Office Design Essentials
An effective office design can improve staff performance by 14%! This is a major improvement that could have a huge impact on your culture, growth, and profitability. Your people could spend 2,000 or more hours a year in your office. As a result, your office affects their concentration, motivation, communication, and inspiration.
Given that an effective office design can make such a difference to staff and company performance, you need to optimise your space. Your workspace should be a strategic asset that provides tangible business value, not just an expensive place where your staff happen to work each day.
We've been designing and building workspaces since 2008, partnering with companies such as Casio and Freightliner. In that time, we've created thousands of office designs for a huge range of companies.
In this article, we'll share the 12 best practices that we've learned are crucial to a successful office design. This includes best practices both for the design itself, and for the project preparation. By the end, you'll be more informed about office design, and you'll be better prepared to make your project a success.
Planning & Running Your Project
There are many different aspects of a successful office design project. Before you can worry about design features and finishes, you need to get the planning, strategy, and structures in place. That's what this first section will focus on.
1) Consider Company Strategy
Before you even start thinking about your office design or brief, you first need to understand the strategy of your company for the next 3-10 years. This will enable you to create a workspace strategy and brief that aligns with your company strategy.
To build your company's strategy into your workspace strategy, go further than just reviewing the latest presentation. Speak to different executives to gain a deep understanding of where your company is headed for the next 3-10 years. As a result, you can then ensure your workspace plans reflect and enhance the overall strategy. To learn more about creating a workspace strategy, read this article.
2) Understand Your Business Needs
Understanding the specific needs and goals of your company in terms of your workspace isn't just best practice, it's essential. Doing this will ensure that your project aligns with your company's objectives and delivers results.
To understand what your business needs from your workspace, hold discussions with your executive team. By taking the time to understand your business needs at this stage of the project, you can ensure that your office becomes a value centre rather than a cost centre.
3) Engage Staff in the Process
Amid all the divergent perspectives and priorities of different stakeholders in your office design, it's easy to sideline your staff. However, this is a mistake. Getting ideas and feedback from your staff will help ensure the design meets their needs. It will also help increase staff engagement and positivity about the change.
Before you begin creating designs, you should survey your staff (and management) to find out what they like, what they don't like, and what would make them more effective. This will give a broad range of quantitative data. To gain more insight, you could also conduct focus groups with a workspace consultant.
4) Work with Experienced Experts
One of the most important decisions you'll make in your project is choosing your design & build company. They'll be doing the workspace analysis, creating the designs, and then delivering the project, so a lot hangs on this decision. Choosing the wrong fit out company will make your project much more costly, time-consuming, and stressful.
To choose the right fit out company, first build a great brief that helps them understand the project. Then make an objective choice, prioritising culture alignment, expertise, delivery expertise, and customer care. To learn more about choosing the right partner, read Choosing an Office Refurbishment Company: 11 Key Criteria.
Designing Your Office
There are many different dynamics in a successful office design, which is why it's important to partner with an experienced office designer. However, we'll go through some of the most important you need to know about when working on your project.
5) Integrate Culture
The most overlooked yet important component of a great office design is culture. It's crucial that your office reflects your identity and reinforces your values. This will help you create a cohesive culture. As a result, you'll have more engaged employees and lower staff turnover.
Culture in office design goes much further than a few walls in the brand colours. It applies to the entire office, from the concept behind the design to the layout to the finishes and furniture. It all impacts your people, so you need to ensure that it reflects and enhances your company identity and culture. Read this article to learn more.
6) Optimise Space Utilisation
Space utilisation is the practice of designing your office as efficiently as possible to minimize the amount of space you need. Doing this will either allow you to add more staff without moving, or create a sublet space to bring in additional income.
Optimising your space doesn’t mean that you cram staff in regardless. It comes back to understanding what your business needs from your space, and cutting out everything else. By conducting space audits and then planning layouts that don't waste space, you could save up to 40% footprint. To learn more, read 7 Ways to Improve Your Space Utilisation.
7) Enable Customisation
Customisation is another important part of a successful office design. Regardless of how much variety your office has, it's impossible to cater for everyone. This means it's important your office can be customised by your people to suit how they work. As a result, your space will help get the best out of each employee.
To enable customisation in your office design, you first need a variety of environments to suit the differing ways your people work. Movable screens and walls allow entire spaces to be joined and separated, while modular furniture allows staff to arrange it to best suit their needs. To learn more, read Top 4 Ways to Enable Customisation in Your Office Design.
8) Consider Staff Wellbeing
Staff wellbeing is another important office design best practice. As the space where your staff spend up to 2,000 hours each year, your office has a huge impact on their wellbeing. Spaces that promote physical and mental health will improve the attendance, performance, and motivation of your staff.
To optimise staff wellbeing in your office, maximise natural light by placing the most popular office environments on the outside. You should also include ergonomic furniture, and breakout areas for your staff to relax. To learn more, read 9 Ways to Improve Workplace Wellbeing with Office Design.
9) Encourage Collaboration
As departments, companies, and supply chains, become more interconnected, collaboration becomes even more important. Your office can facilitate this through spaces that encourage communication and teamwork. This will improve creativity and problem-solving among your teams.
To maximise collaboration in your office design, you must have enough collaboration space for staff to work together informally in small teams. You should also include focus areas elsewhere to ensure such spaces are only used for their designed purpose. Learn more by reading 5 Ways to Improve Collaboration with Office Design.
10) Incorporate Sustainability
Carbon footprint is becoming increasingly important for prospective clients, staff, and investors. For many companies, their workspace is a significant source of carbon emissions. For professional services firms, it is often one of their biggest. You can mitigate this by incorporating sustainable materials and processes in your office design.
There are two parts to incorporating sustainability into your office design. The first is to use sustainably sourced materials during the project itself. However, you can also use your project as a chance to reduce operational emissions, by introducing more efficient systems. To learn more, read Top 5 Ways to Improve Office Sustainability.
11) Include Biophilia
Biophilia is the practice of incorporating natural elements into your office design. Although it's now common, it's still a best practice for your office. A biophilic workspace enhances well-being and reduces stress for your people, leading to improved performance.
To improve biophilia in your office, maximise the access your people have to natural light and fresh air. You can add plants throughout your office from desk plants to living walls. You should also include natural colours and finishes wherever possible.
12) Focus on Acoustics
One often overlooked but crucial design best practice is managing acoustics. Poor acoustic design is one of the most common office fit out regrets we discover when speaking to companies about their previous projects. Effective acoustic design prevents distractions and maintains a conducive work environment.
To minimise noise pollution in your office, you first have to ensure that your layout is not overcrowded. You can then use acoustic furniture and products to reduce noise and echoes throughout your space. To learn more, read How to Reduce Noise Pollution In Your Office.
Making Your Office Redesign a Success
Office design has a huge impact on your company. It closely affects your staff's productivity, wellbeing, communication, and engagement. As a result, redesigning your office is a huge opportunity for your company, one you need to get right.
Applying the best practices you've learned about today will help you create a great office design that is a value centre for your business, not just a cost centre. If you look around your office now, do you see the 8 office design best practices in evidence? If not, it might be time to redesign your office to fully unlock the potential of your places and people.
To take the next step, Download your Ultimate Guide to Office Design. There, you'll learn everything you need to know about office design before you reach out to a design and build company, including processes, costs, and steps to success. Download Your Office Design Guide Today.
To keep learning more about creating a great office, learn How Your Office is Harming (or Helping) Company Growth and The Top Office Design Mistakes to Avoid.
