Better Office Decisions Through Workplace Strategy

The office question often looks simple at first. The organisation needs premises, a lease, a budget and a certain amount of space. But behind every office decision are more complex questions: how work should be carried out, how often people need to meet, which settings support focus and collaboration, how hybrid working should function and how the organisation can avoid being locked into the wrong assumptions.

Portally interviewed Dr Aram Seddigh about how companies can make better office decisions. The original article is available on Portally. In this Workplace Strategist version, we look at the issue through a methodological lens: what does a workplace strategist need to understand, analyse and translate into decisions before the organisation chooses an office?

Quick answer: why is an office decision a workplace strategy question?

An office decision is a workplace strategy question because the office affects everyday work. It shapes how people collaborate, concentrate, learn from each other, build relationships, use technology and handle change. It is therefore not enough to compare available premises. The organisation first needs to understand what kind of workplace would be adequate for the work, the people and the business goals.

A workplace strategist helps the organisation move from assumptions to structured decisions. That means collecting the right evidence, interpreting needs, formulating principles, managing trade-offs and creating a decision base that can guide premises search, design, implementation and follow-up.

From property question to workplace strategy question

Many office projects start with questions that are easy to grasp: how much space do we need, which location is best and what rent is reasonable? These are important questions, but they should not be the starting point. If the organisation begins there, the project may be driven by what is concrete and comparable rather than by what determines whether the workplace will work.

A workplace strategy process starts with purpose. What should the office contribute? Which work should it support better than today? Which behaviours need to be strengthened? Which problems should be solved? Which risks need to be managed?

The office may need to:

• strengthen coordination and learning in hybrid work
• provide better settings for focus and deep work
• create clearer team zones or stronger support for project work
• improve conditions for digital meetings
• support onboarding, culture and informal knowledge sharing
• reduce cost without weakening the work environment
• create a workplace concept that is easier to use in everyday work

When the purpose is clear, the premises search becomes more precise. The organisation can then assess whether a location can actually carry the workplace strategy, not only whether it has the right size and price.

Workplace Adequacy™ as a decision logic

Workplace Adequacy™ is about the fit between the organisation, the work and the workplace. The question is not only whether the office is attractive, modern or liked. The question is whether it actually supports the work that needs to happen there.

For a workplace strategist, this distinction matters. Employee satisfaction is relevant, but it does not tell the whole story. A workplace can be appreciated and still be inadequate for concentration, confidential conversations, digital meetings or cross-functional collaboration. Likewise, an office can appear cost-efficient on the plan but create friction in everyday use.

The Workplace Adequacy™ Framework makes office decisions more structured through five principles:

• Right-sizing: ensure capacity and space are based on real patterns, not only generic ratios.
• Diversify: create the right variety of settings for different activities.
• Facilitate Collaboration: support the collaboration patterns that matter to the organisation.
• Increase Usability: make the workplace easy to understand, navigate and use.
• Insights through Participation: ground decisions in data, dialogue and organisational understanding.

Read more in What Is the Workplace Adequacy™ Framework?.

Right-sizing in hybrid organisations

One of the most difficult parts of the office question is deciding how much capacity the office should provide. Traditional planning often starts from headcount. In hybrid work, that is not enough. Attendance varies by weekday, team, role and season. An average can therefore be a weak basis for decision-making.

If the office is sized for everyone to be present all the time, the footprint will often be unnecessarily large. If it is sized according to average attendance, the office may feel too small on the days when many people are actually there. A workplace strategist therefore needs to analyse recurring patterns rather than simply count people.

A more useful method is to plan for a normal high-attendance day. This does not mean building for extreme peaks, but it also avoids hiding recurring pressure behind an average. Tuesdays, Wednesdays or other shared office days can create demand for workstations, meeting rooms, focus rooms, social spaces and hybrid meeting settings.

Right-sizing is therefore not only about desks. It is about creating the right capacity in the right types of settings. An office may have enough workpoints and still be under-dimensioned if it lacks meeting rooms, quiet settings or support for hybrid collaboration.

This is why workplace strategy requires both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Attendance data shows patterns. Workshops and dialogue explain why those patterns occur. Surveys show perceived needs and friction. Together, they support better scenarios.

Cost is more than rent

A workplace strategist also needs to help the organisation understand cost in a more nuanced way. Rent per square metre is only part of the total economics. The decision is also affected by adaptations, furniture, technology, relocation costs, operations, services, unused space and the risk that the premises cannot adapt when needs change.

An office that looks inexpensive may become costly if it requires major changes or if the space does not support the organisation’s work patterns. A more expensive office may sometimes be more economically sustainable if it enables better use, lower change risk and stronger support for priority activities.

