When was the last time you thought about your office space? Do you still think cubicles are the "new" way to house office staff? If so, it's time to rethink your space in a new creative way.
Do you expect your staff to think of new ideas and methods for your particular business? Do you encourage forward thinking? If so, it's time to stimulate the creative thinking in regard to your office space as well.
The new thinking in office layouts takes a serious view of employee comfort and stimulation as a way to encourage workers to think creatively and enjoy their work experience.
Let's face it- office layouts have not changed significantly for decades. Sure, we learned to enhance lines of desks with moveable walls, but that has been around for years, and often detracts from good internal communication and dialogue.
Consider how Google designs and operates their expansive office campus. They replaced cubicles and bullpens with worker "communities" where people on similar projects are grouped together for ease of cross communication.
Additionally, there are small breakout areas located throughout the building for continued dialogue.
Google is so large they have enough space to have large and small conference areas, beautiful dining rooms, and exercise facilities within their building.
Clearly that size is not available to all the companies in our market, but the general idea is transferable to companies of any size.
Can workers find a quiet space when needed while still feeling "connected" within the work space? If your company is not large enough to support onsite food and exercise or breakout facilities, is your location convenient to them? If not, you might want to consider these types of benefits in your next lease renewal or relocation strategy.
Bottom line: Happy employees are loyal, innovative, care about their employers, and less likely to move to a "better" job. Consider the cost of a lost employee and the retraining, etc. needed to replace each lost person. You will likely determine the cost of a pleasant work place is less than the cost of a "lost" employee.
Professional leasing and sales agents can provide much helpful information to assist you in your decision making, far more than simple lease terms and numbers. Let us help you retain your employees in a location that shows the pride you all have in your business.
Alan Fishman is a broker/owner and president of Fishman Realty Group, Portland.