How to Design an Office Space to Attract and Retain Your Workers
A beautifully designed office space can do wonders in impressing new visitors and clients. However, workspaces are supposed to do more than impress occasional visitors and business clients. An innovative workplace plays a very important role in attracting and retaining talent.
Your employees’ and candidates’ relationship with their working environment starts from the first day they walk into your working area. Believe it or not, well-designed workspaces can spark inspiration and innovation in new hires the moment they work for your company. That’s why it’s important to create and design flexible workspaces for your employees where they can find many of their everyday needs. This way, you’ll be increasing motivation and productivity within your business and keeping your employees satisfied with their daily working environment.
Here’s how you can design a working space that helps you attract and retain skilled workers.
Brand Your Office Space
Internal branding for your office space can build trust in your company and increase work satisfaction and dedication from your employees toward your organization. There’s nothing that can build strong positive feelings and emotional connections between your employees and their working environment more than prominent and clean branding for your office. It’s the same as attracting customers with a solid, consistent brand. Internal branding can attract the most talented employees and help you retain them more efficiently.
You can incorporate branding in your design strategies through many welcoming and wayfinding designs that help set the tone for your business environment. These brand-centric designs can help newcomers feel more comfortable in their new working area and show them the way around your company premises. Help them feel at home by using wayfinding signage displayed in public areas to make it easier for them on their first week to find break areas and similar workplace destinations that newcomers struggle to find. Your business workspace brand is not just about design features, it should be more of a cultural vibe that every employee feels like they are part of. It’s important to get that vibe passed on to your new candidates as they engage with your office space. This creates a pride of place which motivates your employees to work more productively as they feel comfortable in their office environment.
Create Workspace Choices
The average square foot of space given to each worker has decreased recently to less than 100 square feet. Before 2017, the average was 170 to 200 square feet per worker. While this drop in space size may be mistaken for smaller workspaces, the innovation of some big brands who used the reclaimed space to create diverse working environments that allow for more flexibility actually inspired it. Giving your employees the freedom of changing their working space or working in more flexible areas will increase their productivity and deepen their relationship with the place they spend most of their week in. A large working area may look more satisfying and organized, however, reduced personal working spaces can provide your company with extra square feet to create more engagement and include many choices. A diverse work environment will give your workers more flexibility to choose where they work, engage with their colleagues, and find inspiration. This will help you in return by maintaining your retention levels and attracting new talent.
Make Use of Modern Office Design
These days, technology and new working attitudes have changed the traditional workplace design to replace it with new open office designs that look a lot more attractive. No more dull cubicle banks or lifeless break rooms. With the rise of modern design, more and more companies are switching to the best office furniture, such that quality office design is now a must for attracting and retaining talented workers. The more you move away from traditional static working environments, the more productive and inspired your employees will be. You can do this by understanding your space requirements and creating functional offices and various workstations for many types of work to meet your employee needs. Instead of sitting around during their entire shifts, your employees will enjoy activity-based work that gets them to move around and change locations. A modern workspace will also be more emotionally and environmentally pleasing to your workers. On an emotional level, having a variety of gathering spaces and focus areas will help your employees enjoy the community while finding places where they can have a break from the crowd at the same time. Environmentally, modern designs and open offices are great for letting in natural lighting and availing plenty of open space that fits all creative interior design aspects and entertaining activities.
Flexibility Inside and Outside the Office Space
Giving your workers a work-life balance and a variety of workspaces creates a healthier working environment and healthier mindsets for your employees. Your workplace design can include a combination of physical office presence and remote work from outside of the office. You can achieve this by creating third spaces that allow employees to work in non-traditional areas between home and work. You can also adopt video conferencing software to connect efficiently with remote workers and maintain your workflow. This flexibility will also make your office space more approachable and comfortable, especially for your remote workers. Other examples of non-traditional working areas and software solutions that eliminate remote working issues are also great for making everyone feel included by giving you the ability to meet with everyone in your staff, regardless of their location and working conditions.
From this point of view, coworking spaces are a perfect option to consider. These spaces are proven to be a great way to increase the productivity of employees by offering flexibility and great networking ability. The number of shared spaces opening each month all over the world, from Europe to the USA, keeps growing. The United States is considered the world leader in terms of the number of coworking- spaces. There are even top countries for coworking in the country, such as New York, Denver, Washington Dc, Chicago. Therefore choosing co-work space in Chicago or in each of these cities can be a good investment for any business thriving to create a supportive and motivational working climate for employees and make them feel happy.
As an employer, your office space contributes a lot to how your business grows and succeeds. Successful businesses rely heavily on their employees to integrate new ideas and keep up with the growing market. That being said, make it your priority to provide your workers with all their needs so that they can benefit your business. To attract new talent and create a pride of place within your business family, you need an innovative workplace design strategy that satisfies your employees and meets all their needs. A diverse office area will include all activities and space needs that keep your workers motivated and focused on their work priorities.
