Southampton office of Grant Thornton wins workplace award

03 August 2018 Consultancy.uk

The Southampton office of Grant Thornton has won a workplace award celebrating its collaborative atmosphere. The South Coast Property Awards praised the space, which allows access to anyone sharing the consulting firm’s ‘values’, not just Grant Thornton employees.

With property prices rising and competition for office space tightening across the UK, workspace optimisation is becoming increasingly important for firms of all shapes and sizes. In order to honour the efforts of businesses in this regard, the South Coast Property Awards annually distributes a prize for the best workspace environment usage. This year, the Workspace Environment Award was handed to professional services firm Grant Thornton for its Southampton office.

Grant Thornton’s collaborative working space is located at University of Southampton Science Park in Chilworth, which the firm has been in since June 2017. The firm’s previous 20,000 sq ft office at Dorset Street in Southampton had been labeled as outdated and no longer meeting its needs moving forward. The consultancy’s team was involved from the start of the new space’s creation, crafting mood boards which formed the brief for the design agency Area Sq to provide staff with a strong sense of ownership in the new environment.

Southampton office of Grant Thornton wins workplace award

The collaborative space was designed to enable collaboration and growth in line with Grant Thornton’s values. Uniquely, the workspace is available for any entity whose values align with Grant Thornton regarding connecting and collaborating, rather than just Grant Thornton members. The result, according to the firm, has been a vibrant forward-thinking space made up of meeting rooms and pods with a full range of hot desks and innovation spaces.

When announcing the win, the South Coast Property Awards described the Workspace Environment category as seeking “to reward those companies that have used their property strategy to create: quality, design-led working styles; increased productivity; innovative working environments; and, open, inclusive work cultures.”

Commenting on the news, Norman Armstrong, Partner at Grant Thornton’s Southampton collaborative space, said, “We are absolutely delighted to have taken home our first award for the space and have the work which went into the design recognised.  Agile working isn’t a new concept, but we do feel we have provided something different to the city’s offering and encouraging networking among the business community… The space encourages all our employees to move out of their usual department teams and empowered them to choose where and how they work, which has undoubtedly increased productivity and high morale.”

The firm is continuing to create collaborative spaces, on the back of the success of their previous implementation. Grant Thornton recently opened a new permanent office at Sci-Tech Daresbury – becoming the first advisory firm to do so. As the location looks to build on 12 months of rapid growth, Grant Thornton will look to collaborate with the small to medium businesses at the site, leveraging its new G platform in the process.

More on: Grant Thornton
United Kingdom
Company profile
Grant Thornton is not a United Kingdom partner of Consultancy.org
Partnership information »
Partnership information

Consultancy.org works with three partnership levels: Local, Regional and Global.

Grant Thornton is a Local partner of Consultancy.org in Netherlands.

Upgrade or more information? Get in touch with our team for details.