5 Tips for Designing the Best Layout for Your Office

In many ways, a business is only as successful as its office is productive. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses don’t have their office set up in a way that fosters productivity or efficiency of any kind. Instead, the design of the office itself seems to actually hamper employees from doing as good of a job as they could be. Overall, the design of an office workspace is important. Below are five designs tips you should consider applying to your company’s own office.

Bring in Some Natural Light

Human beings were not designed to be cramped up indoors all day. Everyone requires sunlight to be healthy. It even provides the human body with important vitamins and nutrients. Keep this in mind when designing your office. You need some natural light coming in from strategically placed windows. Artificial light simply won’t have the right effect both physically and mentally for your workers.

Choose the Right Seating

The design of office seating is also integral to having a happy and productive workforce. Employees could end up sitting in the chairs you provide them with for hours at a time. You should choose ergonomically designed office chairs on a swivel that allow for easy movement to foster the most productivity. Also make sure the seating you buy is not hard on the back to help prevent office related injuries.

Create Efficient Workflows

Your office also needs to have a layout that creates efficient workflows. Consider where each employee needs to be to maximize their own productivity. If a certain job title requires a person to send out faxes every day, they shouldn’t have to walk across the entire office from their work desk to reach the fax machine.

Realize That Higher Ceilings Are Better

Employees tend to prefer offices with higher ceilings. That extra space can help to relieve the feeling of being trapped inside for many. Your employees’ state of mind and mental health are, of course, very important to producing a quality work product.

Realize That the Open Office Floor Plan Have Been Debunked

For several years, there was a trend in regard to office design that suggested completely open offices created a more productive workforce. This was actually false, and studies, including one from Harvard, have proven that completely open office layouts are bad for productivity and workers. While you do want to foster collaboration, giving individual employees a small sense of autonomy and privacy will help improve their work product.

Overall, put some thought into how you design your office. The layout, lighting, furniture and more are all important. Being more thoughtful regarding the design of your office can pay out dividends by increasing your employees’ productivity.