Where You Should Start When Optimising Your Workplace

A workplace, just like the employees who frequent it, can become dishevelled, tired and outdated if left unattended to for too long. One of the biggest obstacles we see a lot of our new clients suffering with is simply not knowing where to start when it comes to updating and optimising their working environment. So, what really is the first step on the ladder to a better workplace for you and your people?

We’ve found over the years that no one knows a workplace better than those who work within it. Therefore, the first step to improving your place of work should be to talk to your employees and harvest their ideas, comments and suggestions. You could do this in a team environment or on a one-to-one basis, but the most important thing is to remember to include everyone in the discussion. Not only does this ensure that everyone from the tea lady to the CEO feels like they’re providing valuable input, it also means you’re diversifying the feedback you’re likely to receive. For example, someone working in the warehouse will face many different workplace-related challenges to someone working in the social media team.

Once you’ve gathered together your employees’ feedback, you can then go through it to find common themes or similar ideas which would suggest that there’s a pattern in how people feel about their current working environment. List these items, and then try to prioritise them in terms of importance, achievability, costs, and impacts the proposed change would make. You’re now starting to formulate your own workplace optimisation strategy!

Once you’ve decided your basic plan of action, be sure to keep all the people you initially spoke to “in the loop” so they know that you’re working on it, and more importantly, that their feedback hasn’t just fallen by the wayside. Even if individual suggestions have been rejected, which will almost always be the case, people will appreciate the progress update and will feel energised and motivated by knowing that their workplace is going to improve in other ways.

Putting your plan into action can seem like the most daunting (and expensive) part of all of this. However, try to envisage the hidden costs of *not* taking action in comparison to the costs of modernising and optimising the work environment. Yes, monetarily you’re going to have to lay out some cash to get the work done; but if you take no action you could lose even further revenue further down the line if your best people decide to leave, or if everyone’s productivity and morale takes a hit due to them not being happy with their workplace.

Lastly, remember we are always here to help. We are experts in planning, designing and installing new working environments, and can help with any aspect of improving and optimising your workplace. We’re happy to look over and discuss your plans, or even help you formulate them in the first place; just give us a call on 01462 484 022 or send us an email and one of our friendly experts will be on hand to assist you.