It’s no surprise that the more efficient your office space is, the more productive your employees are likely to be. The working environment plays a significant role in influencing your employees’ happiness and focus. So it’s essential that the workspace is as optimized as it can be.
That’s why today, we’re offering three ways in which you can update your office design to optimize your workspace. From creating an optimized kitchen environment to ensuring that you have sufficient document storage facilities, we’ll ensure that your employees can get the most from their working hours in your office space.
Optimizing the office kitchen
The office kitchen is likely to receive a high level of traffic – from early morning catch-ups over coffee making to cooking alongside each other during lunchtime preparation. It’s no doubt that this space will be used very frequently. Thus a great place to start when it comes to optimizing the workspace for productivity and efficiency.
If you’re lucky enough to be able to decide where your office kitchen will be situated, we’d recommend that the kitchen is located outside of the work zone for maximum efficiency. This way, when employees make a trip to the kitchen they are physically taking a break from their work – which is great for their productivity. On the other hand, it’s often easy to make another cup of tea during less interesting tasks, so if the kitchen is a little walk away, it’s less tempting to become distracted.
For effective organization, we recommend dividing your kitchen into stations with their own purpose: the cleaning station, preparation station, cooking station, and storage station. This way, when multiple people are working in the kitchen, they are less likely to be in each other’s way.
Provide sufficient storage facilities
There’s no doubt that well-organized office space will save time and make your employees feel happier. There’s nothing more annoying than needing a snippet of information and having to search through never-ending files to find it. Whether you realize it or not, clutter and unnecessary stacks of paper are likely to be stressing everyone out.
Firstly, think about the composition of your storage space. Ask yourself if there are suitable shelving solutions or drawers to house all of your filing requirements. If not, investing in some high-quality shelving could make more of an organizational difference than you may have initially expected. Vertical solutions will make more efficient use of space and puts more at eye level, meaning that there’s little excuse for paper scattered around the floor. Once you have the equipment that you need, you’ll be at liberty to use labeling, create divided drawers and carry out weekly organizational maintenance as required.
Adapt meeting rooms and social spaces
Informal teamwork spaces are creeping their way into office spaces for their collaborative and productive benefits. Ad-hoc social spaces encourage interaction and offer more opportunities to discuss ideas and issues at length. The collaboration ensures you come up with the best solution as a whole team.
It’s easy to go on a never-ending tangent during office meetings. To ensure that they’re productive, obtain a written agenda in advance which states the discussion to be had. It’s also essential to manage the meeting by the clock. If you’re struggling to keep an eye on the time, why not use time management tools such as Harvest to do this for you? Use digital calendars and meeting organizers to keep track of everything discussed, and organize follow-ups promptly. This way, your team can avoid unnecessary task management stress. Ensuring that everything discussed in the meeting results in a worthwhile solution. Now you’ll divert from the meeting that never ended in a group conversation full of solutions and great conclusions.
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We hope that with our tips, help you make some effective changes in your office space that drive efficiency. Our ultimate tip is to ensure that your office environment is as organisationally optimized as possible so that your employees always feel able to put their productivity first.
Curious about the Human side of Tech? Read our conversation with Vanessa Shaw, who talks about Unpacking the Workplace Culture Trend.
Jeff Gapinski
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