Essential Tips For a Successful Office Fit Out
An office fit out is a clean slate, enabling you to create a whole new look and feel that will maximize your team’s performance and leave positive impressions on your stakeholders. Here are some design tips for your office fit out.
Tips For a Successful Office Fit Out
What do you like about your current space?
If you’re coming from a serviced office or co-working space, there’s a good chance that you’re well provided for. But what do you actually need? The trick is to clearly identify what you and your employees like about that space, and what elements you want to re-create in your first office. Co-working spaces have become renowned for their great breakout areas, communal kitchens, and cool designs. If your team love a game of pool on a Friday afternoon or have a penchant for artisanal coffee, make sure you incorporate these elements into your own space.
What does your business need?
In the same way that you need to identify what you like, you also need to assess what you need. In a bigger business with bigger budgets, you might bring in a workplace consultant to help assess things like the number of desks, meeting areas, and breakout spaces that are needed. But on a smaller scale, you can do this yourself. Consider how many desks are being used at any one time – rather than simply counting one desk per person, as you might find you don’t need as much furniture or floor space as you think.
Keep it flexible
Our biggest piece of advice is to be flexible with your furniture and space! You don’t want to have rows upon rows of workstations in a rigid structure. Using flexible furnishings can mean that your teams can work in different areas, depending on their team structure or current task at hand. ThoughtWorks, an established business that’s maintained its start-up flair, has used a ping-pong table as an alternative workspace for employees who want to work away from their desks.
Create your brand identity
Creating an office fit out that reflects your brand identity is an incredible opportunity to ensure your team lives by your brand values. After all, if you want your brand to mean something to customers, the office is a great place to start to get your staff on board with your brand.
Think of your work area
Often start-ups embrace less traditional working hours, so if this is important for your business make sure the property you lease doesn’t have restrictive opening hours that enforce a more rigid structure. Likewise, think about what provisions you can make for staff who are in the office but need a bit of downtime – whether that’s a TV space, a games area, or simply some comfy seating – it all goes a long way to achieving the more relaxed vibe that your team has grown to love about being in a start-up.