People grow at different speeds during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Similarly, companies grow at different rates at each stage. As personal needs change throughout life, a company’s workspace needs must also change to support its growth.
Understanding the stages of your company’s growth helps you know how they affect your workspace needs. This is key to making growth successful.
In this blog, we’ll explore the five distinct growth phases of scale-ups and how they influence decisions about office space. We will discuss why flexibility is important in your workplace strategy. We will also see how tools like workplace analytics can help you make better choices.
Finally, we’ll touch on how consultants, like those at Savills, can help you navigate the complex real estate world as a scale-up. We will also highlight the unique services offered by VIE People and ScaleUp Company to support your journey.
The 5 growth phases of scale-ups
Each phase of a scale-up’s growth comes with its own set of opportunities and challenges. Recognizing these phases and the crises they bring helps you anticipate your workspace needs and make informed decisions.
1. The startup phase: growth through creativity
- Growth Factor: Creativity
- Crisis: Leadership Crisis
In the startup phase, creativity and innovation drive growth. Your small, versatile team wears multiple hats and thrives in an informal environment. However, as the company grows, the need for structure increases.
Workspace Needs:
Flexibility is crucial in this phase. You need a space that fosters creativity and collaboration but also allows for rapid growth. Co-working spaces or short-term leases allow expansion without long-term commitments. Workplace analytics can help you understand how your team collaborates and ensure your space supports that creativity.
Challenges:
Introducing structure without stifling creativity can be a delicate balance. A lack of clear direction at this stage could lead to a leadership crisis. This can be supported by a well-organized and adaptable workspace.
2. The rollercoaster phase: growth through leadership
- Growth Factor: Leadership
- Crisis: Autonomy Crisis
In the rollercoaster phase, strong leadership gives your company momentum to expand rapidly. However, rapid growth can cause an autonomy crisis since employees feel insufficient freedom.
Workspace Needs:
Your workspace needs to support both leadership and autonomy. A structured office with flexible options is crucial. Short-term leases with expansion capabilities are ideal. Workplace analytics can show how different teams work. This helps you create spaces that support independence and stay aligned with leadership goals.
Challenges:
Your employees can feel boxed in or micromanaged due to the autonomy crisis. Balancing structure and freedom is key in this phase. Your workspace should reflect this balance, offering both collaborative and private spaces where employees can take ownership of their work.
3. The adolescence phase (“puberfase”): growth through delegation
- Growth Factor: Delegation
- Crisis: Control Crisis
As your company matures, delegation becomes key. You build out a management team and empower your team to take on leadership roles. However, delegation can lead to a control crisis where you struggle to maintain consistency across the organization.
Workspace Needs:
You must support both collaboration and autonomy. You’ll need more private offices or dedicated team areas while staying flexible. Short-term leases that let you change the space can be helpful as your team changes roles. Workplace analytics can monitor space usage and ensure your office layout supports effective delegation without losing control.
Challenges:
The control crisis at this stage arises when employees work in silos. Your workspace should encourage effective communication and collaboration between departments while still allowing managers to maintain oversight. One of the ways to do correct planning is to use workplace analytics data to understand how your team is working.
4. The scale-up phase: growth through coordination
- Growth Factor: Coordination
- Crisis: Bureaucracy Crisis
In the scale-up phase, growth is driven by coordination. Your company is large and complex, with multiple teams working towards shared goals. However, growing complexity risks creating a bureaucracy crisis, where excessive structure stifles innovation and slows down decision-making.
Workspace Needs:
Permanent office solutions with agile, collaborative designs are vital. You should still prioritize flexibility and have plenty of meeting rooms and open spaces to promote coordination. Workplace analytics help pinpoint and adjust overly rigid processes.
Challenges:
It’s easy for processes to become bogged down in red tape. Your workspace should be designed to minimize bureaucracy, encouraging quick decision-making and collaboration. Flexibility in your lease terms can also help you stay agile, allowing you to scale your space up or down as needed.
5. The flow phase: growth through collaboration
- Growth Factor: Collaboration
- Crisis: Consultation Crisis
Your company now operates like a well-oiled machine, with collaboration driving sustainable growth. Your teams work together seamlessly, and you’re focused on sustaining your success. Yet, too much emphasis on consensus can result in decision paralysis, a consultation crisis.
Workspace Needs:
Design open spaces for teamwork alongside private areas for quick, decisive actions. Flexibility now focuses on maintaining a dynamic environment rather than expansion. Workplace analytics highlight where collaboration thrives or where it impedes efficiency.
Challenges:
The consultation crisis often arises when there’s too much emphasis on getting everyone’s input, leading to decision paralysis. Your workspace should facilitate collaboration while also allowing for swift decision-making. Create spaces where teams can collaborate and ensure leaders have the privacy to focus on efficient decision-making.
Why you should have a flexible workspace strategy
Committing to a long-term lease on a large office space may seem like a good idea, but it can become a burden when your growth doesn’t go as planned.
Here’s why flexibility should be at the core of your workspace strategy:
1. Accommodating rapid growth
As a scale-up, your team size can change quickly. You may hire 20 new employees in a month, only to realize that you need even more space shortly after. A flexible lease allows you to adapt to these changes.
2. Adapting to market changes
The business environment is constantly changing, and scale-ups need to be agile to stay competitive. If your market shifts or you need to pivot your business model, you don’t want to be stuck with a costly lease. Flexibility allows you to respond to market changes.
3. Managing costs
Real estate is often one of the biggest expenses for a scale-up. By choosing a flexible lease, you can avoid overcommitting to a space that’s too large or too expensive. Flexibility allows you to allocate more resources to growth and innovation.
4. Enabling remote work
Offering hybrid work models or remote work could reduce your office footprint while maintaining productivity. A flexible workspace strategy allows you to experiment with different models and find what works best for your team members.
How can workplace analytics benefit your scale-up?
As your company grows, workplace analytics can be a powerful tool to guide smart decisions about your office space. By revealing how different areas are being used, these insights help you optimize layouts, eliminate wasted space, and reduce unnecessary costs.
They also shed light on collaboration patterns. It can highlight where teamwork thrives and where it might need support. Therefore, you can foster a more connected and innovative culture.
On top of that, analytics help you understand what your employees need to stay productive and engaged. Such as quieter zones, better break areas, or more meeting rooms. In short, data-driven decisions can help you scale more efficiently while creating a better experience for your team.
How can partners support your workplace strategy?
Of course, knowing how your space is being used is one thing; knowing what to do about it is another. For many growing companies, translating data into smart workspace decisions isn’t easy, especially when time and resources are stretched thin.
That’s where the right support can be incredibly helpful. Workplace consultants, for example, can help you turn insights into a practical plan. For example, they can help you find a flexible lease, make your current office more efficient or prepare you for a move. Workplace consultants can help you avoid costly missteps as your company grows.
The space is just one part. As your team expands, your culture, leadership, and ways of working will need to evolve too. This is where partners like VIE People and ScaleUp Company come in. They can help you navigate HR challenges, build leadership capacity or shape a strong team culture. Having an experienced partner by your side can make your growth more sustainable and less overwhelming.
How can you get started?
Your office is a tool that can help you attract talent, foster collaboration, and drive innovation. By taking a strategic approach to your space management, you can create an environment that supports your growth and sets your company up for long-term success.
- By knowing the different stages of growth and their effects on your office space, you can make smart choices that help your company succeed.
- Workplace analytics can give you useful information about how your team really uses the physical space.
- Get support from expert consultants like VIE People and ScaleUp Company. They can help you with real estate, HR, and growth strategies so you scale with confidence.