Employees that are crammed together and working in open plan offices is not the way to go. Open plans are great if you are a budding entrepreneur just trying to save wherever you can and put all your funds into growth. However when you’re an established small, medium or large sized business, open plans don’t remain very trendy. Open plans should remain something for the housing market not for professional offices; at least not everywhere. Why is this necessary? Well, workspace and workplace are to similar things but they have their own definitions. The workplace might be the office but an employee’s workspace is where they perform their roles. Do you think they would like to have a bit of space to themselves or not have a discenerable area they arrive to every morning? Of course they want a little piece to themselves, but here’s why you should give it to them.

Employee mental health

The workplace has to be somewhat tightnit. It’s not exactly like you’re in a house, you’re at work and office space is expensive. However when you’re so close together all day long, people’s patience can where thin if you’re always bumping into each other and each other’s things. It can be really stressful when you are made to feel like another carbon copy of the person sitting next to you. Employees want their individuality to be respected. Even if you make this verbally clear to them they still rightfully believe in actions speak louder than words. When they have their own space however small it might be, they feel more appreciated and able to bring out more of their personality in their work. It’s less stressful too as your things don’t get moved around, your workspace isn’t littered by someone else and you keep hygiene standards higher too.

Departments and sovereignty

Departments all have their own unique cultures. The engineers think totally differently to the marketers. Whereas the marketers want to understand and use the emotions within consumers to sell the product, engineers don’t want any kind of emotion in their designs and manufacturing processes. Therefore, giving each department their own sovereignty allows them to not feel as if their way of thinking and working is being merged or challenged by other departments. Implementing office glass partitions is a brilliant way of separating each department without cutting each other offer. The glass panels are see-through yet they offer just enough opaqueness to give teams privacy and space.

Concentration and familiarity

If you turned up to work every morning and you had a new place to sit, would you feel connected to the company you work for? Human beings want routine, they want familiarity which helps us to concentrate at work too. Giving each employee their own hovel from which they can inject their personality is brilliant for morale but also for their focus to get the job done.  

Workspace and workplace are not the same and you would benefit greatly by remembering this the next time you look at how much room to breathe is given to each of your employees.