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How to improve your office space for your employees in 2022

These days, it is widely accepted that if organisations want to both attract and keep hold of talent, they need to take seriously the importance of providing the best possible office environment. This much is backed up by a wealth of research, which has found that strong office design can make staff as much as 33% happier at work, and that happy employees are 31% more productive.

While, as of early 2022, not all of your firm’s employees may have yet returned from working at home, and some may never do so, a significant proportion of them probably have done so. And those workers are likely to have evolved their expectations of their desired office environment, on the basis of their experiences over the last few years.

So, on that backdrop, let’s dive in, with some suggestions of how you can optimise your office space for the better for your employees in the months to come.

Incorporate some homely comforts

Given that we were just talking about working from home, we might as well start with this one. Even now, some employers might baulk at the idea of trying to make their offices ‘more like home’ – after all, do you want your staff to be constantly wandering to the fridge during their working day?

Putting such unhelpful stereotypes aside, though, given the statistics indicating that employees may be about 43% more productive when they work from home, bringing in some of those ‘home comforts’ may be very much in your interests as an employer, in more ways than one.

As for what exactly those ‘home comforts’ could be… well, that’s up to you, of course. But more and more in recent times, employers have embraced such touches as more natural lighting, cosier furniture, and softer colours, than might have previously been associated with the workplace.

Keep up to date with the basics of office maintenance

You might imagine that giving your employees a more positive office space would essentially mean throwing ‘luxuries’ at them – but that is very far from the case! Remember that it’s the small and mundane details of an office that help to make it an inspiring place to work, at least as much as the bigger and more immediately eye-catching changes.

That might make 2022 the year you decide to beef up your office maintenance procedures, so that ‘small’ issues aren’t given the chance to deteriorate into bigger ones that adversely impact on employee wellbeing.

Think such things as establishing a rota for the routine cleaning of desk spaces, making sure the office doors and windows still work well, and jumping quickly on any drainage issues within the wider office building. For some of these procedures, you may sometimes need to call upon external service providers who have skills and experience in dealing with such complaints as blocked drains in Kent and Dartford.

Make changes with health and wellbeing specifically in mind

We’ve moved on from the days when ‘wellness’ was simply considered a ‘nice to have’ in the workplace; or at least, we should have done. Today’s professionals are revising their ambitions for, and expectations of, the office spaces they are asked to work in.

But how can you adjust your firm’s own office space in response to that? Well, you might consider introducing standing desk workspaces that give your employees the option to not just be sat in one location all day. Many organisations have also made the step of making healthy snacks – such as protein bars and fruit – available in the kitchen, to help staff feel well-fuelled and inspired right through their working hours.

Or, depending on the depth of your company’s pockets or the extent of your ambition, might you want to go deeper than that? Some employers are aspiring to turn their offices into a complete ‘corporate spa’, complete with yoga classes, sleep pods, and spaces that encourage social interaction between staff.

Don’t forget, too, all those other facilities of yours that employees might use over the course of a typical day, and which will subtly influence their wellbeing. Unhygienic and poorly designed toilets, for instance, will not help your personnel to feel good about the prospect of turning up at your office on a morning. Who knows, 2022 might even be the year you reach out to capable bathroom fitters in Essex to transform this aspect of your office premises from top to bottom.

As the above rundown makes clear, some steps that you can take to improve your office space for your employees this year will be more drastic and/or expensive than others. Nonetheless, they will all make a difference in ensuring your staff associate your workplace with all the right things – and are inspired to give their very best performance throughout 2022.