If you are about to move your business into a new office, you have many understandable reasons to be excited. After all, that new office may be far from just a change of scenery; it can also mark the advent of a fulfilling new chapter in your company’s journey.
Nonetheless, you should think carefully about how that space will look, given the perhaps surprising impact of such on employee productivity. Let’s consider the following possible designs…
Defurbishment
With your office, you shouldn’t go too far down the minimalist route. According to psychologists in a paper mentioned by The Guardian, an office bereft of distractions like pictures and souvenirs is “the most toxic space” you can make for your employees.
Still, you can apply the minimalist aesthetic more subtly and beneficially by opting for “defurbishment”, whereby elements of a building are stripped away to expose the likes of beams and brick walls. Don’t shy away from incorporating such natural materials as wood.
Living walls
The presence of wooden surfaces could, in clients’ eyes, strengthen your firm’s eco-friendly credentials – and the same could be said of including “living walls”. What are those? They are literally living walls, as they display leafy greenery, says Undercover Recruiter.
You could effectively complement those walls by displaying houseplants close by, as one study has found that this approach could spur a productivity increase of 15% in your employees. Make sure that each worker can catch sight of a plant from their desk.
A focus on both mental and physical health
By placing foliage in your workplace, you can psychologically engage your workers and so make them happier, which can benefit their working practices. Indeed, you can carefully design your office in such a way that many elements are intended to foster mental and physical wellbeing.
Your choice of furniture can be key to this. Ergonomic office furniture, for example, can help your workers to improve their perception, memory and reasoning – while, by looking at pivotal monitors, they can spend lengthy periods focusing on their screens due to fewer eye strains and headaches.
Variety is the spice of an office
In designing your office, you could also benefit from lifting an array of physical or ergonomic constraints to leave your space dynamic, agile and highly interactive.
You could be surprised by how impactful even little changes can be. For example, re-arranging furniture to make it more comfortable and organic can assist in spurring productivity.
It would be helpful if your office has various vital amenities – like online and phone connections – as soon as you move in, hence why a serviced office in Manchester or elsewhere could hugely appeal.
Open plan offices
ITProPortal notes that open plan offices are designed to encourage discussion between workers, so it’s clear how taking up one of these offices could help your workers to collaborate effectively. Keep in mind that, the better your office’s design, the more productively your staff could ultimately work, so don’t rush planning that design.