If you look around the office to see yawning faces, heads on desks and people twiddling their thumbs a little too often, the chances are that your workplace isn’t as productive as it could be. You want to sense dynamism, hear the chatter of ideas and viewpoints and see people busying themselves with their work. While your employees need to take some responsibility for their work ethic, the onus is also on you as the employer to provide an environment that is conducive to productive working. Beige carpet tiles, poorly designed ergonomic seating and endless cubicles of desktop computers simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Take a look at how you can bring your office into the twenty-first century and make it a more productive environment for your staff.
Technology
Although it may be a large financial outlay initially, implementing new hardware such as laptops, monitors and screens can allow you to reap productive rewards. There’s nothing more morale-sapping and frustrating than having a photocopier that breaks down all the time, intermittent wifi connections or computer crashes. Your employees will be pulling their hair out, and there will be an obscene amount of work time wasted dealing with technical issues because of old hardware. Ship in the new stuff and launch it with a fanfare. Your staff will feel valued, and the ethos of the office will be lifted with new kit adorning the workplace.
Environment
A refurbishment of the office needn’t cost a fortune. Think about what you want from your staff and create an environment that can facilitate this. If you want plenty of discussion and meetings where creative ideas can flow, make sure you have plenty of open plan working areas. Allow people the freedom to move around the office, have those all-important water cooler moments and enjoy chatting about work over a coffee.
Make sure the coffee is of good quality, install some luxury hand dryers in the bathrooms and ensure that there is plenty of greenery adorning the office. These little touches will show your staff that you care about where they work. They should feel reinvigorated to be productive as you have demonstrated your commitment to providing them with a top quality environment in which to work.
Communication
If you’re not the best at showing your face around the office, you should start. Staff love seeing their boss, catching up and saying a quick hello. If it’s hard to tear yourself away from tasks, ensure that you send a weekly email at the very least, to keep your team updated of progress towards targets, the business vision and celebrate successes. Namecheck some staff members who have done exceptional things that week to make them feel valued and encourage productive working. It’s vital employees have buy-in to the goals of your business.
If you can achieve an environment that fosters productive working, your staff will be receptive to this. Follow this advice and make your office the most productive environment possible.
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