Appearance is everything, and when it comes to your business, regardless of the office size, it should look and presentable and feel like a professional working environment. When welcoming new clients or customers, everything should represent and show off the company’s brand. So here are some tips to ensure your office looks and feels the part.
Make Use Of Natural Light
Natural light is a great mood booster, and when it comes to your office space, you want to present a great atmosphere, and a way to do this is to incorporate natural light. It helps to improve the moods of those in your office, and it can improve the appearance of your office space too. When thinking about natural light, it’s worth investing some money into replacing any smaller windows will bigger ones to take full advantage of any light that shines down into the office. If you’ve got a top floor, think about creating glass roofing as this can be great for social spaces during the summer months. Try to remove anything that’s blocking the light from coming in, including heavy blinds or furniture that might be leaning against or in the way of the light coming through.
Don’t forget that there’s plenty of artificial lighting available that can mimic natural light. Certainly worth thinking about getting if your office doesn’t get much natural light throughout the day.
Clear Up The Clutter
A messy space equals a messy mind, and that’s something you don’t want to be projecting into the workplace. From a presentation point of view, guests won’t want to see clutter all over the place because it shows that you’ve not put a lot of thought or consideration into keeping your surroundings neat. You should encourage your departments to take ownership of their own areas, and that staff should be responsible for their own desk space and keeping it clean. Encourage this by offering to purchase desk storage and other office furniture to help keep proper storage of files and odd bits of stationery.
Add In Some Nature
Nature is a lot like natural light in that it can make a big difference to the mood of a space, but it’ll also add some colour to an otherwise dull-looking room. If you don’t want to add too much colour to the walls, then indoor plants are a great way of adding a burst of colour for a very small cost. Start off by doing a tour of your office and looking for the best places to showcase the plants. A reception area is an ideal spot and to add to the appeal that it creates when walking in for the first time. You might want to also consider having some in the communal areas like the meeting rooms and breakout spaces. Staff might also want to have some smaller plants near on their desk, so this should also be encouraged.
Have A Mixture Of Open-Plan And Private Spaces
Everyone works a little differently, and that’s ok because it’s what makes us all interesting. However, that has to be thought about when it comes to the spaces you have in your office and how you lay everything out. Ideally, you want to have an open-plan space on all of your floors but to also have private spaces available to those who would like their own office and those who may want a quiet space to work. Having open-plan is a great way of opening up the space to make it feel bigger, but that comes with a lot more office discussion, which can be off-putting for some. So to ensure that work productivity levels remain constant, having these private spaces will certainly help those who need it.
It might be worth having flexible private offices where it’s not just for the one staff member. Perhaps others can make use of the office for one on one meetings, which can be great if the meeting rooms are all booked out.
Get In Good Cleaners
The office is most likely to get a bit dirty at the end of the day and rightly so when you have so many people in one space. And in order to keep everything clean and working well, you’ll need some good cleaners who can come in after hours to keep everything neat and tidy. You want to ensure that they have everything they need in order to clean everything within the office and Steamaster has some good examples of what every office should have for cleaners to use. Having good cleaners is going to help keep everything tidy and in its place. It’s also good to have for the receptionists or those responsible for managing meeting rooms and catering, to ensure they have enough crockery and cutlery for the day.
Encourage Lunch Breaks
A lot of us have probably become used to eating at our desks, and as well as this being bad for our health, it also affects the look of your office. Clients may not want to see someone slurping up spaghetti or being hit with the smell of tuna fish as they enter the room. So it’s important to encourage lunch breaks both for your staff’s health and for the overall appearance of the office. Lunch breaks are very important to make sure your staff are taking the time away from their desks and moving about. If you have the space for it, create a breakout space where colleagues can eat lunch together. This is much more presentable than having everyone eating lunch in front of their desks.
Presentation is important when it comes to the office because even though a lot of business is done over the web nowadays, there are still traditional face-to-face meetings that happen. When clients come to your office, you want to give them the best version of your company. So be sure to have good cleaners, mix up your spaces and clear up the clutter to keep it organised and presentable for staff and guests.
