PENSON believe that life is too short to spend time in dull or inefficient spaces – we specialise in workplace design; not only in making your office a better place to work, but transforming your office into an environment that allows your employees to fully live and breathe your brand in comfortable and inspiring surroundings - PENSON give your office a facelift - with our ultimate easy 'office upgrade!'.
This is something our boss Lee feels very strongly about, and it’s the theme that runs through every aspect of our work. This week on the PENSON blog we’ve put together five top tips for improving office life quickly and easily without breaking the bank. From design ideas to team relationships, here’s some advice from the experts.
1) Listen To Music
Thanks to our Sonos system we’ve always got a constant stream of music playing in our office (read more about that in our PENSON Playlist blog posts) and it helps dramatically with improving the atmosphere and the general mood of my colleagues and I. There’s nothing worse than a stuffy office where the silence is only broken by the tapping of keys, the mumbling of people trying to keep phone calls private and the sighs of people wishing they were listening to some 90s euphoria right now. Pop on a playlist, or even just the radio if you fancy keeping up to date with the weather and the traffic and the rambling presenters, and watch your office become 70% more fun before your very eyes.
2) Open Seating
In our office everybody sits together – the boss included – in an open seating plan that allows for maximum interaction, collaboration and conversation. It not only creates an easier work flow, but also improves the atmosphere of the work space and encourages relationships between employees. Sort of like when you were in school and the only reason you could think of for how you and your best friends became best friends in the first place was because they sat next to you in class.
3) Friends, Not Colleagues
Speaking of friendships; encourage them outside of work as well as inside. Our team goes for lunch together when there’s a birthday in the office, we go for post-work drinks together after a big week, and we even get given the odd day off to slope away to our boss’s boat together and sail the high seas for a couple of hours. Taking time away from your desks to work on your relationships allows you to form stronger bonds with your workmates and get to know things about them that never would have come up around the water cooler. It’ll probably help you to see things from their point of view a little better the next time they’re late with that PDF, too.
4) Declutter
If things are getting a little frantic your office can usually start to slip into a state of disrepair without anybody even realising. When this happens to us, we pick a day to stop working half an hour early and tidy up our desks. It also helps if you have plenty of storage – it’s not only essential for keeping everything organised, but also for keeping you from going insane under a pile of sample folders and copies of Vogue. Tidy desk, tidy mind.
5) Buy A Panini Press
Trust me.
That’s it for our mini tips to improve your office life and keep everything running smoothly. I also have one last tip, something you should avoid at all costs or risk ruining your office life forever: do not, under any circumstances, get an office pet. Unless it’s a puppy. Because then it’s cute enough to be worth it.
