Define the Business Before You Define the Workplace

THE MARIS METHODOLOGY:

At Maris Interiors, our methodology ensures that your physical estate is a direct and measurable manifestation of your corporate ambitions. We achieve this by creating rigorous workplace objectives that can guide every future operational decision. To turn organisational strategy into workplace strategy, we deploy a framework grounded in the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM) Five-Layer Model. This model structures change across five integrated dimensions: Context, People, Processes, Data and Technology,.

We begin our engagement with ‘Context’, which establishes the overriding organisational purpose and defines precisely why workplace transformation is necessary. This demands that we look beyond standard property metrics to identify the specific value creation thesis of your business. Next, we integrate PwC’s Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) model to proactively analyse your current talent supply and future business demand. By examining the core SWP levers, we align your real estate footprint with future capability requirements. For example, if your strategy relies on the ‘Build’ lever to upskill the current workforce, we ensure the workplace objectives mandate physical training hubs and collaborative meeting zones. If the strategy relies on the ‘Bind’ lever to retain critical talent, we focus on objectives that deliver a compelling employee value proposition anchored in flexible environments.

Only once the business case is deeply understood do we establish a balanced scorecard to measure performance before any design begins. We track business outcomes in parallel with workplace changes, advising leadership to analyse patterns across innovation rates, time-to-market, customer satisfaction and employee retention. By defining these critical metrics upfront, we ensure that every subsequent spatial, technological and operational decision is strictly governed by your overarching business objectives.

THE CEO’S AND CFO’S CORNER:

Are you treating your real estate with the same strategic rigour as your financial capital? If not, you are leaving substantial revenue on the table. Consider these hard truths:

• The Revenue Multiplier: Standard & Poor’s 500 companies that excel at maximising their return on talent generate 300% more revenue per employee compared with the median firm.
• The Clarity Deficit: While 56% of executives claim to be clear about their organisation’s must-win battles, this clarity plummets to just 27% among middle managers. How can your estate support a strategy your managers do not understand?
• The Governance Mandate: The 2024 FRC Code now places increased emphasis on outcomes-based reporting. Boards must demonstrably prove how workplace decisions directly relate to long-term sustainability.

A failure to align property rationalisation policies with internal controls represents a direct breach of established governance standards. By viewing the workplace as an engine for dynamic resource reallocation rather than a static operational cost, leadership teams can eliminate inefficiencies and drive sustained enterprise growth.

MARIS TOOLS:

• The SWP Diagnostic: A strategic workforce planning tool that analyses current talent supply against future market demand to ensure the physical estate supports the required capacity and capabilities of the business.
• The IWFM Five-Layer Assessment: A maturity evaluation framework that structures workplace transformation across Context, People, Processes, Data and Technology to shift facilities management from a reactive cost centre to a predictive asset.
• The Business Outcomes Scorecard: A bespoke tracking mechanism that moves beyond basic real estate utilisation metrics to measure the true impact of the workplace on innovation rates, time-to-market and talent retention.
• The Leesman+ Benchmark: An independent assessment tool that evaluates workplace effectiveness on a scale of 0 to 100, allowing executives to identify physical deficiencies and build data-driven business cases for future capital investments.