Office refurbishment is a valuable opportunity to fundamentallychange your business. From the way it’s viewed by employees, to the way your business is viewed in the market, a great refurbishment can drastically alter the perception of your business. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to improve the level of satisfaction your employees feel with their jobs. If you’re considering doing an office refurbishment, the various items below will help you to understand just how much your business can be transformed if the refurbishment is handled with care.
Help Employees Relax
We’d all love to be able to work continuously without any breakdown in our level of output, and we’d love if our employees were able to do the same. The reality is a very different scenario, however. You and your employees need to be able to relax fairly frequently in order to be productive. Throughout the day, frequent breaks are necessary, and should be encouraged. Anymore, however, more often than not, employees continue working through their breaks, especially if there’s a deadline coming up. Other times, employees will stay at their desks and scroll through their cell phones. In reality, this does very little to re-energize your staff. Of course, how they use their breaks is up to them. However, if you can do anything to encourage them to get up and move around, and take their mind off of monotonous tasks, you’ll do a lot of good. Getting a bit of entertainment and a break from their workspace for just a few minutes can drastically improve their mood, reduce stress, and increase their level of productivity when they return. However, how exactly can an office refurbishment be used to encourage such behaviour during breaks and lunches?
In reality, there are many things your business can do to encourage better use of breaks and lunch hours. During the refurbishment, you could consider adding in a few entertainment items to help employees unwind. Table tennis, a small miniature golf course, table football, a videogame console with some family-friendly games, or even a few jigsaw puzzles could help employees to get their mind off of work tasks. These activities also help them to get away from their desks which is another important factor in their being able to truly recuperate. These are just a few ideas, but there are many more options to explore. Use the office redesign as an opportunity to help your employees to feel more relaxed.
Help Employees Work
All of the ideas mentioned above will help employees to relax, but will also help them to work. Giving employees more opportunities to enjoy themselves while they’re at the office will make them more productive during the time they are at their desks. This is true for a number of different reasons. First, the mind is a powerful machine, but extended periods of strenuous activity will cause it to slow down. Just as other muscles in the body occasionally need to rest and rebuild their strength, so to the brain needs periods of downtime. During this downtime, the brain processes the information it has temporarily stored. This is known to happen most efficiently during sleep but also happens when it is at rest at other times. For this reason, more frequent breaks that are more enjoyable will also help employees to become better at their jobs over time.
Help Employees Collaborate
As you design and plan out the redesigned workspace, you also have the opportunity to install new features in the office that can make the office more collaborative. Collaboration is crucial to the success of any business and any project. Many businesses miss large opportunities when their work environments and practices are not collaborative enough, however. The best way to encourage collaboration is probably just to encourage it. When a new project comes into play, schedule a meeting with people that should be involved. In addition to encouraging it by placing people in a room together, technology and the proper space also do a lot to make these kinds of meetings more efficient. There is a lot of technologies now available that makes collaboration more fun and more effective. Office design by strategyhat.co.uk can help you to create collaborative spaces and integrate technology when appropriate.
Make Employees Healthier
No company can even begin to function without devoted employees. In many cases, employees spend just as much, or even more time at work than they do at any other single place. In reality, if anyone can influence the health of these individuals, it’s their employer. How can an office refurbishment influence and assist employees in bettering their health?
As of right now, your office may not have a culture that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Most of your employees probably spend a good deal of their time sitting at their desks, staring at a computer screen. While that’s certainly necessary for many jobs, there are a few things you can do to introduce healthier habits. During your refurbishment, you could consider standing desks. Many desks are available that are height-adjustable so that an employee has the opportunity to spend at least part of their day standing. This improves blood flow, and can prevent very serious health problems such as blood clots. Additionally, it may be feasible to introduce a gym with just a few pieces of equipment. Coupling these features with incentives for employees to use them could drastically improve the health of some enthusiastic employees.
Attract Talent
All of these features can help you to retain your current employees, and they’ll likely help you attract new talent at the same time. First, your employees will undoubtedly be more likely to recommend your business as a great place to work when they’re happy, comfortable, and healthy. When the times comes for you to expand your team, referrals are one of the best ways to get new people in the door, and it will genuinely help you weed out applicants who aren’t a high enough quality. Second, as individuals come through your doors for interviews, you can take them on a brief tour of the facility. This will help them understand and appreciate the culture that you’ve created.
