The office space is a hugely important factor for your business, no matter the industry or line of work you find yourself in.
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It is the place where your employees will spend the majority of their working day, and so it’s important to have an office space that is welcoming.
In addition, keeping your office space efficient in multiple different areas is ideal for saving money and improving business margins overall.
In this article, we’ll be covering how to design an office space with efficiency in mind. We’ll cover the dos and don’ts of office design and provide you with some ideas you can begin with. Let’s get started!
Get A Modern Radiator
Creating an efficient office space can take many forms, and one such form is creating a space that is heated efficiently. If you have just rented some new office space or been in the same building for quite some time, the radiators may not be up to scratch.
Modern electric radiators – like the selection available here – are brilliant at heating a room with optimal efficiency. It may be worth looking at some room BTU calculators to get the right power of radiator for your office space and ensure your employees are looked after.
Modern radiators also come with the perk of being constructed from state-of-the-art heating technology and new components. This means that they tend to be more economically and environmentally friendly to operate from a power perspective.
That brings us nicely to;
Switch To A Green Energy Tariff
This is a minor side note to consider, but switching to a green energy tariff can have various benefits for your business. Oftentimes a green tariff can cost the same or similar, but even if it does cost more, that cost is marginal compared to the public relations impact it can have.
Reducing your business’s carbon footprint as much as possible will paint you in a magnificent light from a public relations perspective. It will show that you are serious about the work you do and the potential impact you are having on the environment.
Have Appropriate Storage Solutions
And we are not talking about tech-based storage; we are talking about real-world physical storage. A cluttered workspace is not efficient at all. It looks horrid and decreases employee productivity, but it can cause documents to get misplaced.
Worst case scenario is that documents containing sensitive information can get misplaced, which could even result in legal consequences.
Having an inappropriate amount of physical storage can also lead to filing issues with documents that can cause a level of complexity to your day-to-day operations that are very easily fixed.
Investing in a few good filing cabinets that are appropriately labelled and have more capacity than you need is always a solid choice. Just ensure you always have one employee that stays on top of the organisation of the cabinets to keep everything streamlined.
Keep Employee Morale High
This is not talked about enough in business circles. Employee morale is paramount to the overall success of your business. Keeping employee morale high can reduce employee turnaround figures, potentially eliminate the need to consistently train new staff, and lead to a more productive work environment.
And it can be simple changes that make your employees feel trusted or valued. For example, giving your employees more autonomy to handle, delegate, and complete work in a way they see fit (within business needs, of course).
In terms of the physical workspace and how you can design it to increase morale, it can be simple changes such as having a ping pong table for lunch break tournaments or having fridges stocked with drinks that employees can dip into.
Other suggestions could be having an office Alexa to play music while your employees work and investing in high-quality chairs to make your employees comfortable during the day.
Have A Cleaning Rota
For office spaces that have communal kitchen areas, make sure there’s an employee rota for cleaning duties associated with this area for all that use it. This will avoid one person doing all the work keeping the place clean, which wouldn’t be entirely fair.
The simple investment of a whiteboard and pen set is all you need to make sure a rota is organised (and that people stick to it).
Have Assigned and Unassigned Desks
This is a tip that is useful for businesses that operate using a flexible work from home model. Having assigned desks is great for staff that prefer to work in the office but have a loose policy with assigning desks. Let your employees choose their own desks (within reason) to keep everybody comfortable with who is nearby in their working environment.
Again, this can be useful as it places more trust and autonomy in your employees to work the way they are most comfortable – as long as they hit their quotas.
In Summary
Running an efficient workplace can come with a plethora of challenges, but using these tips as a starting point can help you work towards a more efficient future.