Does your organisation really need an office? Yes it does, for five reasons.
Working from home is popular for good reason – a stroll from the kitchen to the spare room can be much more appealing than a long, expensive, delayed commute to work in a dull crowded desk farm.
Pre-pandemic, when everyone was office-bound, the drive for efficiency meant offices became dreary and uninspiring. We now need to revisit the true purposes of offices and how they add value if we are to create exciting new workspaces that enhance the lives and profitability of users.
Here are the 5 reasons why you need an office:
1. Culture
Offices set and reinforce the values, culture, brand, and personality of an organisation. For creative companies, the office should inspire new ideas and allow artistic freedom, like All the Anime, who encourages sketching of new ideas on the walls. If yours is a sales-focussed company, then the office should embrace and reinforce this, with leaderboards showing top closers for the week, a dynamic buzzing outbound sales area, a bell to ring for every sale and maybe even a bar to celebrate victories. If your organisation is helping to create a better world, then your office should support and inspire staff with its sustainability.
2. Productivity
The office is a key productivity tool, giving staff the access, equipment, space and resources that they need to achieve the greatest output in the most efficient way. For example, if your company works around the world, then high quality videoconferencing facilities minimise travel (reducing cost, carbon emissions, and staff time away from their families) while ensuring that every facial expression is visible and every voice intonation is heard from those thousands of miles away.
3. Learning
Team members learn how to do their jobs from working beside their colleagues. Sure, the what and the why of the job can be learned remotely. But how to translate that into practice in a way that has been developed over thousands of hours (sometimes hundreds of thousands of hours) is not something that can be taken from a video tutorial or occasional coaching. This “how” is what differentiates your organisation from your competitors, so it is pretty important. Also, let’s not forget that learning is key to staff for their professional development and career success.
4. Teamwork
Teamwork encompasses community and connectivity. You are an organisation because one person cannot optimally deliver your whole product/service on their own. So teamwork is not an option. And teams need shared values, respect, communication and personal relationships to function effectively. All of which come from face-to-face interactions on a regular basis. This is important for knowledge sharing and innovation. We have all heard stories about colleagues accidentally overhearing a conversation that led to a successful new product or sale – and serendipity only happens in person.
5. Pride
If staff aren’t proud of what they do, they won’t tell their friends and they probably won’t work for the company for very long in this war for talent. Having somewhere special as an exclusive members (staff)-only clubhouse that is cool, lives the values of the organisation, and is way better than home helps to build pride. It is also a sure-fire way to attract staff back to the office.
Post-pandemic, the office is evolving. Revisiting these five reasons why you need an office is the starting point for good office design. This should be followed by an understanding of the how – how your organisation does its best work. Only then can a successful office be designed.
Contact us at Rype if you would like to discuss ideas for the new post-pandemic generation of productive and sustainable offices at contact@rypeoffice.com or call 033 3358 3330. We are here to help.