Your office’s environment can be your biggest asset or your largest obstacle. When a workspace is optimized to meet the physical and mental needs of employees, it can boost performance by an astounding 22 percent.
However, surveys suggest that 90 percent of global workers are unsatisfied with their work environments. For tech startups with limited funding, the instinct may be to invest more in talent than workspaces. Unfortunately, that means missing out on a huge engagement and growth opportunity.
Productive Design Trends
Optimizing a workspace means focusing on the details that have the biggest impact on performance: noise, temperature, privacy, and tidiness. Open floor plans have become a trend for tech companies thanks to giants like Dropbox and Google, but this one-size-fits-all approach fails to account for environmental factors that influence employee output and engagement.
No single strategy exists for creating a perfectly productive office, but the key to a productive team is a space that fosters collaboration. Offices with a variety of rooms encourage employees to work either privately or in groups. They empower team members to use spaces according to their own needs.
Tracking Results
If you plan to renovate your office, it’s essential to track the results. Redesigns are a delicate and unpredictable process, which means they can either help or hurt your company. Here are three ways to determine whether your efforts have been successful:
Set Benchmarks for Success
Measuring an increase in productivity is possible only if you have a starting benchmark. Before renovating, take note of current working trends, monthly goals, and any other metric that could help monitor productivity levels. After changes to your workspace, begin to track variations against the benchmarks. You can do this manually or use a project management software.
Survey Your Employees
The best way to find out whether your team members like the new design is to ask them directly. Gallup recently found that the 11 percent of the world’s most engaged workers were also the most satisfied with their workplaces.
Make it a Full-Time Job
Managing a team’s productivity is time-consuming. You need to put a lot of thought into every detail of your space so it accurately reflects your company’s collaborative culture. Company culture is crucial, especially for the 38 percent of the workforce made up of Millennials, because businesses with engaged employees are 21 percent more profitable than companies with low engagement.
This article was originally published on November 30, 2016 on Tech.co and can be found here: http://bit.ly/2g5vt30
Jason Kulpa
Jason Kulpa is the CEO of Underground Elephant, one of the nation's premier customer acquisition solutions companies for leading brands. By leveraging proprietary next-generation marketing automation technology, Underground Elephant is able to provide the highest quality, direct response solutions at unprecedented scale.
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