Andrew Burns, joint managing director at office design, fit-out and furnishing specialist TSK, discusses how well-designed workplaces can increase productivity and help win clients.

The role of any outsourcing business is, essentially, to take a process peripheral to its client’s operation and perform it to a higher standard and more cost-effectively than the customer could do in-house.

At the heart of this is attracting and retaining good employees, providing efficient systems and processes and the right level of support to create a sustainable culture of excellent performance.

Crucial to this is providing employees with a working environment that is designed for the tasks they are doing and supportive of a culture of teamwork between individuals and collaboration across the organisation.

Complex processes

The range of operations commonly delivered by outsourcers has diversified significantly in the past 10 or 15 years and it is no longer just routine business functions that are commonly managed by an external partner.

In many cases an organisation’s employees are transferred into the outsourced operation so it is essential that the new protocols deliver the efficiencies from day one.

The workplace plays an important role in enabling the change in culture to happen quickly and efficiently.

By creating a workplace that supports activity base working the cost per work output is reduced, employees are motivated and empowered and a high performance culture can be established.

Operations such as customer contact, IT support or HR services will never be performed as well as they could be if teams are treated like process-driven factory workers.

Employees need quiet spaces to take difficult or private calls, break-out spaces for team meetings and training sessions and comfortable areas to take a break from often very demanding working patterns.

Many outsourcing centres – particularly those working internationally – operate long hours, often outside the traditional 9-5 working day and it is therefore paramount that employees feel comfortable in their surroundings.

Even simple things like ensuring the right levels of light and temperature can have a significant positive effect on performance.

Teamwork and collaboration

The importance of break-out areas and communal spaces in any organisation cannot be underestimated.

Spaces where teams can get together away from distractions is essential in fostering teamwork, while providing communal facilities – be it a water cooler, a kitchen or a permanent cafe – brings together individuals from across an organisation creating a sense of community.

A focus on training is a critical element of staff retention, and this needs to be able to happen in an environment where participants are free from distractions and where it won’t disrupt others’ work.

Break-out spaces are also important from a motivation perspective, as they can help shift the overriding feeling of the workspace away from that of a high-pressure battery operation.

Delivering a flagship for Ceridian

A good example of the importance leading outsourcers attach to getting workplace design right is Ceridian’s new 50,000 sq ft flagship office in Glasgow, launched earlier in June 2011.

The purpose-built property accommodates 500 workers supporting some of the biggest and most well-known businesses in the country.

The two sides to the operation – HR and payroll services – each have different key attributes, and the design needed to reflect this.

On the HR side, wellness support and employee counselling for larger organisations is a key part of the service. This is a stressful and emotionally demanding role for employees, and it was important for their workspace to provide private spaces where highly personal subjects could be discussed over the phone. It also needed to be calming, with generous rest areas for taking breaks.

For payroll services, confidentiality and data security are the foremost considerations. This meant thinking carefully about the layout of secure areas within the building, to ensure that social areas could be accesses by all but that workstations containing sensitive information were behind controlled access doors.

Civic pride

A key strategy for maintaining the commitment and motivation was to ensure that the benefits being delivered to customers were always clear to every employee in order to demonstrate the big difference they make as a business and to instill a sense of pride in the operation.

The centre delivers impressive KPIs, servicing more than 1.5 million employees per month working for 110,000 different organizations across 50 countries world-wide. These performance figures, updating in real time, were incorporated into the design in key places where they would be seen by both employees and visitors.

Commercial advantages

Securing new outsourcing agreements often involves the transfer of workers from a client’s business.

The working environment that will be provided for these employees – both in terms of physical surroundings and working culture – plays a vital role in securing their buy-in and this can make the difference between winning or losing a contract.

This concern was also forefront in Ceridian’s mind when developing the brief for its Glasgow office as the management team knew it would send an important message to new business prospects.

The goal was that any potential new partners visiting the site would leave without any doubt that delivering HR and payroll services in-house was an inefficient approach.

Workplace design played a fundamental role in this by making it obvious that Ceridian’s people were supported by the best possible processes and the right technology right across the organisation.

High performance

Outsourcing has become a standard strategy for businesses of all sizes – from small SMEs to multinational organisations – and the range of services commonly outsourced has also become enormously diverse.

The outsourcing businesses that succeed in this new landscape will be those that recognise the critical importance of providing their employees with the tools and surroundings they need to deliver optimum performance.