3 Challenges You Should Expect when Adopting an Agile Work Environment

15 December 2021

The overall layout and design of an office can hugely affect the operations of a business. A properly designed office easily allows employees to be more productive and collaborative. It can even help them appreciate their work and work for the company for a long time.

One specific office arrangement that a lot of businesses already maximise today is the agile office layout. Through this layout, spaces inside an office are arranged to become more flexible and versatile, providing employees with the opportunity to collaborate more with their colleagues and produce their ideas without any hindrance. An agile office layout also maximises technology to make business operations more efficient, more creative, and more fun. It veers away from the traditional stringent office layout.

While an agile office layout can be fun on paper, adopting the said work environment can be challenging at first. If you are thinking of adopting this type of office layout and work environment, then you have to expect to face the following challenges.

1. Resistance from Employees

Even though adopting an agile work environment can make things faster and more collaborative, several employees would surely resist the changes expected from the new office setup. This challenge stems from the fact that some of them may be already comfortable with working in a traditional work environment, especially on their fixed desk. To ensure that the switch to the agile work environment can go smoothly with resisting employees, you may want to listen to them first. Then, you may incorporate elements that must stay alongside your new work setup. Engaging with employees throughout the process of adopting an agile workplace can also help overcome this challenge.

2. Executing Cultural Change

Changing your traditional workplace into agile can be exciting. However, adopting an agile work environment might also mean that a change in your work culture will be expected. An agile work environment encourages employees to maximise the spaces available inside the office to ideate, plan, and other crucial processes on one’s business operations. Hence, employees should be able to work professionally amidst the changes in the environment. Now, executing and implementing cultural change can be difficult. Therefore, you must gather workplace utilisation data in advance so you can come up with a good plan properly. Changes that will be implemented should also be seamless.

3. Health and Output Balance

One more challenge that you should expect when adopting an agile work environment has to deal with the impact of the changes on your employees’ health and productivity. An agile workplace layout allows you to take care of your employees by eliminating things that can affect their health negatively without affecting their productivity. Your agile workplace should ensure that your employees will not have to sit all day long just to start and finish their jobs. Breakout spaces should likewise be present so that several discussions and meetings can be conducted without sitting around a table. Your workplace should also possess areas where healthy food options are available.

To know more about agile workplaces, you can contact us at Agile-Xtra.

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