Your office space tells me lots about your company

Your office space is your ORGANIZATIONAL BODY LANGUAGE and tells a story about your company! Do you have a broad range of caves and campfires around your office? Have you thoughtfully map your office touch points and are leveraging them for learning, enhanced social connections etc.? Did you know open office spaces lead to shorter more superficial relationships and because our backs are exposed we feel unsafe?

Do you have spaces that specifically pays attention to enhancing creativity, ensures attention to detail is abundant and improves collaboration? And trust me it is not the same type of space.

If you are guilty of simply shoving furniture into your space to get as many people to fit in it, I can bet you employee moral is not high, you are not getting the best performance out of your people and company culture is non-existent. The reality is an office layout communicates the type of interaction and behavior that is expected.

A Rice study testing abstract thinking found noticeable higher ceilings ( 10 ft or more) impacted one's ability to find connections with seemingly unrelated objects. There is a reason why we feel different in the Sistine Chapel vs an elevator. Room dimensions inspire big thoughts and it is proven. What kind of space are you company engineers and product design theme operating from?

Conscious sound (notice I did not say noise) is not always bad. In a 2011 study they found sound can enhance certain activities involving abstract thinking and creativity. I recently walked into KHDA's office in Dubai and was pleasantly feeling really good in an open co-working space simply because there were the sounds of birds everywhere ( and not fake bird sounds but real life indoor birds fluttering around) .

The color red in a room causes more vigilant, focus and alertness BUT hinders big picture thinking. So red pens for your accounting department crunchers but no red pens for your marketing department team;-)

Did you know simply facing a window, exposure to sunlight, bringing plants and other nature elements into an office improves productivity, creativity and reduces stress? It is literally and simply our body's physical reaction to being around nature ...we feel better.

Employee personally involved in contributing to the design of their workspace such as choosing their office chair, having their artwork/something cool they did for the company showcased on walls, naming conference rooms etc. makes them more committed.

Did you know a bathroom is a major learning touchpoint at Google. It is where engineers post interesting articles they find. In fact it has become normal at google to understand someone is going to the bathroom when they say ' I am going to read about testing!"

Every piece of furniture and it's layout in an office sways thinking. You cannot claim a particular value or characteristic as a company and then fail to integrate it in the workspace design of the company. It makes the employees and the company feel and look inauthentic.

So remember design with an end in mind. Your office should be a series of hybrid spaces that offers your array of talent options based on the work they are doing that day.

So here's what your workplace design is telling me about you: 

1. If you only have open co-working spaces and no place for folks to actually be focused and think....very little strategic thinking is going on and lots of fire outing at your company. 

2. If your social touchpoints such as where folks gather to get coffee, eat etc. is often out of coffee, has no refrigerator or food, used as open storage area etc. then many of your employees are not forming friendships and bonds in the office. If you do not even have such a space...even worse! 

3. If I can wonder around your office space without a single person greeting me or much less attending to me at any point, then you have a company without a chief and an army of dis-engaged soldiers.