By Henry Pelly

08 December 2016

Over the next few months, a number of blog posts from members of the Practice will discuss Max Fordham's approach to health and wellbeing.

We are currently undertaking a refurbishment to improve the amenity and the performance of the 170 year old building that houses our London office.

By combining what we learn about our own offices with what we've learned from all the buildings we have helped produce over the course of 50 years, we can show how building design can improve people’s health and wellbeing, and ultimately their overall quality of life.

But can you separate the benefits of better organisational procedures from the benefits of physical improvements, especially if you are constantly improving both?  I'm not sure you can. Our Practice structure at Max Fordham is essentially one of 'employee-ownership' - once you've been an employee for approximately four years, you are invited to become a Partner in the firm. Currently, our business is owned by around 110 people of the 230 people who work in it. This structure means that we need real and engaged consultation with everybody in the office to affect change. Sign off from ‘the boss’ in our case means, at a minimum, the tacit agreement of over 100 people. 

How do we ensure that we ask the right questions about our physical and organisational environment?  The nature of Max Fordham, its structure and working practices, allows us to do things that other people can’t.  There is a strong culture of trust, collaboration and transparency in the Practice. Collating information about human resources or the internal physical environment can be done by having a few conversations with the right people. 

For us, well-being and productivity isn’t the end goal; improving quality of life is. We need to go beyond well-being to a focus on improving and optimising quality of life for people who work in our organisation. The practice was founded to provide opportunities for interesting work – just one of many important aspects of a good life. Quality-of-life measures are something that you know when we see.  They are difficult to measure and can only be achieved by balancing different elements which bring us personal benefit - not maximising any one area in particular.   

In terms of designing a better workplace, the Practice has learned quite a lot from the experience of the recent refurbishments of our Edinburgh, Cambridge, Bristol and Manchester offices. We are applying what we have learned from these offices to our London office refurbishment, at The Rotunda. A converted Victorian Piano factory in Camden, the Practice has occupied this space for forty years and is where the largest number of the Practice's employees and Partners work.

We have already made a great start on the fundamentals of the space. The building is naturally ventilated, well daylit and it has a central staircase which runs through its core. We refurbished the first-floor two years ago and started the refurbishment of the other two floors a couple of months ago. Some elements of these floors have remained unchanged for 40 years, even longer! Our aim is to create a space which can support and sustain the practice for at least another 50 and we plan to share our thinking with you as we progress.

If you'd like any more information, or you have any questions about our approach you'd like answered, please email me at h.pelly@maxfordham.com