As the place where employees spend most of their working hours, Office space has a fundamental role in boosting motivation and engagement. Therefore, it’s essential that your workspace is designed and optimized with efficiency and productivity at its core.
That’s why today, we’re offering our top tips on planning work environments to ensure employees stay focused. From team meetings and project management to workspace layout, with this guide you’ll be on your way to cultivating a productive and motivated workforce.
Adopt a clean workspace
As the saying goes, “a tidy desk contributes to a tidy mind” - so encouraging your employees to remove any unnecessary items from their desk could be integral to clearer thinking through a sense of accomplishment and fewer visual distractions. If staff are reluctant to throw certain items away that may be needed infrequently, providing quality cardboard boxes for storage will ensure they’re neatly stowed yet easily accessible.
Another way to promote a clean environment is to bring the outdoors inside your office - injecting a fresh and positive feel. Bringing plants into the office has many psychological and physical benefits, from helping to combat stress to decreasing air pollutants. Plants have even been scientifically proven to reduce noise levels by absorbing sound. The wider the leaf the greater the sound absorption, with plants like peace lilies and weeping figs tipped to offer the best results.
Light also contributes to delivering a clean workspace - the more light in your office the less eye-fatigue and tiredness your employees are likely to experience. While natural lighting is always best, it’s not always possible to add more windows, but you can get smarter with your lightbulbs. Use daylight bulbs to mimic natural light which will reduce the glare from bright bulbs and eye-strain from computer screens - leaving employees feeling happier and more comfortable while they work.
Promote collaboration
Working with people from different backgrounds in terms of training, writing and communication can create a very collaborative workplace. The more your employees feel like they can connect and soundboard with one another the more motivated and engaged they’ll be as a team and individuals.
For organizations looking to promote a sense of collaboration amongst peers, conducting employment feedback surveys can be an effective way to open up a gateway to transparent communication between management and their team. Creating an open culture both through feedback schemes and an open office design will ensure employees feel comfortable discussing issues and finding resolutions together as a team - this could be through group meetings or cross-departmental projects.
To bolster this collaborative thought process, prime your workspace to consist of a healthy balance of shared spaces and conference rooms, alongside individual desk spaces and phone booths. This combination will provide an environment where employees can engage with each other yet still seek privacy where needed. In addition, adopting workspace collaboration software tools such as Slack can be a brilliant way to promote team togetherness and establish inter-departmental communities that could lead to increased productivity levels and morale.
Encourage exercise
While it’s easy to believe that undertaking more exercise may make employees more tired, it can actually have a very positive effect on productivity at work. Yet, with busy work and personal schedules many of us find it difficult to make time for fitness. As an employee looking to optimize your workforce, making it a priority to provide opportunities for staff to fit in even a small element of fitness during working hours could do wonders for pushing up employee wellbeing and productivity.
Regular physical activity has positive impacts on separating work and home, releasing frustration and helping people to sleep better, resulting in a healthier body and healthier mind. Even after as little as 10 minutes exercising, it’s thought that individuals can feel more refreshed and focused, so it’s no surprise that companies like Forbes have now started paying their employees to exercise at work. From cycling to work to subsidized fitness classes at lunch, providing suitable facilities such as on-site showers or even the use of a nearby gym to ensure staff get the right level of exercise could be the key to upping motivation and engagement within the workplace.
With thoughtful office design, it’s possible to create an innovative space that will optimize your employees’ engagement and keep them motivated - and we hope with these insights you and your staff can begin making positive changes towards a better workspace today.
Author Bio:
Alex Jones is a content creator for Kendon Packaging. Now one of Britain's leading packaging companies, Kendon Packaging has been supporting businesses nationwide since the 1930s.
This post first appeared on 4Cs Blog: Employee Surveys And More | Insightlink Communications, please read the originial post: here
