The Leading Workplace Strategist in Vancouver
At Aura, we develop comprehensive workplace strategies to help your company prepare for future growth and strengthen its distinct culture.
A fine-tuned workplace strategy can do wonders for your business, especially when it factors in many of the most important plans for anticipating growth, dealing with adversity, and handling the unknown — building around productivity, efficiency, employee satisfaction and business growth.
Companies that fail to account for how the physical office plays into their overarching strategy will struggle with employee turnover, productivity and efficiency. By articulating a plan that is perceptive, comprehensive and adaptable, you will benefit from an office design that empowers your employees to do their best work.
Benefits Of A Workplace Strategy
Business Growth and Cost Savings
A workplace strategy can help you prepare your company for future growth and optimize the space you have available. Making the best use of your existing square footage helps you focus on growing your business.
Operational Excellence
Analyzing your office can help us to understand your employees preferred modes of work. Aligning your office environment to those preferences will lead to happier, more productive and efficient employees.
Workplace Satisfaction
By having an office that accurately reflects your company culture and values, you’ll be building a more positive work environment. Employees that are proud of where they work show increased satisfaction in the long-term
Talent Acquisition and Retention
By having an office that accurately reflects your company culture and values, you’ll be building a more positive work environment. Employees that are proud of where they work show increased satisfaction in the long-term.
The Different Work Environments And Arrangements
We have come to terms with the fact that not everyone works the same way or in the same place now.
Understanding how your employees work best is a key component of building an effective, people-centric workplace strategy. At Aura, we have defined the different ways and places that people work, each of which has specific considerations for office design. The most successful office environments accommodate all styles of work to provide employees ample variety.
Focus |
Research shows that people are generally incompetent at multitasking. People need to be able to concentrate without distractions to be effective. By creating office spaces that are conducive to focus, employees will produce higher-quality work and benefit from increased productivity. |
Collaborate |
Employees can complete goals efficiently and invent more unique solutions to business problems when they are able to come together as a team. Breakout rooms and open collaboration spaces can also facilitate organizational alignment by increasing communication between departments. |
Socialize |
Adding social spaces and recreational amenities into your office design enables employees to relax and interact with their teammates, facilitating a more positive work culture that people are excited to be a part of. |
Learn |
Continuous learning at work promotes innovation and business growth. Integrating active learning spaces into your office designs can prevent complacent mindsets and increase the calibre of work delivered. |
Work From Home |
The home office is a great space for employees to focus and to work independently. While WFH policies have existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have recently been adopted by widespread. This shift to remote work has many leaders considering increasing remote work opportunities and improving their WFH policies. |
Remote Work |
As remote work increases, the need for established policies and open communication are essential. In addition to requiring strong digital infrastructure, you will need to reconsider the design and size of your office as occupancy numbers will be lowered. |
Our Process
At Aura, we employ a proprietary methodology to strategic planning and development. It’s a holistic approach that ensures no stone is left unturned and focuses on the bigger picture. There are three steps in Aura’s integrated approach to strategy development.
The Discovery Phase
Discovery Workshop
Design always follows a strong workplace strategy, if not, you will have an inefficient use of space. We audit your workplace to figure out how the use of space aligns with your business plan and people strategy. Aura’s experts will lead a discovery workshop intended to uncover your company’s long-term vision, goals and biggest challenges.
Staff Survey
A strong workforce requires accommodation, whether it’s of employees’ preferred work styles, space requirements, project budgets, benefit needs, or any number of other policies. With the information from your audit, Aura will assemble a plan that factors in a number of different scenarios and situations to best fit your current approach, and feedback from your employees will give us a better sense of how to provide them with the most efficient ways to work.
If there are additional challenges encountered from the workshop, Aura will facilitate a collaborative Hackathon where we take the biggest pain points and come up with solutions for them as a team.
Location Inspection Tour
Aura will analyze your shortlist of office locations and uncover the pros and cons of the workspace condition. We will suggest effective ways to negotiate with your landlord and make the most of your lease.
The Design Phase
Workspace Plan and Test Fit
The workplace strategy drives the entire design process — and design is where it all comes together. The integration of adaptable tech, workspace construction and layout, visual identity, safety measures, eco-friendly money savings, and employee socializing and wellbeing are all integrally tied into the look and feel of your office environment. Aura will provide extensive design recommendations in your strategy to set you up for long-term success.
Your strategy will also address the actual usage of space in the office itself. We’ll address space underutilization and provide recommendations for how to move forward. This is one of the most underrated yet important aspects of strategizing: office design can create one of the biggest and most lasting impressions of your business’s philosophy, approach, and personality to employees and customers alike.
Design Concept
At Aura, we use our proprietary approach to develop design concepts. We also provide detailed budgeting direction to ensure your expectations are managed. Progressive budgeting is critical in the process and is done all the way through.
The Delivery Phase
Once your plan is complete, we use change management to ensure your new workplace strategy is delivered.
It’s crucial to manage this change efficiently to ensure a smooth transition to maximize the benefits of your new strategy. A central part in this approach is maintaining open communication, and implementing processes to help your team transition and thrive in the new work environment. When you train your team to use the workplace properly, this helps optimize their work experience and increase productivity. The training includes dividing private spaces for focusing and meeting spaces for collaboration.
Another important consideration in this stage is addressing workplace policies. Workplace policies can be unique to every organization. Aura will work with you to identify policies appropriate for your company. Whatever policies your organization has in place or will adopt, it’s important to educate and train your team, so they are familiar with the expectations.
Complimentary Guide To Develop Your Workplace Strategy
Download our complimentary guide to discover the workplace trends you need to consider when creating your unique workplace strategy.
