The office is not just a place filled with equipment and papers that need storage. The most important part of the office is the workforce–your employees, from the newest addition to the most senior members of the family. Everyone should be comfortable in the workplace so that they can perform their tasks with ease.
What you need most about your employees is their loyalty, and these little changes help you get it:
A Collaborative Environment
The startup culture is known for its unorthodox way of running the workplace. Where old companies had a rigid structure, newer and smaller companies, often with executives in their late twenties instead of forties, come up with unique and fun ways of managing people. It takes some getting used to, but considering the number of young employees entering the workforce, it makes sense for companies to make these changes. You don’t need to change everything in the workplace to make it more collaborative. You might already have good ideas in place; you just need more diverse teams that will help each other come up with out-of-the-box strategies.
Productive Workspaces
Each member of the team needs their own space for work and storage. You don’t have to be an expert in commercial fit-outs to find the most ideal setup for your workplace. With the sizes of office spaces in Melbourne varying greatly, you might have ample space for individual cubicles or you might need to have a communal table for most of the team. The goal is to use whatever space you have to maximize workplace potential as well as that of your employees. It hardly makes sense to go with an open layout if it means having a big bare space in the middle of the room. Instead of inciting productivity, it might make employees lazier. In creative industries, however, the open floor plan makes sense because it allows for informal meetings to strike up ideas whenever needed.
Open-minded People
The work environment is designed around the people you hire, which makes it important to seek out those who can perform in the kind of office you have. You can have all the trappings of a collaborative environment and all the free lunches, but if your employees are not willing to make an effort to get to know their colleagues, it will all amount to nothing. From the hiring stage, your human resource department should already be looking at candidates who will fit the company culture you are trying to build. This does not mean rejecting all applications that do not show an outgoing individual, of course. Introverts need not be singled out as a bad fit. They can be a good fit for your team if they have the right skills and interests that will vibe with other members. As long as they are willing to go outside their comfort zone, they deserve a chance.
You design your office to be a conducive place of work for every employee. However, it’s not just the cubicles that need designing. Consider the people and how they fit in, too.
