Varn's Woodland Office

Woodland office. If you read these words what are you thinking of? Varn designed this great natural workspace with a mission. A place for the Varn team to meet and be able to work outside and close to nature. Time to meet

‘Our woodland originally began as part of our sustainability efforts to offset the carbon footprint of our business. We are now proud to now positively offset our business and staff commute carbon footprint through managing this Varn woodland.

We manage over 35,000 trees consisting of hardwoods such as ash, oak, beech and cherry. Our woodland management plan is to absorb as much CO2 as possible and promote natural biodiversity through a small scale ‘rewilding’ programme. Based on our current usage and Varn being in business until at least 2060, we should be absorbing more than 50 times the carbon we emit.  We like to think of this as a climate positive contribution.

However, we wanted to go beyond these sustainability commitments, and an idea started to emerge when we needed to find safe outdoor spaces to meet as a team and for walking meetings during the Covid 19 Pandemic. This idea became real when we decided to set up a workspace in our woodland where our team could work outside in the woods. We have really challenged the conventional office set up and have developed the Varn Woodland office creating an innovative and energising outdoor workspace, so our team can work outside, be inspired and surrounded by nature. We are proud that our woodland office is powered 100% by solar and a 15KW battery, consequently meaning our outdoor workplace is running off grid’.

How do Varn’s employees and clients people respond to the Woodland Office and the events you’re organizing there? Could you share with us some learned lessons?   

‘In the modern world, the need to feel productive can lead to people becoming burned out. We wanted to promote supporting mental health in the workplace. There are many mental health benefits to working outside, from improving mood and reducing feelings of stress to improving activity levels. Our team enjoys working outside, going for woodland walks, having meetings under the trees, and even burning off energy in the woodland pedal go-kart! All whilst simultaneously having the aim of excelling at what we do, which is focusing on delivering expert search marketing, SEO and website rankings for our clients. 

Feedback from our team has been hugely positive about working in the woods, and our clients also enjoy the novelty of meeting with us outdoors. We have supported many of our clients with digital marketing and SEO training courses, all delivered in the woodland office, complimenting the training content with an inspiring setting’.

Varn: ‘We currently work from the woodland one to two days per week, and early indicators show improvements in productivity. We've compared capacity with time logged, which indicates 79% productivity in the office and an impressive 87% in the woods.

Our woodland office became an event venue in 2022 as host to an event we called VarnFest, an outdoor business festival that we created to support local business leaders and owners. This received hugely positive feedback, and this was focused very much on how wonderful the outdoor woodland setting was compared to other business events, which tend to be hosted in stuffy, dark hotel rooms. We even incorporated some wildflower arranging into VarnFest, which got people connecting, talking and thinking creatively, all whilst being surrounded by nature. 

We have more helpful events lined up for this year at the woodland office, including ‘VarnFest Future Leaders’, which will be a non-profit event to support young people at the start of their careers, with helpful personal development focused talks, all based outdoors in the woodland’.

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