How to improve office space effectiveness
Encourage interaction
Offices are evolving. However, they still remain at the centre of the working lives for most of us and increasingly we are adopting location neutral practices and habits. Just as we are developing portfolio careers, so we will be using portfolio workplaces; convenience and efficiency are key drivers, enabled by constantly evolving connective technologies used to increase office productivity.
Whilst sometimes the job in hand can require a head-down focused approach, more and more businesses are creating communal areas to allow for interaction. As humans, we are naturally wired for human connection, so stepping away from a screen for a real conversation can improve office productivity. Impromptu meetings over a coffee, or sharing project dilemmas whilst shredding or photocopying can help employees release from a slump and get their creative juices flowing again. Many organisations do not allow lunch to be eaten at desks either, meaning colleagues often interact over lunch in the canteen, a break room or outside.
Office efficiency ideas
Here’s our top three simple tips if you’re planning your own office makeover to create the perfect shared workplace design:
1. Encourage movement
Arrange seating plans that require workers to stand up and move from their primary work area as part of their workflow. Movement increases blood-flow and should therefore not be overlooked as an important effectivity lever.
Think about where collaborative workspaces can be accessed or where coat stands, water coolers, stationery cupboards or paper shredders are located to encourage free and easy movement. These are important considerations when planning how to improve office efficiency.
2. Introduce colour
Use colour to your advantage when creating a productive workspace. It’s well documented that low-wavelength colours like blue and green induce feelings of calm, and studies show that these colours can improve efficiency and focus too. Other reports propose that red incites urgency and that yellow may stimulate creativity. Introducing bright and vibrant design elements is relatively easy to do, even if you don’t want to reach for a paint brush. Lever arch files or noticeboards can be used to quickly introduce large blocks of colour to lift your workspace.
3. Consult staff
There is no better way of putting a work efficiency plan together than seeking input from those working in the office every day. Many businesses utilise the input from employees to create a working space that will be truly beneficial for them. Staff will be able to voice what does and doesn’t work, what can be improved and how best to create a collaborative working environment to suit the department.
Offices are changing
If you Google ‘the office of the future’, you will learn that the office as we know it will be dead in a few years. The reality is that most work is still carried out in a central location that, for the sake of simplicity, we call ‘an office’.
Workplaces are becoming more adaptive to the needs of work and workers, with the evolving concept that ‘work is where you are’. This location neutrality can embrace completely new environments and reconfigure spaces in traditional offices.
Many of us have spent more time in our offices than we have at home. Most of us spend more time working than sleeping. So what can employers do to make maximise effectiveness of the office space?
Effective office design
Over the course of the 20th Century, efficiency theorists and organisational psychologists have influenced the design and layout of the office environment.
One possible definition for the office of the future is ‘anywhere with an Internet connection’. Perhaps the workplace should be characterised by connectivity, rather than a physical space.
However, it is up to employers and employees as to how quickly this change occurs – and how completely.
Maximise output
Before mobile phones and social media became mainstream, a remote office worker could be uncontactable for an entire day, without raising a comment. A holiday was one or two weeks spent completely cut off from the world of work. You couldn’t check email or take a phone call as we do today.
Technology and changing work cultures mean that work is within arm’s reach 24/7. Most of us have become desensitized to this over time. Younger people have never known anything different.
But by being ‘always on’, there is a risk that how we perform becomes reactive, rather than proactive. This means that we risk being not just connected to our work, but ruled by it.
As Philip Tidd of Office Architectural Practice Gensler recently said, “Your productivity is not measured by the amount of time you sit behind a thing called a desk. It is what you do. It is about your output.”
Minimise distractions
The main developments in office configurations over the last 40 years - cubicles and open plan - both have drawbacks. Cubicles depersonalise, are associated with battery farming and have distracting noise issues; mainly that you don’t know where it’s coming from. Open plan offices have the benefits of creating an esprit des corps (in theory), as well as giving management a visual audit of who is doing what. The most widely reported disadvantages are noise, lack of privacy, and the consequences of shared light and heat.
Organisational psychologist Matthew Davis found that decreased levels of concentration and increased occurances of stress are far more common in open plan offices. Similarly, the Queensland University of Technology claims that 90% of studies reveal open plan offices to be associated with higher levels of stress and elevated blood pressure.
Leitz asked their 800-person sample what their preferred office space would look like.
25% work in an enclosed single person office – a relatively senior profile – but over 50% would have an enclosed office as their preferred environment.
In both cubicles and open plan, it’s not surprising that people are increasingly retreating into their own internal space created by using headphones. Whilst only 25% of our sample said this is acceptable where they work, it should be viewed in the context of the rise of millennials in the workplace. For millennials headphones are part of an everyday work uniform.
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