The Opportunity
The Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) strives to protect the lives of South Australians by continuously developing and providing an effective and equal justice system.
In order to continue to provide this high-quality service, the AGD needed to relocate from 45 Pirie Street to the new GPO Tower, where they would occupy nine floors.
Drivers for the relocation included:
- Current building’s ageing fit out
- Lack of adequate spaces to support AGD’s business services
- Need for enhanced technologies (that could not be supported at 45 Pirie Street)
- Need for a modern and flexible workplace that can respond to future changes
communikate et al was appointed to manage stakeholder engagement and communications, to ensure the new workspace design reflected the client’s needs.
Our Approach
We worked alongside GHD Architects and Dr John Holm of SocioDesign to develop a comprehensive stakeholder engagement program that balanced internal stakeholder needs, business imperatives and physical design.
With eight business divisions, each with various groups and teams that have varying functions, it was important the engagement process gave everyone an opportunity to discuss their functional needs and also any concerns. This ensured a workspace would be designed to, where possible, accommodate these factors, which ranged from collaboration, privacy and security and access.
Our stakeholder engagement program, included:
- Developing the vision and guiding principles
- One-on-one meetings with leadership
- A staff survey garnering 585 responses and 65% completion rate
- 18 staff focus group sessions with 193 participants
- Current office walk throughs to observe office configurations and space utilisation
- Staff drop-in sessions to enable the opportunity for feedback and ideas to be given
- Creation of a GPO Tower email address for staff questions and feedback
- Development of an informational wall for staff to raise questions and comment
communikate et al was responsible for developing the overall strategy, designing and facilitating the workshops and surveys, analysis and reporting and graphic design of the project brand and all elements.
The Outcome
The integrated stakeholder engagement program enabled stakeholders to openly provide feedback and engage in the relocation process. The strong level of engagement from staff meant AGD’s approach resonated and gave everyone an equal voice in their future workplace.
From this we were able to develop a vision and set of guiding principles that took into account staff needs, cultural requirements and physical design, to ensure we created a new workspace that set AGD up to achieve the best possible outcomes, in terms of productivity, culture employee satisfaction and engagement.
