How to Create a Productive Work Environment in a Small Office
No matter what kind of work you do, whether paperwork or manual labor, your work environment greatly affects your productivity, efficiency, and team collaboration. This is especially true for small offices where the quarters may be closer, hours may be longer, and each person’s work may vary. It is important to design and configure your small office to fit your team’s needs, including things as large as rearranging desk spaces and as small as providing a plant. To help you optimize your workspace for both you and your coworkers, here are our top tips for creating a productive work environment in your small office—
Pay Attention to Your Office Layout
Your work environment starts with the environment around you and your team. You may not think about it too much. However, your office layout is important to your team’s productivity. Are most of the team’s desks closed off? Do they face windows? Is it easy to walk through space without hitting anything? Are some employees under the vent? These are things to consider when planning or rearranging your office layout. Creating a spacious and inviting environment in your workplace can be a great addition to your team’s morale and productivity.
Foster Communication and Collaboration
In addition to your physical workspace, the dynamics of your office community are an incredibly important part of the team’s productivity. As a manager or a boss, ensuring your office community is open, accepting, and collaborative is your job. You know that each team member is crucial and deeply valued; ensuring they know this and can come to you with ideas, concerns, or comments is imperative to creating a productive work environment. One way to foster open communication and collaboration in your office environment is to allow employees to express themselves freely. This can be both in meetings and on online collaborative platforms like Slack or Trello. Show your team how valuable they are to your business.
Allow for Customization
Every member of your team is unique, including how they work best. Each employee has their own needs for being productive—lower lighting, two monitors instead of one, trackballs, noise-canceling headphones, touchscreens, plants, decor, comfort items, or ergonomic keyboards, to name a few. Being open to your employees’ work needs will show them how much you value them and increase their individual productivity and fulfillment in their work. A diverse work environment is a successful one.
Prioritize Employee Wellness
With productivity and efficiency as your main business goals, your office environment can become tense. This kind of stress can lead to employee burnout, which is extremely detrimental to both their health and the overall performance of your team. Fostering a work environment that greatly values employee wellness is a recipe for productivity. You can encourage regular breaks, set up a space for recharging during these breaks, implement mindfulness and wellness practices in everyday work, and even provide amenities like coffee and snacks to keep your team fueled up. Your office should never be a place your employees dread going. When wellness is prioritized, you will see just how much your productivity and efficiency grow.
Your work environment not only plays a huge role in how your team performs but also functions as one of the defining factors for how well your small business does in the long run. The more efficient and inviting your work environment, the more likely you and your team are to be focused, collaborative, and productive. Small offices and businesses like yours are truly the backbone of our community. They are always at the heart of everything we do at 1st Advantage. We are proud to offer our help to small businesses, whether it be through our unique and convenient business banking options, our personalized financing opportunities, or just some friendly advice in person or over the phone. Whatever your goals are as a small business, we are here to help you make them a reality. Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender