Something that you are always going to have to think about in business is ensuring that your workplace is as safe as possible. That is important for yourself as a manager, for the people who work for you and spend every day in that place, for any visitors you might occasionally receive, and of course for customers, if they should ever go to the workplace too.
But in order to make sure that the office is safer, you need to ensure that you are aware of the frequent problems brought up in an office which you are likely going to have to deal with at some point. In this post, we will take a look at what you can do, starting today, to make your offices much safer indeed, so that everyone can enjoy working there much more easily and freely.
Electrics & Plumbing
This is something that is worth mentioning, merely by virtue of the fact that many people don’t really realize just how important it is, and how often the electrics and plumbing can go wrong and cause a real problem in an office. You need to have someone look at both of these regularly in order to ensure that you are not going to get any issues with them.
After all, if you do have issues, that means that you are going to put your people at risk of flooding, electrocution or even fire. It might be a simple case of occasionally needing to change liquid level sensors or have the electrics re-installed, but as long as you are keeping an eye on this stuff, that is the main thing.
Fire Hazards
Fire is a serious problem which you need to protect against, and one which you can help to prevent in many ways. One of the most important concerns here is that your employees are properly trained for dealing with fire.
As long as that is the case, you can be sure that they are going to be able to know what to do should it break out, and how to keep that from happening in the first place, of course. Understanding fire hazards collectively is going to be an important way to make your offices much safer indeed, and it is not the kind of thing that you should or can overlook for that very reason.
Unauthorized Personnel
It’s also hugely important to keep out anyone who is not permitted to be in the building. As long as you do that, you can be sure that you are going to be able to keep your people much safer, so this is definitely something to think about. It should be a simple case of having the best security staff you can find, and ensuring that you are training them as well as possible on not allowing anyone to enter. Having ID cards made for the staff could be useful for this purpose too, so that is something to consider if you are serious about this threat.
There have been a lot of research into how to improve productivity when it comes to offices and workplaces. In one recent study by an architecture firm, they found that the success and performance of the workplace was closely linked to the design and innovativeness of the office space.
Being innovative doesn’t have to be expensive technology, furniture, or using top-notch interior designers. Being innovative can be as simple as arranging office spaces different, to changing to more comfortable desks and chairs, to changing the layout. Experiment and see what works!
True innovation in the workplace starts when you think ahead of the current office environment. Think about how to implement a new design to increase productivity. How can you best measure productivity? Consider using these four criteria: focus, collaboration, learning, and socializing.
The study found that 48 million workers do not work in an environment that helps them be more productive! That results in quite a bit of money money left on the table. Here are simple changes that you can make to help the four criteria and productivity.
Focus
For maximum effectiveness and efficiency, your employees must be able to have an environment that allows them to focus. With an open office, this might not be possible.
If you want to reduce interruptions, then having separate work places and a policy of minimizing noise may be the right move. Having staff in place that can help an employee focus on her task and not be bothered by less important tasks can be another smart move. You can learn more here, but outsourcing office support could be a good idea for your business.
Collaboration
For some businesses collaboration is important to improve the innovation and productivity of the firm. If this is the case, then having an open space office layout may be the right move.
The key is to experiment and measure the change against the four criteria, make changes, and then iterate quickly. You can measure collaboration by first asking employees if the layout has improved or helped, and also measure by the quality of ideas. Don’t be set in one way and get feedback from people.
Learning
If you want your business to keep growing, then having the ability to recruit, train, and retain employees is important. Ensuring that your employees have an environment conducive to learning is key to their self-development.
The greater their skills and the more they learn, the more productive and innovative they will be. Not only do you want the office to optimize the learning environment, give them the resources to learn as well!
Socializing
We are not robots. It is important to schedule breaks through out the day so you can rest and recuperate. Socializing or taking time to replenish your energy will help you sharpen your ax.
Another correlation between productivity and socializing is relational. When people have good synergy and can work well with each other, it becomes a multiplier. Keep the feeling in the office fresh by encouraging staff to take regular breaks and meet others.