If you ask any office employee about the environment of their workplace, they’ll most likely have strong opinions.
That’s because the place where we spend 40+ hours a week working can have a major impact on our mood, health, and well-being. It’s easy to imagine that going into an office awash in grey and sterile colors and furniture doesn’t do much for motivation and creativity.
On the flip side, offices that are too all over the place can lend themselves to a lack of productivity and distraction, something that will assuredly cost any business’ bottom line in a major way.
The trends for 2019 office design and furniture largely expand on the same themes of 2018 – well-being, communication, and psychologically-minded coloring.
We’ll explore these trends and how office managers and business owners can utilize them to increase productivity and bring value to themselves and their employees.
Well-Being
General well-being is a big concept, and doesn’t mean the same thing to all people. But, in terms of office design this blanket term relates to comfort and ergonomics.
Most often we spend hours either at our desk, or moving from one location to another. That means where they sit during their working hours needs not to break their back.
Ergonomic chairs and desks allow the hours of sitting down to not negatively impact their health. Back problems are among the leading causes of chronic pain, and using badly-designed office furniture is an overwhelmingly common culprit.
Communication
The office phone and email are the primary modes of communication – especially for office-oriented companies. But, it’s been well documented that in-person communication among high-performing teams is crucial to success.
Many offices in 2018 were redesigned to foster in-person communication, largely through the “open-concept” fad of recent years. While there are negative consequences of open concepts, inter-departmental openness is still a valuable feature of effective office design.
If your accounting department or design team are all located close to each other, consider a open-concept walled off with partitions between other departments. Especially with teams that rely on a high degree of collaboration, the value of being able to literally see your colleagues eye-to-eye cannot be understated.
Color!
Studies for years have shown that color has a major impact on how we feel about ourselves and about the environment around us. Considering that offices are often the place where tons of intellectual tasks take place, the connection between increased productivity and color is more than apparent.
Bright colors such as yellows and greens are known to foster creativity, while deep reds bring a more aggressive energy to any mood. Professional office designers are increasingly incorporating the psychological effects of color into their concepts with special consideration on what kind of work is being done in what space.
Bringing It All Together
The forward-looking office designer is one that not only thinks about the type of work being done in a particular space, but also about what effects design has on the users of that space.
For all office furniture and technical furniture needs, you need the best in the field of competent and efficient office design. Contact Saraval Industries today to find out how to optimize your workspace for 2019’s future successes.