Help Your Employees Work Smarter, Not Harder with These Office Design Tips
Humans are designed to gather input from their surroundings to adapt. With countless numbers of us spending 8-10 hours daily in office settings, there’s no doubt that the environments of our workplaces greatly influence everything from our wellness and moods to focus and performance. Extensive research shows that office design significantly impacts various factors, including satisfaction and productivity, so how can we optimize workspaces to make the most of these motivating marks? To help employees work smarter and not harder in meeting business demands today, we must first understand the connection between office space and overall productivity.
How Do Office Layouts Impact Productivity?
Today, office design is much more complex than ever before. By thoughtfully combining elements like space, furnishings and sensory factors, we can influence human physiology and overall performance capacity. For example, defined spaces and how they’re arranged speak volumes about how your employees will spend their day while incorporating ergonomic and aesthetic furnishings can elevate form and function, and sensory indications like color and lighting can improve mood and increase productivity.
Choosing the Right Work Space
Long gone are extreme design concepts like rows of desks in a windowless warehouse or the depressing, isolating cubicle farms popularized in the 80s. Fortunately, modern office design integrates emerging research, manufacturing advances, and technological leaps into applicable trends, and today’s successful business finds a happy medium by including both open spaces and personal work zones. Both are necessary for functional operations; private workstations are appropriate for work calls and client meetings with minimal distractions. In addition, open spaces nurture the essential collaboration that inspires innovation and motivation among team members.
Office Furniture for Productivity
The best businesses today take spatial concepts to another level, future-proofing their plans with modular elements like moving walls and adaptable furnishings that can be used by individuals, as small cohorts, or as meeting spaces for collaborating groups to maintain the momentum that might otherwise be lost when demands and markets change. Furniture today is more than decorative. It supports employee wellness, fosters accessible organizational systems, and provides the company brand and vision continuity from the boardroom to the breakroom. With this, furniture design elements must offer interesting aesthetics, functional variety and comfort while also being adaptable enough to promote creativity and communication in your team.
Color and Lighting Play a Role
Intentional workplace design can foster engagement and increase productivity because it has a powerful effect on how people behave and work. Elements like color, material and lighting choices can energize and motivate employees or strain and drain them.
Lighting choices are crucial in supporting motivation throughout the workplace; dim lighting can lead to drowsiness and challenge focus, but harsh overhead fluorescents can strain the eyes and even trigger migraines. Natural lighting is the superior alternative. So, implementing design elements like large windows or incorporating ambient lights that mimic natural features can result in substantial productivity gains because employee satisfaction increases.
Color is another essential component for improving productivity because it influences how we engage with and respond to our environment. Specific considerations like wavelength can lead to color choices that are either stimulating or calming; blues and greens, for example, promote restfulness and improve focus and efficiency, so they make excellent choices for improving concentration in areas where it’s most needed.
Design an Office Space that Inspires with Working Spaces
When it comes to your company’s success, elegant office design is the key foundation for your valuable employees to help your business grow. Choosing elements that seamlessly combine your brand’s vision with the flexible, tech-integrative elements to elevate your staff can inspire the design teams at Working Spaces to design your office space with everything your business needs to succeed. Rely on the knowledge and dedication of our expert designers to provide an unparalleled customer experience every step of the way. Looking to support improved productivity? Let Working Spaces show you the way!