Your office is where you spend a significant proportion of the day but sometimes, you and your colleagues may find that it gets on top of you. From the frustrations of technology giving up at just the wrong moment to the slow burn of a toxic professional environment, if you want your office to be a pleasant place to work, you must nurture it.
Get the Support You Need
The first thing that will dramatically improve your office is outsourcing support. From IT consulting to diagnose issues and create a plan for the future to HR to take on any problems you and your colleagues may encounter, having a support network is vital.
While large companies may have these functions well covered in-house, the vast majority of small to medium businesses will do better to outsource. There are lots of reasons to outsource but chief among those reasons are the professional services you get as and when needed without the cost of a full-time department.
Outsourced services providers are always looking to make your life easier so while you want to focus on creating a great office to work in, they can focus on the basics.
Create a Calm Space
Creating a calm space isn’t just about putting a few potted plants around the place and introducing desk lamps – though those things might well help! Instead, a calm space is usually achieved through behaviour. Emotions are contagious so when one person is really stressed out, it’s likely that those around them will also find their emotions running high. While individuals can combat this to some extent, the changing the culture of the business is the best thing to do.
When everyone in the office is feeling tense, you should look for the causes and see what can be done to change things up. So, if everyone is feeling tired and overworked, you might look at hiring another member of staff. Similarly, if there is a culture of eating at desks developing, you might encourage people to leave the office at lunch and consider relaxing deadlines just a touch. There are all kinds of ideas you might like to try.
Take Feedback Onboard
If there is one thing that will make your office environment more pleasant, it is including everyone in making it so. Requesting feedback (anonymized or not) from colleagues about how they feel and what could improve their working life is really important. But then you must act on as many suggestions as possible.
There is nothing worse than being asked for feedback and then being completely ignored. To show your colleagues that you really care, you should make a point of looking through suggestions and then actioning as many as possible. So, a team holiday to St Lucia might be a stretch but you might consider taking an afternoon to do fun team building activities.
There is always something you can do to make your office environment a better place to be. When you spend so much of your time at work, it needs to be a fun, productive space where you feel valued.
