There Are Plenty Of Vital Elements For Office Design

By Albert Tay

There are important details in an office design that can affect any company's performance. These details can make a company be a success or a failure. Office space size, company goals and open communication with the workers is important in deciding about efficient office design. Sometimes it is important to hire an outside professional designer to do the job, but a lot of time it can be accomplished by the company themselves.


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Improving and maintaining employee morale as well as productivity is a goal of many big companies. A high employee morale means more work is getting completed. Many offices are small, dark and dreary. This mood will affect how the employees work and that in turn affects profits. An office manager or owner needs to decide on what is the correct solution to the problem of office design and then decide how to proceed to correct it.

Observations of the workplace need to be the stepping stone to any office redesign project. A manager needs to ask himself if there are any areas of the office that appear to be a problem and are some areas too small for the equipment in them.

A good idea is to have the manager draw a picture of the traffic patterns within the office. Observe how employees move throughout the day. Also observe the conference rooms and workstations and see where the work is getting completed. Is there any empty space not being used?

Asking employees for their input can bring other issues in to the equation as well. Employees may make unrealistic demands. Try to work with the employees concerns but remember no one office design can please every employee. Remember if the new office design is going to make big changes such as move employees out of individual offices and into cubicles, remind the employees of what the added benefits will be for their move such as new and bigger lunchroom, more room around equipment, etc...

Determine office goals for a redesign. Make a list of four to five goals and then brainstorm on a way to meet them. One popular idea with work areas is to move the supervisor to the middle of the main room and put the workers around the edge. This places the workers who spend the majority of their day by the windows and natural lighting. This move alone increases morale and therefore increases the amount of work that gets done.

After identifying the problem, consideration on the different options occurs. Should the area be remodeled, can redesign occur by just moving furniture or will it require the whole company to move to a new location? These questions need to be asked and a cost analysis of each needs to occur. What is the best plan for the job? These questions will be raised and a decision will need to be made.

Completing an office design can be a hard job to work on. It takes a lot of planning and thought. It is important to take everyone's views into consideration prior to moving on the project. Remember in the end it is worth the effort, it will increase worker morale which in turns increases productivity which in turn increases profit margins.

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