Most people personalise their office desk to some degree. They might add a family photo or two, they might have a brightly coloured pen pot, or they might have a several sticky notes around their monitor screen. Does personalisation help with productivity in some ways? Yes, because it helps employees feel comfortable within their space.
You could take this a step further and think about chairs and how people need to have certain settings for comfort and support, according to their height and body type. In this case, personalisation of furniture is a vital part of providing a safe working environment for employees. Some members of staff also like to use privacy tools, such as office desk screens, which allow them to concentrate. We all have different quirks and comfort levels which we need to be accommodated within our working environment, in order to be able to work to the best of our ability.
Allowing staff to personalise their space has to be done within moderation however. You can’t allow everyone to go around changing the colour of their screen, adding as many decorative items as they like etc. – you’re trying to set a professional appearance, after all!
Of course, most employees won’t take liberties in that way, and that means that encompassing designer office desk choices into your office space, with a little personalisation, can increase productivity in the right way, without reducing the quality of appearance.
Flexibility is also a key point of furniture personalisation, and perhaps one the best ways to demonstrate this point is with modular breakout furniture. This type of furniture can be moved around into different shapes, pieces can be taken away and moved somewhere else when not in use, and they can easily be stored away, due to their lightweight nature. When you combine these types of furniture with contemporary office storage, you get a modern look to your office space, with the scope to be able to move things around if you want a fresh change.
In addition, personalisation gives an office space a sense of quirkiness and personality. If you allow staff to personalise their desks (within reason), you’re creating a sense of ‘this is us’, and that can increase morale. When staff are forced to conform, e.g. they aren’t allowed to put a stamp of their own on the space where they spend a huge amount of time, there is the chance that they don’t really get to assert their own identity. This can create a sense of discord and upset, and therefore reduce morale down.
Office interiors do not need to be 100% within a theme, it’s perfectly fine if you allow a certain amount of personality between desks. Where this doesn’t work however is when you have a hot desking arrangement in place. In this case all desks need to be the same and they shouldn’t have any form of personalisation. Chairs can be adjusted according to the needs of the person sitting there for that day, but other than that, everything will remain uniform across the entire office.
This is one of the main reasons why many staff don’t like hot desking. Of course, there are other reasons too, but not having an office ‘home’, e.g. their own personal desk, can be a concern for many.
Stylish office desks might lose a little of their sparkle when over-personalised, but provided this is within limits, it’s productivity and the way the employee sitting there feels which is more important. A single family photo is perfectly fine, several cuddly toys are not.
A small ornament is fine, several novelty items attached to a computer monitor are not. Again, it’s common sense, and it’s about setting boundaries. The hope is that your employees will be mature enough to realise this anyway, and for the overwhelming majority of businesses this is certainly the case.
So, furniture personalisation, within reason, is a definite must do for businesses who want to create a comfortable and ‘at home’ working environment for their employees.