If you’ve decided it’s time to upgrade your facilities, either through expansion or relocation, this investment only pays off if you can thoughtfully design the space around your team’s true needs.
Ideally, your new facility should boost productivity and employee morale.
Identify Your Pain Points
The first step to designing your new space is to make sure it is laid out in a way that addresses your main issues.
For instance, New Castle Lawn & Landscape, based in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, recently purchased 12 acres adjacent to their property to improve the flow of their yard. They developed the first acre, so it now includes an on-site fueling station, a horseshoe for pull-in parking and additional parking spaces.
“At the start of the day when I pull in, I see trucks lined up on our road, and when they punch in, they’re ready to go,” says Brad Stephenson, co-owner and CEO of New Castle Lawn & Landscape. “Whereas before, it was a cluster.”
Meanwhile, Green Lawn Fertilizing’s old headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania, no longer supported their commitment to professionalism and didn’t have the space available for them to invest in their employees’ training. Now, their new headquarters features 22 newly renovated offices, a 1,500-square-foot training room, three distinctive conference rooms, multiple common areas, and a 1,110-square-foot café.
“We wanted a center where they could come in either for training or for customer service week, a space that was large enough for each team to come in as a group one day a week, at least, and work together,” says Josh Willey, president and COO of Green Lawn Fertilizing.
In their case, Willey says they don’t need space for everyone to come in at the same time for a meeting, as they have a remote department rotation schedule.
Include Employee Insights
While you may know what the main problems are with your previous facility, you shouldn’t make these layout decisions in a vacuum.
Willey says their entire senior leadership team provided input while their founder and CEO, Matt Jesson, drove the design portion.
“The layout was more the operational team,” Willey says. “I led that. He (Jesson) led the design features. I’m more of a minimalist. He’s the one who pushed for the coffee bar, the wall with our logo and plants and all that kind of stuff that he was able to design, and I would say my voice was function and his voice was that professionalism and making it really special.”
Stephenson says his leadership team and all the supervisors were involved in making sure they laid out the new yard effectively.
“I think it’s important to get other people involved, just get other people’s input, because once you move, you want them bought into the solution,” Stephenson says. “If it’s just, ‘Here this is what you’re going to do,’ it’s so much harder to get people bought into why you’re doing something.”
Reinforce Your Culture and Brand
Your new space also serves as a prime opportunity to reiterate your company’s values to team members, job candidates and clients. This can be achieved with everything from the amenities you choose to include to your signage.
“The cafeteria has proven great,” Willey says. “We do a catered lunch on Tuesdays with the whole staff, where we’ll all be together for an hour each week, and we’ll do monthly updates in there after lunch, and things like that. But that’s a big win for us for sure.”
Willey says the café is one amenity he didn’t expect to be quite so popular.
“That’s a common area where people come in and congregate, and we even have a lot of folks who work in the branch up the street that they’ll come here in the morning and grab their coffee, and then they’ll go to work,” Willey says. “This is like the local Starbucks.”
Willey says they want their team members to feel valued, excited and proud when they get to visit the company’s headquarters. In their training room, they have pictures of everyone who has gone through their leadership development program, completed any NALP certifications, or completed any external education programs such as Harvard or Stanford.
“Anybody who does anything extra to level themselves up or grow personally, they’ve got their picture in the training room,” Willey says. “When you walk in here, I think there are two things that are very clear to every employee. The first one is that we give back to our community, there’s stuff everywhere that we give back to, and then you can’t miss the fact that we are grateful for and celebrating people who are learning and growing themselves. It’s difficult to come into this place and not get that message.”
Willey adds that the new headquarters has also helped with their recruiting, as it shows the caliber of their organization.
Depending on your location, a new headquarters or expansion can add visibility for your brand. Stephenson says previously they were tucked back in a corner, and now they have a sign people can see from the road. Green Lawn Fertilizing saw a similar branding benefit from their highway-facing location.
“It provides us basically two free billboards on either side of the building,” Willey says. “You have our pest logo and our lawn logo that oversee this highway that thousands of cars pass by every day, and see that, so it’s free advertising.”
Map Out Phases
With your new space, not everything has to be done all at once. If you have acquired a location with extra space, focus on developing the areas that meet your immediate operational needs first.
Stephenson says they focused on developing the square footage that had the least amount of red tape for their first phase. The second phase will develop five additional acres and include a lay-down area and more parking.
“That one takes more time,” Stephenson says. “We can’t just go on that. Plus, it takes a lot more money to get it set up the way we want it as well.”
Willey says they took a five-year and a 10-year look at their projected headcounts and made sure their office space supports that, but they also have additional square footage they can take advantage of down the line.
Additional space alone will not guarantee better operations. However, when you work with your team to ensure your new facility helps remove daily friction, then you can experience ROI in increased efficiency and a stronger company culture.
