Case Study: Procentia: Ways of Working, Workplace Experience, Testfits

Procentia is a software and technology company specialising in the pensions administration and risk market. They have an approx. 6,000 sq ft, three floor HQ office in Bristol and a smaller US office.

The challenge.

Due to a strong growth phase the business needed to review its UK office in terms of size, type of settings and how well it supported employees. Having introduced hybrid working after the pandemic, office occupation levels were somewhat low and the Exec Team felt that collaboration, creativity and sense of shared purpose were being negatively affected. Many employees were more focussed on their individual needs rather than those of the team or business. The office lacked adequate attractive and welcoming collaborative and social spaces as well as places for video calls and quiet focus work.

What we did.

This project involved several members of our team: Hybrid work specialist, employee experience strategist, workplace strategist and workplace designer.

• Review of employee experience, communications, ways of working and physical workplace

• Bespoke all employee workplace survey

• Employee focus groups

• Executive Team visioning seminars

• Post code plots, travel analysis, office location analysis

• Office size scenarios, testfits and concept designs

• Employee experience and ways of working recommendations

The result.

The office size and layout scenarios and testfits enabled the Exec team to make an informed decision about how much and what type of space they would need and whether they should move from their current office. Their aim is to create an inspiring and supportive workplace culture suited to a growing tech firm. The recommendations included: introducing team level agreements to better organise team time in office; moving to a single floor office with central social and collaboration spaces and a variety of work settings; encouraging senior management to sit within their teams; and balancing occupation across the week to reduce the need for extra space on busy days. 

“It has been fantastic working with Workwell. Kristal, Debs and Lucy are all super knowledgeable and fitted into our business extremely well. They challenged us on the why and their report and recommendations were a real eye opener that they had carefully considered, and understood, how we are currently working and how better to do that going forward. 

Working closely with them all has been a pleasure and we have created a new role dedicated to Workplace Experience off the back of it to create a workplace everyone loves!”

Lucy Ginn, Head of Workplace Experience, Procentia