How often do you think employees are ask the following questions? Do you like your office space? Is your office adequate enough to do your work effectively? More often than not office space decisions are made at the top. The better views and nicer offices are allocated on a hierarchical process without any input from employees. Executives tend to think that their employees can work just as well in cubicles or offices.
This is an interesting article that talks about an experiment that Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister conducted to determine the impact a company’s office space had on employee productivity. The result was that those employees who had more positive comments about their office space were more productive than those who didn’t. The ones that loved their workspace the most were interrupted less and were able to concentrate better in a quite environment.
Key takeaways here:
- Every employee is different and motivated in different ways
- Each employee has a job function that requires a certain level of concentration
- Some employees like stand up desk while others don’t
- Engage your employees and get their input when designing office space layouts.
- Design office layouts based on job functions and needs not the “importance” of one person over the other
- Don’t just focus on the cheapest rental costs. On average Office workers make 20x more than their employers pay in office rent. If you save 10% on office space rental but lose 10% in employee productivity……..you just lost $2 for every 10 cents of savings.
