What to Know When Refurbishing Your Office!

When you choose to refurbish your office, the possibilities are exciting as you consider what you can do to increase productivity and employee satisfaction. However, there are certain considerations you should keep in mind as you are pondering what changes to make.

Employee Opinion

Knowing what your employees are expecting from their office space can help you plan the best design possible. Perhaps you have some great ideas in mind, but your employees will not appreciate them. Change can be difficult for everyone, and it may not benefit your employees if they are staunchly against the changes you want to make. One way that you can guarantee employee happiness is through conducting an office-wide survey. Have them submit their opinions in a clean, neat way so that you can see if there is an overwhelming desire for you to design the office in a certain way. Because the employees know that you are thinking of them in the redesigning process, they will be more pleased with the result, even if you did not take all their suggestions.

Timing

You want to consider when you will do the refurbishment and how long it will take. If your office is affected by seasonal business, such as more business around Christmas, for example, office refurbishment will be frustrating at that time for your employees. They will be trying to work extra hard to compensate for the extra business, and they will need to be kicked out of their normal work space for the refurbishment. Try to schedule the refurbishing around a non-busy time period for your office. See if the refurbishing team can break the project into phases. They can work on one side of the office for one month and the other side in the other month. This will be much less troublesome for your employees than making them all unable to work in their spaces for a longer period.

Budget

Refurbishing your office means that you will need to consider the cost. Many refurbishing companies will give you a quote that you can use for presentations to the board. Here are two ways you can keep costs down.

1. Sell your old furniture: By selling your old furniture, you will at least get a small amount of money back, which can help you with the cost of the new design.

2. Negotiate with your landlord: If you are renting the building and the refurbishers want to update or re-do the air conditioning or electricity units, you can negotiate with your landlords to see if they will pay for part or the whole of such changes.

Design

Looking through the works of different designers and their previous designs can give you a good idea of what styles they have. Make sure you choose someone who has a style that matches what you have in mind. If you do not, you may end up with a design very unlike that which you were imagining.

When refurbishing your office, consider your employees' opinions, the timing, budget, and design.