Can You Scrum in Your Workplace?

As the workplace assumes its new role as a hub for collaboration and community – it presents new office furniture requirements and in particular, the need to help people coalesce with ease.

Employee collaboration dropped 37%[1] during the pandemic. So, after almost two years of working in isolation, there is an overwhelming need for sociability, togetherness and inclusion, not just for employees but organisations too. Consequently, offices are being redesigned to meet these new requirements and offer the employee experiences that home-working simply cannot.

Helping people to coalesce easily is crucial to business for a variety of reasons – it maximises the serendipitous opportunities that arise when people are together, facilitates quick exchanges of ideas, builds relationships and bonds, improves knowledge sharing, creates energy and atmosphere and perhaps crucially of all – offers the agility that is so important in the new post covid workplace.

Employees really value being able to collaborate easily too. 75%[2] of employees consider collaboration and teamwork as very important, plus employees are typically 17%[3] more satisfied with their job when collaboration is part of their work and the organisation’s culture.  

The financial benefits of improved collaboration are striking too. Collaboration is linked with increased sales, customer satisfaction and ratings, as well as being more innovative, productive and profitable than the businesses that don’t prioritise it. However, even with these compelling commercial gains – a study by Deloitte found that only 9%[4] of employees feel their workplace has all the collaboration tools they need. There is still work to do.

Set against this backdrop, we developed our new product Staverton Scrumwall. We designed it to give organisations the collaborative and flexible office furniture they need to make effective, relevant and agile workplaces. Initially, Scrumwall was created for a project with global sports betting, gaming and entertainment provider Flutter plc (you can read more about that here) to help them define activity-based work settings on open plan floorplates in an agile way – a challenge that many businesses will most certainly relate to.

Scrumwall is a free-standing version of our already successfully wall-mounted meeting room solution Staverton WW – and it is available in both single-sided and double-sided versions.

Perhaps its most significant design feature is that it can be configured to suit a wide variety of different space requirements, meeting styles and aesthetics. A range of modular components make it possible to customise the size, function and look of Scrumwall – so it can support standing height tables for quick exchanges, integrated technology for project meetings, sitting height desks for teamwork and credenzas (with or without doors) for storage.

Scrumwall supports worksurfaces in a variety of shapes and sizes. Face panels are available in different materials and finishes including dry wipe whiteboard, fabric upholstered and MFC to ensure maximum choice, plus they can be mixed and matched to create the perfect configuration.

Discreet cable management is always a key design consideration for Staverton, so Scrumwall offers worksurface-to-floor cable management thanks to our carefully designed cable duct with removable cover. The panels we’ve designed to mount TVs and monitors continue the theme, as they also ensure cables are hidden behind the panel.

It is because it’s been designed to bring structure and definition to space, that it offers much more value than just a piece of office furniture. It provides visual cues as to how spaces should be used, supports a wider variety of working styles and behaviours and offers all-important longevity, which means as needs change, the furniture can flex and adapt.

Staverton is well known for being a UK office furniture designer and manufacturer, a sit-stand desk manufacturer and a workstation supplier – but most of all we are problem-solvers with an innate knowledge of how changing workplace behaviours require more from agile office furniture solutions. Scrumwall is the perfect embodiment of that, and we will proudly launch it at this year’s Clerkenwell Design Week, where we’ll invite workplace designers, workplace transformation leads and facility managers to experience it first-hand.  

So, as the return to the workplace continues – it must be ready to encourage and support collaboration in spades. It really is time to ask yourself, can you scrum in your workplace?

 

[1] Research from Zippia as quoted here: https://www.zippia.com/advice/workplace-collaboration-statistics/

[2] Research from Zippia as quoted here: https://www.zippia.com/advice/workplace-collaboration-statistics/

[3] Research from Zippia as quoted here: https://www.zippia.com/advice/workplace-collaboration-statistics/

[4] Research from Zippia as quoted here: https://www.zippia.com/advice/workplace-collaboration-statistics/