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If you want employees to work hard over the long term, you need to make sure that they have a basic level of comfort in the office. Workspaces should feel light, airy and welcoming, not dark and dingy.
If you don’t provide a reasonable working environment, your top employees will start looking for opportunities elsewhere. They’ll begin wondering why they’re working for a boss that doesn’t seem to have their best interests at heart.
And when they leave, it can be costly. Recruiters estimate that replacing a member of staff costs the average of 50 to 60 percent of their annual salary.
Here’s what you can do to make your employees more comfortable:
Tear Down Walls
While the cubicle concept was popular in the 1970s, it’s not appropriate for the modern world. Walling employees into boxes and hoping that it’ll make them work harder is a policy that almost always backfires.
Try taking down the walls instead. This way, you can facilitate teamwork and stop employees from feeling so anxious all the time.
Improve Privacy
While collaboration is important, office spaces need to be flexible enough to provide staff with privacy when they need it. Those that go too far in the direction of an open plan often run into diminishing, or even negative, returns.
The best approach here is to adopt a hybrid workplace. You want some areas where colleagues can go to thrash out problems together, and other spaces where they can work peacefully by themselves.
Keep The Temperature Reasonable
While you can allow some fluctuation in office temperatures, it’s a bad idea to let them oscillate too much. If it’s too cold or too hot, productivity will tank and employees will start to complain. Some may even get sick.
It’s a good idea, therefore, to maintain a relationship with HVAC maintenance services for commercial properties. This way, if there is a problem with your system, you can fix it straight away and avoid annoying any of your staff.
Create A Good First Impression
While you might not have the budget to completely revamp your back office, it’s still a good idea to transform the entryways and other communal areas. You want to redesign them to set the tone for the rest of your workspace so that people feel good whenever they enter your premises.
Bring In More Natural Light
You also want to bring in as much natural light as possible – part of the reason why modern skyscrapers are pillars of glass and steel. The more daylight there is entering your buildings, the more appealing your office space becomes for workers, and the more productive they’ll be.
Consider Color Psychology
Lastly, you might also want to employ color psychology to your advantage. Which you choose will depend on the type of business you run and the sector in which you operate. Cream and beige, for example, are ideal for brands that want to communicate a sense of sophistication. Green, on the other hand, signifies sustainability but also wealth and money.
