With employee productivity becoming of greater importance every day, ensuring your office space is future proof is key to driving your business forward for growth.
Allowing employees to access the right tools gives them the freedom they need to feel empowered in their responsibilities, creating a happier and more harmonious working environment for everyone.
How do you know if you have the right tools for your employees, in the right places?
No matter what type of collaborative office spaces you decide upon, ensuring you have the technology ready and available in all areas is imperative to ensuring that employees can carry out their workplace duties to the highest standards possible.
Ensuring you have flexible and functional spaces that you can adapt and adjust is very important. Key flexible office ingredients include:
- Having the option of changing the room layouts, catering and car parking facilities for guests.
- Wayfinding for guests to find their way to the correct space is incredible useful, as is room screen display.
- Electronic whiteboards, flip charts and AV screens are a must, as well as adapters for both PC and Mac laptops.
- Video conferencing technology is imperative, along with a strong Wi-Fi connection, mobile device charging points and accessible power outlet sockets.
What does innovation mean in your business?
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
From virtual office walkthroughs to pre-visualization of digital furnishings in an existing space, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality promises to make life easier, even if they are not mainstream enough to be on every facility manager’s desk yet. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality should gain exposure and saturation enough that most will have experienced it – and started dreaming up innovative ways to use it.
Designing Spaces for Health and Performance
With recent figures showing there are 1.4 million working people suffering from work-related ill health in the UK and a reported 30.7 million working days lost due to work-related ill health, ensuring that your office is accommodating for your employees with Service, Quality, Safety is of essential importance. learn more about our design services here.
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Informal Spaces
Whilst you have been brainstorming your office space, have you thought about booth, pod or huddle spaces? These are generally far more informal spaces, often used by individuals, or perhaps for one-on-one meetings.
Collaboration/Creative Spaces
What about collaboration/creative spaces? These would be appropriate for those who require the easy-going feeling of a booth or pod, but with enough size to accommodate larger teams of people. It might require some creative input and tools that won’t be found in the boardroom – whether that means a classic pin board, wall display areas, or empty work surfaces to layout creative designs.
To make your office as perfect as can be, you need to accommodate all your employees and take into consideration their welfare and wellbeing. Companies are increasingly investing in new concepts and ideas that focus on themes like flexibility and mobile workspaces, for spaces for individual and focused work, quiet zones, meeting rooms and areas for social exchange.
Open Offices
Sentiment regarding open-plan offices is divided. Offices will undoubtedly react to the shift in opinion, testing out plans that implement coworking areas, private work rooms and other functional spaces to relieve the pressures of open-plan working. Instead of an all-in open plan, for example, a large office might offset a co-work wing with a bank of private “phone booth” desks.
Biophilic Design
Have you considered Biophilic Design in your future-proof office plans? The biophilic design uses forms from nature to keep offices looking good and employees feeling good. Sounds (running water, natural ventilation), textures (wood grain, natural fibres), colours (earth tones, sky hues) and plants can all play a role in the nature-influenced ‘green office‘ design, giving managers immense freedom as they build offices that respect employee’s needs for organic environments.
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From Curves to Hierarchies – Why Office Layout is So Important
In a typical year (of which 2020 was definitely not!), the average person spends around 1,800 hours at work. Spending that much time anywhere means it needs to be conducive to happiness, productivity and enjoyment. When it’s associated with work, it becomes even more critical.
