In the corporate world, employees are the engine that keeps companies growing and innovating. Smart organizations know that their most important goal is to provide their employees with the tools that help spark creativity, stimulate communication and increase productivity.
Office designs can be a very important tool for managers to support employee activity. When designed thoughtfully, they can provide a place where employees learn and grow into a team, providing better results by working together more effectively.
Here are the 3 best office design ideas that help create an environment where an employee can thrive.
We should find a balance in all aspects of life and the same sentiment applies in office design. Although certain studies suggest open spaces encourage employee productivity, this may not be completely true. Keep in mind that we cannot apply the same rule to everyone, and there are many occasions when private spaces are necessary. A combination of open and enclosed spaces is the perfect solution to enhance workplace productivity. Provide employees with different spaces for different tasks by balancing open areas with more private spaces.
We can encourage collaboration and idea generation in open spaces by creating lounges and open hubs, allowing employees to move around freely without disturbing fellow workers. Separate private spaces can accommodate those concentrating on individual tasks. This minimizes over-crowding of spacious areas and provides employees a place where they can work and focus within their own personal space.
Open lounges can benefit from having dry-erase, writable walls that employees could use for idea generation and employee notices. It is an innovative and environmentally friendly tool for collaboration in the workplace as it minimizes the use of both paper and space and allows many in a team to write at the same time. These specially designed walls are non-ghosting (eliminating the ugly residue left by markers on traditional whiteboards and paints) and allow writing to be easily cleaned while also looking aesthetically pleasant. peerhatch provides graphic infused writable walls to foster collaboration with branding, functional design and motivational imagery.
We can further optimize office space by creating boundaries between work areas and customizing departments and its members so that no distractions are caused, and no disturbances disrupt the workflow, while the members of the same group can work together and teamwork and team identity flourishes.
Increasing productivity through connectivity is another take on how managers can ensure that employees are working to their optimal productivity and achieving the required results. Promoting the use of collaboration tools that are based on IT like Slack, Bitrix24 and Hipchat not only eases the mode of instant conversation, but also allows teams to communicate across departments by reducing communication barriers as much as possible. IT based collaboration tools like these allow you and your employees to use instant messaging, send important information, create and supervise tasks, host virtual conferences and meetings, and micromanage projects. They are the ultimate tools for a fast-paced workplace and enable you to perform all tasks in a timely manner with ease and comfort for everyone, eliminating the need for time consuming emails, memos and unnecessary meetings completely.
Automating the processes and creating your own ERPs and online services allows you flexibility, enables your employees to perform better and cuts down on expenses.
Tracking individual performance with software designed for talent management such as PerformYard and Trakstar helps track employees’ performance and provides a deeper insight into their strengths and weaknesses. This enables the manager to better assess his or her team and assign tasks that are a perfect fit for the individual capabilities, therefore achieving better results.
All this technology is available on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, cutting the traditional cords anchoring employees to their workstations.
Redesign your office space to increase organization for your employees. Start by providing them specific places for specific activities. Ensure these areas are clean and easy to access with all tools necessary for a particular task at hand. Organizing materials locally keeps an employee focused within an area without having to scout outside their space to complete projects. Such segmented organization reduces wasted time as wandering employees can become distracted interacting outside a projects scope of employees. Keeping a team together continuously will improve communication, reduce time wasting and elevate effectiveness and collaboration.
In this digital age, most offices are going paperless – investing in cloud drives and storage disks as cost effective ways to enhance organization. When data storage is saved to the cloud, paper for internal office uses like memos, printed presentations, and brainstorming can be minimized. Tying in with the previous point on technology, access to these files in an organized office can be accessible via removeable wall mounted access points – such as cheap mobile tablet devices.
Thoughtful strategies and effective use of new technologies can group employees, tools and materials into a localized organization that increases productivity.