Eighty-seven percent of businesses rank cultivating employee engagement and strong company culture as their biggest challenges.
The struggle to instill and maintain workplace values is inextricably linked to both client satisfaction and workplace design. Keep reading to learn how good office design can help you attract top talent and the best customers.
What a Strong Office Space Does for You
Companies that invest in well-designed workspaces reap the rewards for the lifetime of their spaces. These benefits take numerous forms but can be boiled down to six basic categories.
If you do it correctly, renovating your office space will:
- Improve employee engagement
- Increase safety
- Attract new clients
- Demonstrate your progressive workplace values
- Maximize your real estate
- Equip your company for the future
Creating Employee Engagement
The workforce is changing. As baby boomers retire en masse, Millennials are taking over. As this new generation steps up to leadership positions, “Gen Z-ers” are filtering up to fill the positions they leave.
Both Millenials and those who follow them are the new waves of top-tier talent that companies need to attract to remain competitive. But what too many companies fail to take into account is that these younger, tech-savvy workers come to the workforce with different expectations than the people they are replacing.
Today’s top talent is looking for workspaces that enable them and their companies to thrive. They want spaces that:
- Facilitate collaboration
- Seamlessly integrate the latest technology
- Promote movement and health
- Offer flexibility and control
- Support an efficient workflow
- Are invigorating and welcoming
Modern, well-designed workspaces promote engagement and productivity. They help your company pull in and keep the best talent, and equip that talent to make you successful.
Increasing Safety
An American worker suffers an injury at work every seven seconds. It’s tempting to assume those injuries all happen on manufacturing floors or in heavy industrial settings. Poorly designed and aging offices, however, are often among the most dangerous workplaces.
Even outdated cubicle designs and equipment configurations can lead to high rates of chronic disease, carpal tunnel, and other adverse health conditions.
Workplace injuries directly cost American companies approximately $162 billion every year. Worse, companies with poorly designed workspaces can earn a reputation as being an unsafe or unhealthy place to work.
Such reputations drive away key talent and top-tier clients. They can be costly and time-consuming to reverse. The costs of renovating a workspace are far lower than the costs that can accumulate from not doing so.
Attracting New Clients
Modern technology has made the world a much smaller place. Online rating apps, social media, and social activism are seemingly everywhere. Small mistakes can be amplified and broadcast in the blink of an eye to the point of global fallout.
As a result, clients are increasingly cautious when choosing which companies they will do business with. Having a quality product or service is no longer enough.
Clients want to align themselves with companies with strong and consistent brand values. Savvy, top-tier clients look for product and service providers with:
- Progressive, up-to-date value statements
- Clear branding and value propositions
- Cohesive, consistent messaging throughout their marketing
- Physical spaces that match their branding
Inviting clients into a physical space that does not reflect your brand and values creates cognitive dissonance. It creates the impression that your company doesn’t mean what it says and isn’t reliable.
Proving Workplace Values
Welcoming clients into a space that does reflect your brand and values builds client confidence and enhances your reputation as a reliable, quality provider.
More than that, an updated workspace can provide you with the opportunity to make abstract workplace values concrete for your customers. Flexibility, creativity, and efficiency, for example, are excellent values for a company in the fast-paced modern business world. But they can also be easily lost in the noise of buzz-words of marketing jargon.
When your clients visit your workspace and find a mix of workstations that facilitate both collaborative and private work, however, flexibility takes on a whole new level of meaning. Similarly, when they find your space outfitted with the latest technological tools and a system that visibly streamlines your workflow, they will see and believe your capacity for efficiency in a way no marketing copy could ever accomplish.
When they see your environmental branding throughout your space, both visually and in practice, clients become believers and advocates for you.
Maximizing Real Estate
If improved office branding and employee satisfaction aren’t enough, renovating your workspace can save you cold, hard cash and lots of it.
There’s simply no getting around the fact that maintaining a brick-and-mortar workplace is expensive. Depending on your industry, you can expect to spend between 2 and 8 percent of your company’s gross annual income on rent. In prime hubs, such as New York City or Los Angeles, the percentages are often much higher.
With physical space being such an expensive proposition, it’s just plain smart to make the most of what you have. Using your existing space more effectively can prevent you from having to buy additional space, saving you the enormous costs of:
- Hiring a real estate agent or broker
- Breaking your existing lease and signing a new one
- Updating, renovating, or modifying a new space
- Transitioning to a new space
- Lost productivity during the transition
It’s important to keep in mind that renovating doesn’t have to be a massive project. Even small changes can have a big impact.
Preparing for the Future
The pace of change in the workplace has never been as fast or unrelenting as it is right now. Companies can no longer afford to get by with what has worked in the past. To stay competitive, businesses need to look to the future and equip themselves and their workers now.
Hiring a renovations expert to help you assess your space and make powerful changes is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make in your future.
Secure Top Tier Clients for Your Business
Secure top tier clients and talent for your business today by creating a workspace that reflects your workplace values. Let the experts help you redefine your space in powerful new ways, today.