on the maturity of your organisation with regard to the envisaged changes.

4. The work starts after the choice of the scenario. Their duration can be three months to one year, depending on the extent of the work and the degree of transformation needed in the chosen scenario.

During this stage, constraints may arise. The technical aspects of the buildings/premises (HVAC, lighting), ordering and installing furniture, or carrying out works, involve varying deadlines and different stakeholders.

Beware that the cost of the work is often underestimated. We generally recommend, as a minimum, the installation of lockers and the creation of collaborative spaces, as this is the expectation of employees who want an office "better than at home".

Levers can be used to accelerate the implementation of the project. One of these possible accelerators is teleworking. Its implementation is an example of a key success factor for the rapid realisation of projects. Telework allows, among other things, to avoid having to rent additional space or to create buffer zones as the project progresses.

Author: Floriane Giacometti

Are you interested in the detailed study?

We invite you to discover the event through the exclusive replay and the presentation of the Parella 2021 Barometer by clicking below 👇

Click here!