As a small business owner, you probably work in close quarters with your employees. You share the same office space and you’re pretty much altogether, all the time when you’re at work. The more your business grows, the more attention you should be putting into your office design and office furniture. Whether you know it or not, office design has an impact on workplace productivity, SMB recruitment and retention, health and safety, and distraction levels.
Productivity
Office design and productivity go hand in hand. It’s not just new office chairs, desks, and tablets, though these are all important parts of the bigger picture. Office design should be about creating an energy or a buzz, a feeling that will make people more excited to be at work, share their ideas, and collaborate. Design experts say that natural light, bright colours, and open spaces can create this type of energy.
Recruitment & Retention
Office design plays a bigger role than you might expect in employee recruitment and retention. Remember that the office is where people will spend 35% of their total waking hours throughout their working years, though as office days get longer, that number will continue to push up. You need an office designed for creativity, energy, and comfort if you’re going to attract top talent and keep people on your team. When potential hires come in for interviews, seeing the office for the first time will make a big impression and influence their decision.
Some of the most common requests in office design from employees today include:
- Strong Wi-Fi
- Adjustable workstations with ergonomic furniture
- Open-concept layouts that promote collaboration
- Bright colours
- White boards
Health & Safety
Employee satisfaction is also tied to health and safety. You may need to upgrade your office chairs or bring adjustable desks to improve the health and safety of your employees. An office job may not seem like much of a health hazard at first, but back and neck injuries and repetitive strain injuries are some of the most common causes for lost productivity at the office. These are non-accidental injuries that are preventable with ergonomic furniture. Make sure your office chairs are completely adjustable so that staff can find the right positions for them. Finally, you can improve your office health by improving cleanliness. The whole office, and especially the bathroom, needs to be kept clean at all times. Consider getting high-quality bathroom stalls from https://onepointpartitions.com/ to keep the germs away.
Mitigate Distraction
While the uptick in open-concept, collaborative workspaces is largely seen as a good thing, offices that go overboard can actually hurt their productivity. Airy, open spaces are more efficient budget-wise, but it can also be easier to get distracted in these spaces. Sometimes it has to do with personality. Some employees will just work harder and faster alone. Creating a quiet work zone is a great idea as you expand into the medium-sized business category and grow into bigger spaces, though you may be hard-pressed to find space as a small business. A variety of workspaces will help employees with different tolerances for disruption and work habits.
Do your research when you move into a new office space or redesign your existing one. Find out what works, what’s new, and what problems you may run into with your design choices. Then you can start to design a more productive workplace.
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