How to Make Your Office More Productive

The Robin Team

Published on

March 17, 2023

This post is aimed at business owners, facilities managers, and supervisors and describes four steps they can take to create an organized work environment that’s conducive to collaboration, clear communication, and the optimization of their office resources.

We’ll explore four big levers that can be pulled to evolve any approach to office space management, so that your people want to come into the office and work productively. Those levers are:

Office layout, which is about how you organize workspace. It can be by department/function (the pre-pandemic norm), but since the onset of hybrid work, office layouts have increasingly focused on supporting how people work instead of what function they perform.
Workplace technology has never been more important than today in supporting how and where people work. Workplace technology needs to support employee productivity and connection/collaboration in location-agnostic ways, whether your people are working in the office, at home, or anywhere else.
Desk and room equipment/furniture. These have needed to become far more flexible and adaptive at a time of hybrid work. Modular and movable are today’s watchwords for office design. Office assets aren’t “owned” anymore, but are instead flexibly deployed to support people’s evolving needs.
Data and analytics. You need visibility into the performance of your office management approach so you can drive improvement. If you can’t measure performance, you can’t improve it. Fortunately, the various tools that help you easily manage and oversee your workplace also provide the data and analytics you’ll need to drive better decision-making around office management.

Everyone has challenges around managing office productivity, hybrid work software provides you with a comprehensive office space management solution that streamlines workspace management, increases the collaboration and productivity of hybrid teams, and reduces your real estate costs.

We know that office space is a limited and expensive resource (generally second only to salaries) that should not be wasted. If an office fails to meet the needs of its people, they may opt to work from home or at the coffee shop. In fact, workplace productivity relies a lot on office environments.

It’s estimated that providing a single desk costs a company $8,000-$10,000 annually. How can you drive ROI when that desk sits empty? What drives office utilization is an office with the right mix of productivity-supporting spaces that address how people want to work.

By understanding things like office utilization, you have the data you need to build a more productive office space.

A To-Do List for a Productive Office

Robin’s recent report, entitled Redefining the Workplace to Enhance Productivity (free download), surveyed business leaders like you who are tasked with office management responsibilities. The report provides a number of key findings that can help inform your decision-making as you manage office space:

1. Understand the impact of layout on office productivity

Office utilization should focus more on supporting employee productivity and driving satisfaction than on the density of users, according to 87% of survey respondents. You simply need to put people before places.

Instead of organizing your open office layout around functions (the pre-pandemic norm), today’s office is part of a flexible, hybrid work model where space is organized around how people want to work. Whether those spaces support collaborative work (conference and meeting rooms) or individual focus work (quiet work spaces that allow for quiet immersion) - your workplace should account for it all.

“Organizations should strive to create fluid, adaptive workplaces where employees and teams are more mobile, shifting as needed across different workplace environments – physical and virtual – based on the nature of the work, and where they and their teams are most productive,” says Darin Buelow, principal, Global Location Strategy Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Offer more collaborative spaces within your office so people can get more collaborative work together.

2. Create a productive workspace worth visiting

When you provide a great ambience for collaboration and team connection, guess what? Your people show up. It’s no surprise that seven out of ten organizations (70%) have been redesigning office space to accommodate more collaborative working and enhance the overall workplace experience, according to our report.

Creating a great, welcoming office ambience means considering:

Natural light
Temperature of the office
Number and distribution of plants,
Private meeting room spaces to take phone calls
Colors of walls and furniture

These are just a few of the multiple other considerations that contribute to the “personality” of your office. Of course, you’ll need to think into logistics as well. Remember to set up the right number of bookable offices and conference rooms to accommodate your people, as well as implement the right technology so people can easily book/schedule space.

The focus should be on enabling your people with technology and productivity tools that reduce friction when visiting the office. Your tools should be saving them time and frustration as they schedule spaces for individual work and collaboration.

Finally, your visitor experience (for customers and providers) and wayfinding are also important office management considerations. Aesthetic improvements like natural light in the workspace are important details that can contribute to a visitor's perception of your company.

When guests are visiting the office, make sure to leave a good first impression.

3. Get iterative when evolving your workspaces, using employee feedback for job satisfaction

If you don’t know the office space designs, configurations, and layouts your people prefer, you should ask them and keep asking them. Our survey finds that over 90% of respondents are using employee feedback tools to determine if their office environment and management plans are working, and are using that feedback to inform how and when they make workspace changes.

Depending on what your data and analytics are telling you, you might pivot from hot-desking to desk hoteling or set up functional “neighborhoods,” but boosting productivity starts with asking the right questions. However you evolve your physical space, you’ll need technology tools to make it work and measure ongoing effectiveness.

4. Make it easy for office workers to plan office visits and interact with the office.

Provide people with the tools they need to conveniently plan office visits, book office space for immersive work, and book conference or meeting rooms for collaborative work.

When your tools remove the friction and hassle around coming to the office, allowing people to see who else is coming in, people actually enjoy the office, which increases job satisfaction and boosts company culture. They recognize the unique value of IRL collaboration and interactions with colleagues. It’s little wonder that nearly 90% of the organizations we surveyed have fully or partially implemented room and desk booking software.

Make it easier for teams to plan in-office days together.

Making Office Productivity a Reality

There’s no simple template or single approach for managing an office today. You need a comprehensive office management platform that enables you to plan, measure, and iterate what you do based on continuous employee feedback. Your role is to help people connect to the office in ways that help them work their best, together with others.

Today’s office should be a focus for collaboration and community. Research from Axios shows that 3 out of 4 employees miss their office community. A considerable 84% of employees would be motivated to come into the office if they knew they could socialize with their coworkers. Make coming into the office easy for them – we’re here to help.‍

A productive office starts with Robin, check us out.