Planning the perfect office renovation

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An office renovation can be an exciting time for you and your staff. It can signal a shift into a new era for the business and will often come during a period uof success for the business when you have a bit of extra cash to splash on the necessary expenses. That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and rainbows though and without proper planning it could cause more harm than good. Read these points below to help avoid the pitfalls that may come with an office renovation.

Plan With Your Employees’ Needs In Mind
We’ve all seen the flashy job adverts that boast about the office’s beanbags, air hockey table, coffee machines and more… They look great in the advert but, in reality, how often are they used by the employees themselves? Were they something the workers wanted or was it instead just done with the company Instagram in mind?  A perfect place to start to begin to discover and learn just what is available out there for your employees, is officemonster.co.uk/office-furniture.

Employee-first design will do wonders for office morale and productivity. It can also help your employees feel their needs are really being heard. Perhaps the budget for a flashy TV could instead be spent on some comfortable chairs or standing desks. Demonstrably planning with your team in mind can help alleviate some of the stresses of the working environment keeping your team happier overall.  You can also use this opportunity to plan around individual worker’s specific needs.

Think About Minimising Disruption
Goodwill towards the renovation can be used up quickly if the works mean your staff are unable to do their daily tasks to the best of their ability. Think about if they’re going to need to take client calls while the power tools are whirring away next to them. It’ll be a pain for your team AND your customers if works cause disruption.

With the recent successes of work from home programs during lockdown perhaps you could consider having the whole office work from home for a week while the decorators blitz the office. One extra week of working from home could save the hassle of three weeks working around contractors if you’re planning a more thorough renovation.

Making sure you have your bases covered with the likes of Cheaper Bin Hire will ensure you can speed through works quickly and that there won’t be an unsightly mess left around the office for days or even weeks. No one wants to work in an office that looks like a bombsite and getting a skip in from the start will help avoid this. Perhaps it’d be a good chance to ditch the horrifying crockery and cutlery from the office kitsch too?

Design With The Future In Mind
This doesn’t just apply to the design trends you opt for but rather it applies more fundamentally to the choices you make for the renovation.

Do you anticipate your client base doubling, tripling, or even more in the coming years? Make sure the redesign allows your team and your facilities space to breathe. You might regret not opting for the second meeting room in a year’s time if you suddenly don’t have room to host multiple client meetings at the same time.

Perhaps you’re instead moving away from in-person pitches to online-only meetings? In that case a series of smaller rooms allowing each member of staff some peace and quiet for their calls could be the perfect choice.

A renovation is also the perfect time to embrace more sustainable changes for your office - you can read more about some ideas for those here.

Whatever decisions you make they should be made with a growth mindset at the forefront. Growth for your business, for your staff, and for your customers. A short-sighted redevelopment will only cause problems both in the short term and in a year or two when you need to tear everything down to start again.