Member Article

Shoosmiths champions workplace transformation

Head of Shoosmiths Manchester, Vaqas Farooq has revealed how the office has benefitted from heightened efficiency, stronger recruitment pull and more streamlined business processes since moving into its new purpose designed collaborative workspace at XYZ in the city centre.

Vaqas was speaking at a seminar, jointly hosted by Shoosmiths and award-winning interior design and fit-out specialists, Claremont who designed and built the innovative workspace project for the leading law firm.

The event provided an invited audience of Manchester business leaders with insight and practical advice around transforming workspaces to drive better business performance.

Guests were given a guided tour of Shoosmiths’ innovative two-floor workspace, which includes a variety of different work environments, tailored to suit the firm’s activities and to maximise collaboration.

The tour was accompanied by presentations from Vaqas Farooq and Claremont’s lead designers, who explained the rationale behind Shoosmiths’ new workspace and its outcomes. The speakers provided insight around how to develop engaging workspaces that help to attract and retain the best talent, how to create a future-proofed workspace that evolves as a company grows and how to increase capacity across an office estate whilst building in flexibility and longevity.

Vaqas Farooq said, ’We are very proud to be blazing a trail for law firms in the city, when it comes to rethinking the way our industry works and we wanted to share what we have learned by helping to bring the ‘agile’ approach to life for other businesses in the region. The event gave us the opportunity to showcase our new offices in an educational manner that we hope will help inform future decisions the business community makes around workspace design.

‘We are already reaping numerous benefits as a result of our investment into a progressive workspace. Our agile culture, that empowers our teams to decide how and where they work, is helping us to attract and retain high-calibre employees, for instance. And our focus on collaborative working, enabled by technology and dedicated workspace, has resulted in more effective team work, scaling expertise and improving colleague productivity and well-being.’

Sarah-Jane Osborne, design and workspace strategy director for Claremont said: ‘Shoosmiths has fully embraced the very latest in workspace thinking to increase productivity, collaboration and effectiveness for both the business and its clients. Adopting this progressive approach has put Shoosmiths ahead of the industry change curve and makes the firm a prime example of how workplace investment should have people and processes at its heart.’

Shoosmiths’ new Manchester office occupies 32,000 sq ft of space at XYZ in Spinningfields. It incorporates eleven different types of workspace along with break-out areas. Workspaces include a garden, working library, multi-zonal project room, drafting areas, huddle booths and telecon rooms. Each of the office’s five practice groups have their own ‘neighbourhoods’, which incorporate some traditional desk space, along with team and collaborative areas.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Maria Carr .