Activity-Based Working And Collaboration in the Workplace

In the slew of years, many tactics have been proposed by businesses to tackle the necessity of becoming more flexible and agile to match the needs of rapid change and fluctuating markets. One of these is Activity-based working – a workstyle that has gained popularity and traction in recent years.

In the rapidly changing world of technology, research and business, the nature of work is rapidly changing. Not only have computers drastically freed up time for us to work on value-adding, innovative, problem-solving activities, how we approach traditional concepts of mobility, authority, workspaces and workplace health and safety have all transformed in the last few decades.

Activity-based working is a workstyle that focuses on providing the office with what your employees may need in separate sectors. For example, you may have a part of the office designed for quiet working, another place as a kitchen open for socialising, another dedicated to collaborative team efforts and meeting rooms, while yet another is a break-out green space for your workers to take a breather and work in a different environment for a while.  The main idea is providing flexibility and agility for your employees to extend the benefit down the line, and make your business more flexible and agile.

From a perspective of diversity, activity-based working acknowledges we’re all different. If one of your workers prefers isolation to put together their report, while another might want to have more social buzz around them as they work, activity-based working allows them to do so. ABW lets people choose what roles, where to go, and how to do their best work. Such an approach solves many of the more traditional problems that companies have been facing with old office designs, where increasingly they’ve found that a one-size-fits-all office approach is failing them.

There are a few reasons why Activity-based working can be attractive to your business.

Collaboration and Activity-Based Working

What is collaboration, first thing?

Collaboration is when two or more people who work together by sharing their ideas, brainstorming and mixing skills to achieve their goals. It’s a style of teamwork where people have greater expectations to problem-solve and overcome roadblocks in their project because usually, a collaborative team consists of many different specialties and disciplines all mixed into one group to share their different opinions and ideas. It’s something that has been proven to improve productivity and efficiency as well as workplace happiness, which makes many businesses keen to help facilitate great collaboration in their employees.

Collaboration can be increased by encouraging workers to be more flexible. Allowing your workers to work where they want to, when they want, allows them to respond to opportunities and changing needs as they arise. Imagine new business opportunities presenting themselves all at once during a busy period. It’ll be easier to pull together a team from different parts of the organisation to work on a project when your office is designed to cater to mobile workers.

And you still have a range of work settings for different types of activities too, such as meetings, collaboration, private work, creativity and concentration. Which means you create dedicated spaces for each one. Collaboration can be increased by setting a clear expression of intent from the getgo, just by knowing which part of the office you’re in, letting your employees quickly get into the mindset to collaborate and get things done.

With activity-based working, you can bring out the best in all the people in your organisations, by letting your workers match themselves with the environment they work best in, letting them feel comfortable and increase their productivity with their work, adding value, better knowledge sharing and financial benefits, improve employee satisfaction and space utilisation and above all, allows flexibility and agility as a main component of your business culture and values. Aligning your business with such core goals aligns your culture with the modern values of Millennials, bringing even more benefit by helping you attract and retain your new talent.

Want more tips on how to make your workplace activity-based? Why not call us on (02) 8774 2682 to have a chat with our experienced business consultants, or contact us via our chat on the Collappor8 page? We’re more than happy to collaboratively discuss how we can find creative solutions to boost your business the way you want it to!