OfficeFurniture | Rap Industries Ltd

Harnessing Office Design to Boost Productivity in the New Year

The office. The environment that millions of Britons (and many more worldwide) get to endure and enjoy for at least eight hours a day, five days of the week. The office, witness to drama, despair and elation and the setting which a few of us love but the clear majority of us outright hate. The office design which featured in the satirical television series of the same name is a stereotypical yet in most cases, genuine representation of how our own four-walled offices appear. Whitewashed walls, cubicle-styled desks and tapping, endless and monotonous tapping on keyboards. Work can become stressful and frustrating, but this ebbs and flows. But the office seemingly never changes, the same frustrations emerge and grow every day, slowly chipping away at the productivity, creativity and probably sanity of everyone who works within one.

Fortunately, modern start-ups and design companies in particular are taking the lead in creating offices which are tailored to actually help and encourage people to work. These designs take inspiration from when we design our own homes; everything from the colour of the walls right down to the fine details are selected by us and carefully tuned to make the space as comfortable as possible. Traditionally, the idea was that we should be setting up our desks with little treats from home to help ‘re-create’ that feeling, but ultimately it just made us hate the office more as we realise what we are missing out on. But modern office design is evolving that theory. Modern offices are increasingly adapting to the needs of their employees, setting up spaces and surroundings which create comfort and eliminate distractions which help people to focus.

The Cubicle is Dead, Long Live the Cubicle

Simply searching for office design will reveal some pretty crazy designs, but there is logic behind the madness. Admittedly, many smaller businesses cannot accommodate the lucrative costs of some of the professional designers used, but the practical elements behind some of the design decisions can be employed in any environment. One of the most striking features of modern office design is that the cubicle design is gone (sort of). Desks are no longer tightly knit together is small clusters on this basis of collaboration. Instead, we are now being taught to make the most of the space which we have available. With the advent of computers, there is no need for filling rooms and hulking filing cabinets anymore, so additional space is opening to allow people to spread out and create the areas they need.

The actual size of your office will play a part in this and while adapting is often the case, a small and compact office size could become a permanent hindrance on productivity. Reason being that small areas amplify small niggles. Noisy colleagues can be easily blocked out if you are sat 15 yards away. However, if they are a foot away, their pet peeves can be inescapable, further escalating stress levels and reducing your effectiveness. Furthermore, small offices suffer from acoustic issues, especially when multiple people are cramped inside. The rattle of keyboards in use, telephone calls escalating in volume as everyone tries to talk over each other and general chit chat are all emphasised, leading to distractions and the loss of valuable minutes and hours in the day.

Clever Use of Colour and the Hidden Benefits

The layout of the office makes the most significant visual impact on anyone who walks into the space. However, when you are sat in such an environment for multiple hours every day, you start to pick up on all of the fine details at hand. In traditional designs, you begin to pick up on how dull and dreary the colour scheme is as well quickly discovering how rigid and depressing the whole environment can be. The aim of the modern office design should be to change this perception. Colours when used in moderation can boost an office both visually but also psychologically for the employees. Bright colours promote happiness and calmness, while intense shades such as reds are designed to motivate and get people fired up about what they are doing.

One of the tactics employed at Google is the idea that the office should constantly change. Every week, seating areas would be re-arranged, promoting the concept that the nature of the work they do is constantly changing and therefore their staff should be constantly prepared for this. Now, admittedly this is probably unattainable with a static office space, but the idea that things need to be constantly changing is something that we can all learn from. The best way of doing this, is through nature. Flowers, plants and more tap into the pastoral part of our mind, they develop and grow alongside the employees which mirrors the development which you will be hoping for within your business.

Office Design Should Be Tailored to Your Company as Well As The People Within It

Finding a practical solution for your office can actually be very simple. On a one-to-one basis, find out from your employees what makes them tick, how they like to work and what really gets on their nerves about the office design. If your design team is struggling to concentrate with noisy neighbours, then it is time to consider giving them the privacy as well as the resources to be as creative as possible. Drab, noisy and distracting environments stifle productivity, decrease the wellbeing of your employees and ultimately harm your business.

Gauge what colours they would like to see, the kind of layout they wish to work in and the finer details which they believe can improve their working environment. An office design should be dynamic and in turn, provide space for your business to grow, but it is important to remember that over stuffing the space can and will cause considerable issues in the future.

Rap Industries have been designing and manufacturing office furniture for over 40 years. We take great pride in applying the feedback of our clients in all of our new furniture designs. With office screens, room dividers and acoustic pods available, we have a wide range on offer to enhance your office. For more information, please call 01733 394941 or send an e-mail to sales@rapind.com.

Why Do We Value Privacy So Much?

If you have ever worked in an open plan office… and if you are reading this I would wager that you have, you will probably be well versed in the pitfalls of the bullring style ‘collaborative work space’. If not and especially if you are re-designing your office, please listen in closer for the sake of your employees. Privacy is not something we are thankful for every day, but it is something we very much notice once it is taken away. In a wider context, imagine if your medical records were leaked, your issues at home spreading like wildfire at work or that *thing* you did when you were 18 years old and thought it would never the light of day again. How would that make you feel?

Having a colleague peering over your shoulder at work for 6 hours a day isn’t quite as drastic as these examples, but while it is manageable for a couple of days, the frustration of it all builds up. While you are trying to meet your deadline, all you can hear is the laughter booming from the other side of the office and phones ringing off the hook. When this happens, all you can hope to happen is to block out your surroundings in the hope of actually getting some work done. But simplistic open plan office designs do not facilitate this, they forget the intricacies of human relationships and they neglect the fact that everyone is different.

Office Design Needs Balance

By this point, you may be wondering how large companies such as Google which has set the benchmark in recent years for open office design, has been able to subvert some of these issues. Quite simply, they provide a variety of spaces for staff, some where they can sit with others and collaborate while they work. Then there are others which allow employees to sit in private, shut out the world around them and get on with the task at hand. Okay, so you don’t have a multi-acre estate to create a layout like this, but examples such as this highlights the importance of creating environments which allow staff privacy while still having the option to interact with others.

Headphone usage has been on the rise recently as bosses allow their usage so staff can focus, but this does not eliminate the issue of visual distractions. One solution for this can be to introduce Office Screens. These can add a splash of colour to the space especially if it has been whitewashed and more deluxe versions even integrate acoustic foam which can help to soak up some of that frustrating ambient noise which keeps bouncing over from the other side of the office.

What Should Be Considered…

Every work area is different, so this will require some thinking on your part. However, there is a fine line between giving someone privacy and simply just placing an employee in a box. Ask someone who worked in a cubicle what they thought of that. Open spaces are great when they are tempered with areas where staff can focus on one task at a time. Just because of all the space you have does not mean you need to fit in a desk wherever possible. Crowded offices become very noisy at peak times and can you seriously expect efficient work when teams are constantly trying to talk over each other?

Before you start, it would be beneficial to find out thoughts of those already working in the office, what is their pet peeve with the current design? To enable your employees to work at their optimum, it is important to integrate a design which allows them to get on with work at their pace. It is perhaps unrealistic to expect everyone to work 100% in every minute of the day, so the conditions need to be created so that when they are working, they are not constantly distracted by audible and visual distractions.