Negosentro.com | Office Design Tips Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know | If launching a new company is a scary but exhilarating experience, designing your first office space is doubly so.
Nothing says you have “arrived” as a businessperson like striding into a building that has your company’s name listed in the directory and knowing that your dream now has a concrete address.
But setting up a new office is a complicated process, and there are a lot of things you’ll need to keep in mind if you want it to come off. Here are a few tips to remember as you get started:
Your Office is More than a Workspace
The primary purpose of any office is to provide a place where your employees can work, and where you can meet with customers, clients, and potential partners to show them what your company is all about.
But an office serves other functions as well, and if you want yours to have the maximum impact, you will need to factor them into your design process. An office is also:
- A place where you foster the kind of strong corporate culture that will make you desirable for potential employees
- A headquarters where you can concentrate your staff’s creativity and solve problems through collaboration
- A physical manifestation of your company’s values, attitudes, and philosophy
If you want to make sure your office is as productive as possible, you will need to make these considerations part of your decision making as you draw up your first plans.
Think of Your Furniture as an Investment
One of the big questions many entrepreneurs face when setting up a new office is the expense involved. Essential furniture and equipment can be quite expensive, and if you’ve never purchased commercial office furniture before, it can be hard to know how much money is too much.
This leads far too many young businesspeople to try to find the cheapest options available. This is a mistake: not only will commercial office furniture design the look of your office for years to come, which office workstations you choose can have a major impact on your workers’ productivity. This means that high end commercial office furniture can be a worthwhile investment in the long run.
For example, if you browse Branch office furniture you’ll probably note that the prices are higher than those you might find at a fast furniture outlet — but those prices also represent greater value, both in terms of the actual quality of the furniture, and in the ease of installation that comes when companies offer turnkey solutions.
Form Should Follow Function
One of the most important principles in modern design is that form should follow function — how something is designed should reflect what it is designed to accomplish.
When it comes to office design, this rule has a number of practical applications. You may like the idea of an open plan office, for example, but if most of your workers are engaged in projects that require a great deal of concentration, this may have a negative impact on productivity.
If you’re attached to certain styles of office plan, letting go of your dream office design may be hard; but it will make life easier for your employees, and will deliver results where it really matters — in your bottom line.
If you’re getting ready to move into your first office space, or if you’re scaling up to a new location, there’s a lot you need to keep in mind when it comes to design. But these three tips are an important guide to helping you stay focused on what matters most: making your new office an incubator for successful new products, services, and ideas.