The office decision should therefore not be reduced to a cost comparison. A more strategic question is: which option creates the best balance of function, flexibility and organisational value over time?

Flexibility as a strategic support condition

Flexibility is often confused with a short lease. But in workplace strategy, flexibility means something broader: the ability to manage uncertainty without creating unnecessary cost or operational friction.

It may include the ability to grow, reduce space, share space, change furniture layouts, reconfigure areas, adjust team zones, update technology or use the office in new ways. It may also include portfolio strategy in multi-site organisations.

For small companies, flexibility is often a protection against uncertain growth forecasts. For larger organisations, flexibility is more often linked to scenario planning, governance, leadership decisions and long-term investment logic.

A workplace strategist therefore needs to clarify which type of flexibility is critical. Not every form of flexibility is equally valuable. The important task is to connect flexibility to the organisation’s real uncertainties.

The office must support both collaboration and focus

In many hybrid organisations, there is a strong idea that the office should mainly be a place for collaboration. This is partly true. The office can be highly important for onboarding, culture, relationships, creative problem-solving, complex coordination and learning. But if the office is only optimised for collaboration, it may become difficult to work there for a full day.

Employees often need to combine meetings with preparation, analysis, recovery and concentrated work. If the office lacks quiet settings, focus rooms and good conditions for digital meetings, people will plan their day around the office’s weaknesses. They will come in for some activities and choose remote work for others.

This can create a fragmented office life where the organisation does not get the culture, collaboration and knowledge sharing it hoped for. A workplace strategist therefore needs to define the office role more precisely: which activities should happen in the office, which can happen remotely and what conditions are required for people to combine them during the same working day?

The best answer is rarely office or remote. It is a clear workplace strategy where the office supports collaboration, focus, learning, recovery and quality of work.

AI changes which work environments are needed

AI makes the office question even more strategic. As parts of knowledge work are automated, simplified or augmented, the human role changes. More work may revolve around judgement, interpretation, creativity, ethics, prioritisation, review and shared decision-making.

This creates two parallel needs. First, organisations need settings where people can meet, interpret information together, build shared understanding and solve complex problems. Second, employees need settings where they can work without disturbance to analyse, review and quality-assure AI-generated material.

AI therefore does not automatically make the office less important. It can make the office role more specific. Workplace strategy needs to describe which tasks become more valuable to do together and which require stronger support for depth and concentration.

For a workplace strategist, this means that the future office should not be planned around yesterday’s work patterns. It needs to be planned around the way technology, work, leadership and the work environment develop together.

Method before solution

A common problem in office projects is that solutions are discussed before the question is properly defined. Should we move to activity-based working? Should we reduce space? Should we add more focus rooms? Should we move to coworking? Should we require more days in the office?

All of these questions may be relevant, but they should come after the analysis. A workplace strategist first needs to understand which problems need to be solved and which goals need to be supported. Otherwise, the organisation may choose a workplace model that sounds modern but does not fit the work.

A structured process might include:

1. Define the decision situation and organisational goals.
2. Collect evidence about work, attendance, needs and perceived obstacles.
3. Analyse variation across roles, teams, activities and weekdays.
4. Identify strategic principles for the office role.
5. Compare scenarios for space, cost, ways of working and risk.
6. Translate the strategy into requirements for premises search, design and implementation.
7. Follow up after implementation and adjust when needed.

This structure is what makes workplace strategy useful in practice.

Five questions the workplace strategist should ask

Before the organisation chooses an office, the workplace strategist should help leadership answer five questions:

1. What role should the office play for the organisation?
2. Which work activities should the office support better than today?
3. How do attendance, collaboration and focus needs vary during the week?
4. What flexibility is needed to manage future change?
5. Which principles should guide premises search, design, implementation and follow-up?

If these questions are not answered, the office decision is often driven by rent, instinct or comparisons with other organisations. That increases the risk that the workplace will not be adequate for the specific organisation that will use it.

About Aram Seddigh

Dr. Aram Seddigh is the founder and CEO of WeOffice and the person behind the Workplace Adequacy™ framework. A licensed psychologist and economist with a PhD in work and organizational psychology, he advises organisations on how the physical workplace can better support focus, collaboration and well-being. Through Workplace Strategist he makes these methods, concepts and training available to practitioners who want to work more systematically with workplace strategy.

Read more about Aram Seddigh on WeOffice and Workplace Strategist.

Source: This article is an adapted version of an interview first published by Portally — How to make the right office decision.

Portally is a Swedish digital marketplace for commercial premises — offices, coworking, warehouse and industrial space — that connects organisations looking for premises with available spaces in major Swedish cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Learn more at portally.com.