Office space planning should be seriously thought out when creating the layout of your office, this serves to achieve an organized work space in your office. Having a well designed office layout can go a long way in improving the feeling of your office space, making workers more efficient and increasing job satisfaction for all, making it easier to concentrate and having a more inviting feel.
An organised and tidy office will circumvent issues you might find in smaller spaces allowing an enhanced ability to move around the office, and giving workers a comfortable amount of personal space. Some say that an organised work space is comparable to an organised mind, and the two even work together. Just like an organised, calm mind, organised storage and use of space makes an office comfortable to work in.
Making good use of office storage solutions will enable you to be more efficient in other ways, too, with quick, easy and accessible storage you’ll easily be able to find your way to important papers or stationery.
While many people work mainly with computers today, we forget that there are still a lot of paper documents such as bills and contracts that come through the workplace. This is where office furniture such as filing cabinets comes in – Allowing quick and easy storage, as well as providing an easy means of finding just what you need in moments. This kind of organisation is important in maintaining a steady, efficient workflow.
The larger your business, the more important it becomes to have robust file storage – With more contracts, more bills, and more paperwork going through the company it only becomes more important to have an efficient storage means for these documents since it will save large amounts of peoples’ time when they need those documents.
Without a good amount of planning, you can soon become overwhelmed with the amount of time and the effort you need to dedicate to managing your documents. So while you might get away with a few notes on your desk, you’re going to need somewhere to put your files for quick access when you need them again.
While it is important to have good file storage, we must not forget that there are many other things that you might forget need to be stored. Things such as stationery, spare computer peripherals and cables. While these aren’t necessarily the most used items in the office, you do need somewhere to store them. This is where a good shelving unit, or a set of drawers might come in. If you find the right shelving units you can even enhance the aesthetics of your office – So rather than going for a simple frame with shelves, you might look for an enclosure to put in the corner.
Of course, aesthetics aren’t always the primary concern, so you might focus more on finding open shelves for this purpose, allowing just a little bit more ease-of-access and space. So when you’re buying shelving for a workspace, you want to think about what you’re going to be using it for, and where it’s going to go. The last thing you’ll want is a mess of items stored in plain sight because of open shelving.
Good use of desks is also important. While most of our work takes place on a desk, we don’t need to keep them absolutely free of anything we’re not using. The classic example is to have an inbox and outbox stacked on your desk for your paper mail. Not only does it offer convenience in storage, but it also helps to organise your documents in a simple way – You know what you have and haven’t dealt with already.
Beyond this, even the choice of your desk can be important in storage terms. Many desks these days come with inbuilt wire management, using a variety of means to help hide those messy cables that would otherwise be dragging all over the desk and floor This does help to increase the safety of the office by doing away with trip hazards.
You’ll also find desks with drawer storage, a convenient means of storing your pens, or personal effects such as your wallet or keys, or documents you need quick access to but may not need very frequently.
In some cases you might need much larger desks than usual, perhaps your job requires the use of multiple monitors, meaning a smaller desk becomes cramped. At the same time, it’s entirely possible that you simply don’t need this amount of space so a smaller desk becomes much more convenient, allowing for other office furniture to be used where needed.
It’s important to any business that the workspace is organised and works efficiently, on a day to day basis the amount of paperwork most offices need to go through exceeds what you would expect, even in the smallest companies, and in larger companies a layout that reduces the congestion of foot traffic also becomes a major requirement. Good usage of storage has a massive positive impact on these issues and can really make a huge difference to how efficient your office is.
Choosing the right storage is critical in maintaining this, if you manage your space inefficiently you’ll find annoying problems down the line that just means you end up spending more for a better solution after you already paid for your original storage. Careful planning and consideration really is a necessity. Storage goes beyond just finding some desks, shelves, or drawers, and goes into the deliberate planning and purpose of what you buy. You need to be careful with what you buy, otherwise you could end up with desks too large to fit into the space you’ve chosen for them, or cabinets that don’t hold enough files. It’s all too easy to fall prey to these problems due to rushed decisions.
In some cases you might hire a consultant or specialist office planner in order to get the layout of your office just right, they would work with you to help choose aesthetic designs, or even just to find the right office furniture to handle the amount of storage you’ll need.
