Making the most of your office space matters now more than ever in today’s dynamic work environment. The optimisation of desk space has a dramatic effect on workplace productivity, staff satisfaction, and your bottom line. To help make the most of desk space around your office—keeping it almost as tireless as your team—here are a few sneaky strategies:
Be Flexible
Goodbye, rigid, cookie-cutter office settings. The key to making the most of desk spaces is flexibility.
- Hot-desking: Alternatively, have your employees take whatever seats are available each day. This will reduce the number of desks that have to be bought and keep things interesting for your staff.
- Moveable Furniture: Provide desks with height adjustment to accommodate a large range of preferences and allow movement throughout the day.
- This means that desks and partitions could be easily reconfigured for accommodating the size needed by an ever-changing team or different project needs.
Make an Efficient Layout
The arrangement of your desks really does all the work:
- Design Areas: Outline areas for concentrated work, collaboration, and relaxation. This can help employees select the right space for whatever they are doing.
- The Flow: Ensure there is enough space between desks for people to move easily. A crampy layout reduces work productivity because of harbouring stress.
- Consider the sight lines: Set up desks to avoid visual distractions, but also to create that open feel.
Smart Storage Solutions
Clutter is a very strong enemy of productivity. Enforce smart storage principles to keep desks clean and functional:
- Under Desk Storage: Compact drawers or filing cabinets can be placed under desks, utilising below spaces.
- Vertical Solutions: wall-mounted shelving to keep items independent and within easy reach without cluttering the desk’s surface area.
- Unify all the shared resources into central storage and hence reduce the need for personal storage at each desk.
Harness Technology
Technology is a great friend for desk space optimisation.
- Wireless Peripherals: Do away with fewer cables using wireless keyboards, mouse, and charging pads.
- Monitor Arms: Several articulating arms that mount monitors to clear desk areas.
- Docking Stations: Provide docking stations for the laptops when staff connect to them for a wire-free look.
Create Multiple-Use Spaces
Design spaces for more than one purpose—make every square metre count.
- Breakout Areas: Adequate numbers of comfortable areas serving as venues for informal meetings/lunch.
- Hallway Standing Desks: Make ad hoc offices using wide hallways with standing desks placed around.
- Meeting rooms can be booked in; on the absence of meetings, this could provide quiet space for those people that need it to focus.
Prioritise Ergonomics
Happy employees are productive employees. Do not compromise ergonomics for space savings:
- Seating: Good-quality, adjustable chairs that would help to ensure a proper sitting posture.
- Ergonomic Accessories: Keyboard trays, footrests, and monitor stands that allow for proper positioning while working.
- Natural light: Place desks maximising the full advantage of natural light and increasing good mood and productivity.
Implement a Clear Desk Policy
Allow cleanliness to be conducive to access to most available desk space:
- Clear Desks at the End of the Day: Encourage cleaning desks, especially in hot-desk environments.
- Adequately Named Lockers: These are storage compartments kept separate from workstations, where workers can store their utilities.
- Digital-first approach: Digitisation reduces the load of papers.
Green It Up
Not only do plants serve as decoration, but they also provide space zoning and mood-lifting:
- Table Plants: Small plants allow for personality in most spaces without taking up too much space.
- Living Walls: Installation of vertical gardens for space dividers and air quality improvement.
- Potted Plants: Have larger plants potted in mobile containers as fluid dividers between desk zones.
Create a culture of collaboration
Encourage the staff to think of the whole office as their workspace and not only the workstation.
- Collaboration Tools: Whiteboards, electronic displays, and collaboration software designed to support team activities across various specialisations
- Quiet Zones: Quiet zones for individual quiet work are to be established, reducing the dependency on large personal desk spaces.
- Routine Feedback: Continuously involve your team in the changes being made and how best it works for them and allow changes at your behest wherever needed. Wrap Maximising the desk space in your office involves fitting the most workstations into the provided space, allowing the creation of an environment where activities can be accommodated for suitable styles of work, efficiency, and dynamism through the growth process.
At Paradigm Interiors, we appreciate that not all offices are created equal. We pride ourselves on bespoke solutions to maximise whatever space is on offer to be as comfortable as possible and promote the welfare of all employees. Combine these tactics with the most experienced designers around, and you can be assured of an active, highly efficient workspace that elicits the best from your team. After all, making an optimised office isn’t about saving space; it should mean a hands-down environment for your team.
With good design informed and expectant for new ideas, you really can make every square meter of your office work harder for you.