It has been a busy year for us at MovePlan, as we’ve worked with clients across the world to support them with changes in their businesses, from implementing new ways of working to managing office relocations and reducing filing storage. As 2019 comes to an end, we think it’s important to look back and reflect on what we have achieved. Sharing statistics with staff is a great way of highlighting just how far your business has come, and gives everyone the motivation to build on that in 2020.
Colour is thought to have a huge impact on how we feel and the way we behave. Most of us spend time carefully selecting the right colours to use in our homes. But how much consideration is given to the colours used in an office?
Suki Reilly, MovePlan Global COO, was recently invited to speak at the Workplace Innovation Forum in Dublin, organised by Condeco, the global leader in workplace scheduling technology.
Being an environmentally friendly business sends out a message to customers and staff that you care. It shows you have morals and ethics, and are willing to make changes to help a cause external to your business’ needs. One of the biggest ways you can make your business more environmentally friendly is to reduce the amount of plastic used.
We spend so much of our life at work, putting in increasingly longer hours in the office to get the job done. So, it’s vital that employers encourage and enable staff to look after their mental well-being in the workplace. Not only will employees feel valued, cared for and stress free, their productivity will be given a boost too if they are happy.
MovePlan has opened three new hubs on the West Coast of America to support our continuing growth in the United States. The three new hubs - in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle – opened in the autumn. The new bases will complement our existing operations in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto and Washington DC.
They say messy people have creative minds. However, being messy in an office environment might be considered socially unacceptable. It’s all very well putting up with messy family members at home, but it’s completely different having to tolerate colleagues’ who refuse to keep their personal space in order. Your work environment can have a big impact on productivity and creativity. Whilst some people might be happy to work in a tip, for others this could be detrimental.
You might not associate your office as somewhere to get fit. However, more businesses are considering the mental wellbeing of their employees by offering them a space to exercise. Statistics from Hubble, a digital office agent, show that on average there has been an eight percent increase each month in companies searching for an office with an on-site gym. Gone are the days when the office was a place you spent the hours of 9am to 5pm, rushing out of the door at the end of the day to get home.
Depending on how it’s handled, change can either be stressful and daunting, or exciting and empowering. Businesses need to change in order to thrive and meet developing needs. However, managing that change to ensure it doesn’t result in stress and uncertainty for staff is a challenge. Even when change is positive, it still requires people to adjust to something different and new, which can cause stress simply by disrupting a routine. The fear of the unknown can cause anxiety, which is not conducive to a happy, harmonious office environment with a productive workforce.
With more businesses moving away from the traditional 9-5 working day, so too has the need for a conventional office space. Many businesses are looking at ways to enable staff to work in a more flexible way, offering flexible working hours, opportunities to work from home, part time positions and shared job roles. With this new flexible working comes the need to review working space for employees and assess whether the design still works, or if changes need to be made.
We spend a large chunk of our time at work, possibly chatting to our colleagues more than our loved ones. Most people during their careers will experience the good and the bad when it comes to office environments, from deadly silence to raucous banter, or tense and serious to relaxed and happy.
Moving can be stressful, costly and time consuming for businesses. However, with some forward planning and plenty of organisation, there are ways to make it run more smoothly. If managed well, a seamless move will be quickly forgotten, but the ramifications of a poorly-managed move quickly impact upon income, operations, relationships and reputation.
Protecting our planet by considering the environment is right at the top of many people’s agendas at the moment, and businesses can play their part too. Long gone are the days when being an environmental activist meant hugging trees at proposed development sites. Now, everyone is coming around to realise that we all need to work collectively to save the planet for future generations, with wealthy investors and powerful governments all getting on board.
