As a provider of serviced offices, one of our daily tasks is to customize the furnished office space rented by our clients. We provide a default arrangement for all of the hundreds of rooms and spaces located in our business centers, but many businesses ask us to move things around to match their needs.
This experience has taught us to anticipate what kind of office space setup a particular type and size of business might need to make their employees comfortable and help them do more and better work.
Factoring in all such personalized requirements, I’m sharing with you today some office space ideas that we make use of to provide clients with a pleasing and productive working environment.
1. Open office without cubicles.
We can and do set up cubicles if a member company requires it. But let’s face it – the age of the office cubicle is over. It’s a relic of the 9 am to 5 pm workday when you clocked in, went through all the files on your desk, and clocked out. You can’t do that anymore. It’s now the age where you collaborate and work in teams with complete transparency.
You don’t have to draw lines demarking your own space. It’s an open office where you can cross the lines and work with colleagues sitting on desks next to you.
2. Coworking space and shared office seats.
It doesn’t work for everyone, but it is without doubt a big part of the future of office space. You and other companies are sharing the same space, and you simply use the facilities – desks, meeting rooms, and other common areas. We’ve got these coworking areas, and we have what you call seats in shared offices. What many of our clients do is take up their private office, and then make use of coworking space and/or shared office seats when they grow and expand.
You can take up x number of seats to start with, and scale it up and down as needed. So we have office rooms of different sizes based on the number of seats. A new startup or small business may prefer a 5 or 10 seater space, while a mid-sized or corporate branch office may opt for a 50-seater or 100 or 150 seat space.
3. CEO room with a view.
A room with a view is typically a perk, since everyone can’t have a view. Most of the office grunts will be facing a wall. Only the CEO and top management will get the corner office with a nice view.
If you have an office like this, it makes work seem a lot less like work and more like a nice day out – a walk in the park, a picnic, so to speak.
4. Spacey and wide open reception area.
The reception desk is what makes the first impression, which can make or break the deal even before you meet the client. It needs to be grand and a wide open space, with a massive reception desk that dwarfs everything else.
5. Recreation or lounge area for common use.
What we do in our Business Centers is to combine a lounge with the reception area, so that the perception of a high-class facility is highlighted when you enter. Also, it makes guests feel a lot more comfortable while they’re waiting for you.
6. Tea and coffee machine, kitchen or watercooler area
You want a place where your employees can flock to, for a break in between work. It can be a simply pantry area where you have a watercooler, a tea and coffee machine, or even a room that functions as a fully-equipped kitchen.
7. Private zone for confidential and personal calls.
One of the disadvantages of coworking spaces and open offices where everyone’s in the same room is that there’s no privacy. You might want to make a confidential call with a client, employee or business partner. It could also be a personal call. The point is that everyone needs a little bit of privacy now and then, and you need a “privacy zone” where others can’t hear you speak.
We have telephone booths where you can speak in absolute privacy. We also have a rooftop cafeteria in one Business Center, and a large multi-cuisine restaurant in another one where you can speak freely without worrying about who is listening to you.
8. Meeting space to impress clients.
We’ve got meeting rooms and board rooms and a lounge, restaurants, and lots of other spaces where you can meet with and impress clients.
9. Filing cabinets and a storage area.
If you have a business, you have a lot of paperwork, reports, product and technical documentation, compliance docs, marketing material, letterheads and all kinds of files and papers lying around in and on every one’s desks. All this does is make your employees sleepy at work, and unable to find anything at all.
Take the easy way out to clean up this mess by issuing a blanket order against having any papers or files on desks. Everything has to be in the storage room, and it goes in there only if it’s essential. That’s the best way to make your business a paperless office, and a neat and tidy one.
10. Walking space in extra long corridors and outdoor gardens.
We have extra-long and wide corridors between office rooms, and an open-air terrace on each floor that leads to the kitchen pantry on that floor. We’ve got gardens and sprawling parking lots at each of our business centers, and it’s not just for cars.
People taking a break from work come down to walk around, stand by the swimming pool or just enjoy some down time in the cool shade of the garden.
A nice walk gives you some respite from the stress of working, and employees coming back from lunch or a tea break in the outdoors are full of energy and ready to work hard again for the rest of the day.