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During a recent panel discussion Hunters, in collaboration with The Senator Group and MBP, brought together leaders from workplace design, sustainability and commercial real estate to discuss what makes a workplace sustainable beyond carbon.
The conversation explored how reuse, employee experience, inclusive design and long-term thinking can help create workplaces that work better for both people and businesses.
Thank you to the panellists for being part of an insightful afternoon:
Caroline Pontifex, Director, Head of Workplace & Design at Savills Workplace & Design
Martin Frohock, Global Workplace Experience Director at AVEVA
Jo Casselle, Associate Principal at HLW
Olivia Broughton, Sustainability Manager at The Senator Group
What we learned
- Start with what you already have
- Design for how people work now
- Involve employees from the beginning
- Plan for a product’s next life
- Measure what happens after move-in
Start with what you already have
A sustainable workplace project should not begin by asking what needs to be bought. It should begin by asking what can be retained, adapted or reused.
The panel discussed how the conversation is moving beyond simply measuring carbon towards avoiding unnecessary resource use in the first place.
For instance, you wouldn’t discard all your assets when moving house, so why should a workplace move be treated differently? Most people would not throw away everything they own and start again. They would decide what still works and only replace what is genuinely needed.
The same principle can apply to furniture, architectural elements and even parts of the building services. The main difference is that workplace reuse requires more time for auditing, coordination and planning.
Design for how people work now
One of the most practical issues raised during the panel was acoustics.
Rooms originally designed for focused work are now frequently used for video calls, leaving people with fewer places to concentrate. As workplace behaviour changes, spaces need to change with it, rather than continuing to operate according to assumptions made before hybrid working became widespread.
Adding more rooms isn’t necessarily the solution. The priority should be to create and protect a variety of settings, including quiet zones for focused work, enclosed rooms for calls and collaborative spaces where conversation is expected.
Inclusive design is ultimately about choice. Different settings, levels of privacy and sensory environments can support individual needs whilst creating a better workplace for the whole team.
Involve employees from the beginning
Change management should not begin once the design is complete or construction has started.
Bringing a change specialist into a project too late means they miss the early concerns, cultural context and reasons behind key decisions. Employees should have an opportunity to contribute while the brief is still being shaped.
Not every suggestion needs to be implemented, but consultation helps people understand the project and feel a greater sense of ownership over the outcome.
One example shared during the panel was a workplace that Hunters returned to ten years after completing the original project. Because the company and its team had been understood well from the start, only relatively small changes were needed a decade later, which was considered a success for the long-term value of getting the original brief right.
Plan for a product’s next life
Furniture should be viewed as a long-term asset rather than something replaced at the end of each project.
Take-back schemes, refurbishment, remanufacturing and second-life stock can keep furniture in use for longer. Under these models, manufacturers retain an interest in getting products back because the materials and components still hold value.
Product information also needs to remain with the furniture, helping future owners understand what it contains, how it can be repaired and what can happen to it next.Measure what happens after move-in
A workplace should not be judged solely by how it looks when it opens. Its real success lies in whether people use it, whether it supports the business and whether it continues to meet employees’ needs.
Some workplace professionals already use occupancy levels and employee Net Promoter Score as evidence of what their projects have achieved. Post-occupancy reviews, employee feedback and workplace data could become increasingly important in demonstrating whether decisions made during the project have worked.
That focus on what happens after move-in brings the conversation back to where every sustainable workplace project should begin: the brief.
Building sustainability into the brief
Carbon remains a vital part of sustainable workplace design, but it is now becoming an expectation instead of the whole picture.
A sustainable workplace should make better use of what already exists, involve people early, support different ways of working and continue to be assessed after completion.
The simplest place to begin is with three questions:
- What do we already have?
- What do our people need?
- How can we make both work for longer?
At Hunters, sustainability starts with understanding what a client already has. Get in touch with our team to explore how reuse and more sustainable specification can be built into your brief from the beginning.
