If you’ve ever tried to work on a quiet piece of work in a loud and busy open plan office, you’ll know how frustrating it can be!
An office that has many employees all working on different tasks is bound to be a frenetic and quite vibrant place. That has its advantages but it also has a few downsides - the main one is the fact that it’s quite loud at times and it can mean that you can’t find privacy and solitude when you need it.
There have been many different attempts at solving this problem. For instance, hot desking is probably one of the most common, and after that came the agile workplace. However, there is no one size fits all answer here. One workplace might find the hot desking arrangement very easy to use, but another might dislike it completely. The bottom line is that you need to find a way of working that suits your employees and gives everyone the freedom to focus on the task they need to complete to the best of their ability.
With that in mind, how do you feel about work zones?
This is part of the agile workplace but that doesn’t mean you have to embrace the whole agile working model if it simply isn’t for you. You can take a few elements of it and weave it into your contemporary office set up as it is now.
What Are Work Zones?
Working zones are separate areas for different types of work. Two of the most common types of work zones are collaborative zones and quiet zones.
As the names suggest, in the collaborative zone your employees would brainstorm, discuss, and collaborate on work projects. In the quiet zone, employees would sit and concentrate on a task that requires focus and zero distractions. By having these zones in place, employees feel less stressed, less pressured and productivity increases as a result. We all know that when productivity increases, so do profits!
Of course, many businesses take these work zones and eventually turn their workplace in a fully agile model. That’s something you might like to do in the future, but it doesn’t mean you have to transition to that right away. For future reference however, check out this infographic which talks about the agile way of working.
Source - https://officeprinciples.com/infographic-agile-working/
Increasing employee productivity is vital for many reasons but it’s also a must do if you want to keep employees stress levels down. When people feel like they’re not productive, they feel overwhelmed with the work they have. It’s almost like you’re trying to swim through mud. When that happens, it’s impossible to feel like you’re enjoying your job, that you feel capable, and it’s more likely to lead towards the slippery slope of workplace stress.
Protecting your employees against these problems is vital and that means finding a way of working and a design for your office which ticks all the boxes. You need to have comfortable office furniture, you need to be able to give your employees somewhere to go when they need a time out, and you need to encourage them to take their breaks. All of this boosts morale and ensures that productivity rises.
As far as work zones within your office design are concerned, these could be very beneficial on many levels. Choosing the right office desks and furniture will allow you to create these spaces in a quality way and when you do that, you’ll notice that more work is done and the quality is far higher as a result.