How office design affects your performance

Many companies choose to rent or lease office space, and some invest in fit-out while others hold back. I have been the latter because I have never believed in putting money into something that isn't mine.

By accident, we walked pass an auction sign a few months back and hours later we bought the building. Now it is fitout time.

In lieu of this, we have spent hours on Pinterest looking up offices and searching the internet. It's been an incredible experience and one that has unleashed the designer in our team. They all have some type of input that really shows their style but also how collaboratively we can design the perfect office to make our team even more happy.

When you have a happy team, performance is not far behind. People tend to perform at a higher level if they work collaboratively and as a team, in an environment that they enjoy coming to.

Office design is more important to performance than you think. In fact, your team is less likely to move for a "cool" or "modern" office fitout design to go to another company even if they have a bigger brand that has not invested in the design of their office and doesn't given them the instance feeling that they belong.

Things for all business owners and leaders to consider:

Sitting close isn't a bad thing if there is light

People like light surroundings and if you have a smaller space that becomes irrelevant if there is a lot of light coming through.

Central location

You can have the nicest office but if it is out in the middle of no-where or in a place where they can't be proud of, then your team might not feel quite as at home as you would like. Our new office is in South Yarra and our team is extremely excited to be surrounded by every day businesses, where trams stop at the front and a train at the back. The central location allows for everyone to get there easily without too much fuss, but also gives them "bragging" rights.

Designer look and feel

We work in marketing so design is important. Our team are looking for a designer approach to their new office and with that we approached wholesaler of stone Atlas to buy stone and hire a stone mason to cut it exactly how we wanted it to be. Our desks will be made out of stone and our floors at the front will also be natural stone. This hotel feel is what we are looking for and we cannot wait to show off the sheer beauty of natural stone on our premises. Atlas has been extremely kind and the fact that they are a fraction of the price of other stone retailers is a big deal. It allows us to have the highest quality at the same price as buying tiles. Amazing really!

Zip tapware

It's been decided that we want sparkling water from our taps. I'm not sure about the options here, but Zip is one of the brands widely used in Australia and we have it already in our Sydney office. For those who like sparkling water (me), this is a godsent.

Liveable

The environment needs to feel like it is an upmarket extension or a different playground to their own homes. Something to mix it up a little and let them be psyched to go to work.

We are excited to be on this journey and will be publishing a magazine on not only our own designer offices, but also that of others around the world that inspire employees to work to perform.