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Five Things You Can Do to Design a More Productive Office

Good office design is essential for employee happiness and productivity. Indeed, for some companies office design is so important that they will spend thousands of pounds getting it to look and feel just right. However, not everyone can afford to totally redo their entire office’s decor. Full scale renovation can cost huge amounts of money and also disrupt normal working life quite considerably. With this in mind, then, what relatively simple things can be done to renovate your office without calling in the builders? Read on for five handy ways to boost your office’s productivity.

• Change the layout

One of the fundamental aspects of office design, the layout of your place of work is a big part of how people first – and continue to – perceive it. While some people prefer individual cubicles, many are of the strong belief that an open plan environment is superior in terms of both productivity and general psychological wellbeing. Provided you can adjust to the generally higher level of background noise (although you can easily mask this with your own music through some headphones, and having some quiet areas is still advised) and significant difference in atmosphere (generally thought to aid communication, collaboration and a team mentality), they can work quite well. Although it is arguably not cheap to completely change your office layout, you may be able to at least take down some partitions and have a happy medium.

• Repaint

Probably one of the first things you think of when you’re going to redecorate your home (and one you may want to consider if you have some offices to let). However, repainting your office – even if it’s just a single wall – can have a big impact. Certain colours are thought to encourage productivity; bright ones in particular (for example reds, oranges and yellows) are attributed with encouraging energy and enthusiasm, while more muted colours might evoke a more sedate, sophisticated aesthetic. If you want to be adventurous why not get an inspiring mural done instead of simply painting a wall one single colour? This could either be done by the people that work at your company (and thus making it a fun team building exercise) or you could commission an artist to come and produce something truly unique and special.

• Executive toys

You may laugh, but having a few interesting items lying around the office can be a surprisingly big morale booster. The Newton’s cradle was arguably the archetypal executive toy, but today there is a huge variety of entertaining gadgets to choose from. Whether it’s retro toy robots or animatronic butterflies, a few interesting interactive curios scattered about the workplace can do a lot to lift the mood (and they also give clients something to occupy themselves with while waiting for a meeting to start).

• Snacks

A dip in blood sugar level can put a real dent in anyone’s ability to work, so having things to snack on scattered around the office is a pretty good idea. While brightly coloured jars of sweets and chocolate are always welcome, more substantial snacks such as fruit and even some of the more healthy baked goods will generally keep you going longer. Some offices also offer fridges full of cold beverages, and on Fridays some even provide beer.

• Relaxation areas

While an all singing, all dancing open plan office is all very well, it pays to have a few places where people can go to get away from their desks and relax. Whether it’s a full blown games room (either a more traditional one featuring a pool table and darts or some shiny HD TVs and games consoles) or simply a cosy selection of sofas and beanbags, being well rested always helps to boost productivity. Such areas can also be used for informal impromptu meetings if desired; discussing how to deal with a certain account’s latest trials and tribulations is always easier if you’re comfortable.

How To Motivate Employees

Keeping  employees motivated when at work is something that many businesses really do struggle with. Not only is each every employee different to the last  but you will find that it can be very hard to change from a business with no motivation to a business where everyone is as happy as they can be, there is no pleasing everyone!

Motivation is key to business success, with employees happy they are going to be working to their fullest capabilities; here are a few ways to get people motivated in the virtual offices uk.

Get Feedback

Asking employees what they currently think of the company is something that can become very important for moving forward in motivation. If you go around and ask people personally then you will get a certain response but you are not going to get the best results using this method.

If you really want to get honest results from employees then you need to create an anonymous survey that employees can fill out with thoughts. This technique will get you a lot of complaints but they are complaints that can be changed for the better and improve the way the business is run!

Take Employees Out

A lot of businesses have massive gaps between management and the employees that actually bring the money into the business. This is only going to be a bad thing for a business as it will result in employees having little to no respect for the owners of a business. Make sure that if you do own a business, that you make the effort to occasionally take out your employees for dinner or for at least a few drinks.

As a business owner it might not be viable that you treat everyone to dinner and drinks but at least ask to see if people want to go out and get the first round in! Everyone will start to feel a lot more relaxed both around management and each other which helps to keep people motivated.

Get People Talking

If you are working within a company where no one knows one another and are just sitting there in silence every day then you are actually working at a disadvantage. Although you might think people are hard at work, the creative juices will not be flowing as well as they could be.

Introducing people to the team is incredibly important because it puts names to faces and gets people talking. Talking in a business might sound bad but it actually means employees are discussing work and feeling a bit happier in their jobs.

These are just a few of the ways you can get people motivated!