One of the great measurements of your success is that opportunity to move premises. Maybe you started out with a home based business, but then you upgraded to a co-working space, or you then moved up to a modest office. Now everything is gaining traction to such a great amount it’s now time to really invest back into the business. As such, a new office can provide that. And your office can be whatever you want it to be; a place to nurture your employees, somewhere to have the latest equipment that you weren’t able to afford before, but also, it can be a hub of activity for clients and customers alike. The humble office space can embody so much, but what are the essential things that need to be implemented so your new office can thrive?
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Functionality
There are so many office design specialists out there that can tell you that if you are a certain type of business, you need to have your office laid out in a certain way, but there is really no one-size-fits-all rule to this. The functionality, however, needs to be one of the priorities. This means you’ve got to think about what encourages your employees to be productive. Functionality isn’t just about giving your employees all of the relevant tools, but it’s about providing that ability to seamlessly glide from one thing to the other. Productivity isn’t just about hitting targets, but it’s about ensuring that your workers are comfortable, and are able to function under stressful circumstances. This means that you’ve got to speak to your employees and see what they need to function at their optimum. These days, there’s a lot of talk about standing desks. Standing desks, depending on who you ask, can either be a great boost to the business, or they can be a major headache. It all depends on the business you run. In terms of functionality, and especially how you are laying out the operation, think about it in a logical sense. You want your employee to go from their desk to the printer to get that piece of paper to come back, and it all has to be done in record time. So think about these things- maybe employ a little Feng Shui to make it flow!
A Place Where Your Employees Feel Secure
It’s not just about health and safety, although you need to have these items thoroughly implemented. Fire extinguishers, fire curtains, and a first aid kit are things that need to be within our periphery. In terms of health and safety, the employees need to be schooled up on the ways to deal with an emergency, but it’s also about ensuring that your employees feel secure in the overall environment. It’s not just about the physical security, although CCTV and ID cards are invaluable to create the overall sensation of security, it’s also about making sure that your employees feel able to do their work in the office. There’s still a lot of fraud out there, and a lot of it comes from within the organization. If your employees don’t feel secure, and there is someone working from the inside, it’s not just to do with the physical security aspects; it’s also about how you lay down the law. If you don’t have an adequate security policy in place, your employees won’t feel that they can do the job properly.
Privacy
While there’s a lot of talk on the importance of collaboration, it’s also as important for employees to feel that they have access to privacy. There’s a big debate on the efficacy of an open plan office. Many feel that it encourages collaboration, but others feel that it hinders it. When employees need that extra bit of focus, privacy is invaluable. It’s not necessarily about providing cubby holes in the corner of the office for employees to work, but it’s about making sure that your employees can feel that sense of privacy so they can truly go into themselves. This could be achieved with something really simple, like small meeting rooms so an employee can go away for 30 minutes to do a pressing task, or on the other hand, you could implement tools like noise-canceling headphones, so the employee is able to focus on the task at hand in a busy office. When money is an issue, or you’re not able to get planning permission to set up a few meeting rooms, a few of these little productivity tools are very effective for so little cost.
A Place For Clients
You want to bring the clients in and let them have a feel for the business, and as such, you want your office to embody a sturdy work ethic, but is also somewhere that brings out the nature and ethos of the company. When you have clients come in, people can feel that they have to be on their best behavior, but if you are a dynamic and nurturing sort of business, maybe you want to have a space for numerous methods of collaboration. Meeting rooms are very handy, but when you look at the space, and you want the feel of the company to leap out at these clients, you should think about those essentials, like the decor, and the colors, as well as the designs that you want to put on the wall, because they’ll all feed into the image you trying to present. It’s not about overthinking it, because you need it to be inextricably linked with what your company stands for.
A Home Away From Home
And if you’re very hot on the employees being relaxed and comfortable, you’ve got to find little touchstones that will make your employees calm down so they can work at their best. A lot of offices have breakout rooms and relaxation areas, but you’ve got to think that maybe employees don’t always feel that they can relax. Others may not want to at all, because they are in “work mode.” But maybe it’s about cutting them some slack and letting them have a more relaxed Friday afternoon or it could be about those team building exercises that some shudder at the thought of. It doesn’t necessarily need to be at home away from home, but if you can tap into that sense of relaxation, it will work wonders for your productivity, and the overall culture of the business.
A new office is a way to start again. If you didn’t have the means before to motivate your employees or give them the tools that they would really benefit from, now is the time to really shake things up.
- This post has been written by an outside source – Please see my disclosure policy
