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.
