Why do office environments matter?

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For most of us we spend a large chunk of our waking hours at work in often very bland, blank and boring offices. However, studies have shown that the appearance of our workplace matters a great deal to productivity, our happiness and even our health!

That being said you may be thinking that surely this is just personal taste or for new business start-ups only, but you couldn’t be more wrong. This is applicable to organisations across all sectors and industries and of all ages and sizes alike.

Office design should be levered as another tool to help grow your business and meet your organisational goals.  Below we have highlighted 5 keys goals that should be included in your design strategy to increase productivity, happiness and health.

1. Boost collaboration and integration

To be clear, you do not have to be a ‘creative company’ to need collaboration. Collaboration is important to business success as it merges the unique skill sets of the thinkers and the doers on your team to generate innovation.

Therefore, it is critically important that collaborative spaces, either formal or informal, are incorporated in your workplace and are designed to maximum effect.

It is often the reality that there is a natural divide between teams and sections within your business, but by creating hubs or zones within the workplaces will provide places where individuals from all teams can interact to share opinions and ideas that may make the difference to the business.

2. Encourage creativity

Like collaboration, creativity is not just limited to the ‘creative companies’. Creativity is defined as the use of original ideas to create something and that could include anything from a new product to an improvement in a logistic process.

Encouraging this within your team is key in ensuring your business continually adapts and improves with the changing market.  The use of colours, specifically blue, and tools like whiteboard vinyl rooms and inclusive furniture layouts create an unconstrained environment for teams to follow their creative lead and produce new and innovative ideas.

3. Increase job satisfaction

Studies have shown that the physical workspace is responsible for 24% of job satisfaction, which is a large proportion of what makes your team happy. A happy team will positively influence productivity and performance, which is essential to a healthy functioning business.

It has been suggested that by allowing your team to bring in personal items such as family photos, mugs and even in some cases their dogs, provides instant benefits at no cost. Not only do these items brighten the space, but they inject it with personality which allows your team to be themselves, which boosts their feelings of belonging and team.

4. Add authenticity and credibility

PR and marketing campaigns can strengthen a strategy that communicates a brand’s vision and values, but these can be undermined in the workplace if the office space doesn’t align with the promise of your brand message. If your brand communicates sustainability, a cutting edge approach or professionalism, but your offices reflect the opposite, what message does this send to your staff and clients?

It is important that you take time to think about how your vision and values can be worked out in your office space and create a design that is authentically reflecting your brand and reinforcing the company values everyday in every way. 

5. Promote health:

Research from Ohio State University found that those that worked in old offices with low ceilings and grey walls were significantly more stressed, even outside of work, which increased the risk of heart disease. While that is a bit dramatic, and I am not saying that bad design will kill someone, it is important to understand how people interact with design.

For example when going on holiday, how many of you would choose a hotel that resembles your office? Not many I’m sure, but that is because subconsciously design impacts your perceptions on comfort and well being. Not only this but as an employer it is important to promote a workplace where your team want to come to work and through considered design you can combat absenteeism.

The use of appropriately placed wall coverings such as vinyl wall murals and custom wallpapers of outdoor scenes of beaches or woodlands, positively influence the chemicals in the brain to create a relaxed and calm environment.

All of these 5 key goals are simply achieved by understanding your brand and the hard working individuals behind it that make it happen.

A good indicator of the success of your office design is if a person could walk in the front door and immediately catch something of your culture and understand what kind of organisation you are. So, get your office on-brand and leverage design to positively influence your team to achieve greater levels of productivity, innovation, collaboration and succeed by meeting other organisational goals.

If you don’t know how to best communicate the culture of your brand visually or you simply don’t have the time to do it all yourself then paying professionals who communicate visually every day can be well worth the money. The branding consultancy package offered by Vinyl Impression takes you on a journey of how best to unpack your brand and it’s values before transforming those themes into holistically considered interior design features that are tailored to fulfil your goals.