The millennial workforce is a peculiar bunch. Nowadays, giving a raise or adding vacation days is not enough to keep the morale high around the office and help employees maintain maximum productivity throughout the day. The millennial workforce needs and wants more.
Concretely, the modern employee needs to feel appreciated and respected, and if you’ve got that covered, then the next crucial item on the list is to create a workplace your employees will love. Here is how you can raise productivity around the office with some contemporary design solutions, in order to retain top performers and improve workplace productivity.
Come up with the ideal layout
In case you haven’t noticed, the days of dull cubicle offices are long gone, and nobody in the 21st-century wants to work in a place that’s not open, spacious, and vibrant – a space that supports freedom of movement and communication among employees. Nowadays, interior office designers are building spaces that bring people together, co-working hubs that allow people to mingle, socialize, exchange ideas, and make magic happen.
This doesn’t mean that the entire space should be completely devoid of privacy, quite the contrary, but it does mean that the main work area should follow an open-office layout that will imbue the workspace with that much-needed feeling of freedom and positivity. Aside from the functional benefits, your employees will enjoy their time in the office as well.
Support seamless connectivity
Up until a few years ago, there wasn’t an office in the world that didn’t have tens of kilometers worth of power cables running along the edges of workstations, the edges of the walls, and just about everywhere else in the office, helping keep many a laptop and smartphone topped off at all times. Well, that’s all a thing of the past, as wireless and serviced offices are becoming the go-to solution for business leaders looking to elevate productivity in the workplace.
With the use of furniture with wireless charging in the office, your employees can forget about cords and simply charge all of their devices on the go wherever wireless charging is enabled. It’s a great way to take the office into the 21st century and introduce innovative technology into the ever-demanding workplace.
Create a multifunctional space
A truly productive office space is one that is able to meet the daily needs of all of its employees. There is no cookie-cutter solution to office design in the modern business world, which is why the leading Hong Kong interior design company Studio X emphasizes the need to create a multifunctional space that is also representative of your brand.
The key here is to design a space in your office for every situation. To that end, consider having a grand co-working area complemented by quiet booths for when complete silence and focus is needed. “I like the idea of brainstorming in huge coworking spaces. It really helps to bring all that creativity together to develop a content strategy or create a content guide, for example. But sometimes you just need to stay completely focused and undisturbed to complete writing. That`s when I prefer using a quiet booth,” shares Kristin Savage, a contributing writer at TopEssayWriting. Likewise, the modern office should enjoy a fully-stocked kitchen and a rec room to boot.
Improve the lighting and air flow
Lighting and quality air are two fundamental elements of a thriving 21st-century workplace, and you can rest assured that the modern employee will not be able to perform at their best without them. Firstly, switch out the dreadful fluorescent lighting for a softer, friendlier hue, preferably by using eco-friendly LED lights.
Secondly, improve the air flow in the office by scaling the HVAC just right, introducing air purifiers, and simply airing out the office regularly. For an added touch of vibrancy and zeal, you can introduce air-purifying potted plants into the mix as well.
Go ergonomic across the board
Last but not least, there is a need to create a comfortable work environment. Literally. The way your employees sit at their desks can have a profound impact on their psychological state throughout the day, so a good long-term investment would be to introduce ergonomic furniture into the office in order to support good posture all day long. In turn, you will witness the productivity levels around the office starting to rise.
Truth be told, it takes effort and commitment to make top talent in the industry stay by your side in these times of uncertainty. With employee retention rates lower than ever before, designing your office for maximum happiness and productivity might just be the thing that will help you build a thriving, loyal employee collective.
