Office culture or workplace culture is a term that tries to define the culture inside of your office. It can also apply to various workplaces that are not necessarily offices, such as the faculty at a university. Culture involves the shared ideas, shared goals, and shared values of a group of people. In a wider sense, culture involves the history, religion, food, ethnicity, and so on of a group of people. In an office, it’s much narrower. It mostly applies to the things you believe, the goals you have, and how you work together. When people are trying to make their offices run more efficiently or more productively, they often think about how to motivate individual workers. Some might want to bring in new employees who have a particular skillset. That’s a great idea; however, you need to make sure that person fits the office culture.
Office culture is sometimes more easily influenced than you think. There are experts in the field whose entire careers involve diagnosing workplace cultures and fixing them. If you think you have a culture problem in your office, you could hire one of these people, but you could also try something a little bit different.
Office Refurbishment
Yes, refurbishing your office can change your workplace culture. Research has shown that people tend to move towards the physical settings that are the most comfortable. The implication is that you can affect where people go in your office and how they associate by changing the furniture.
A Saracen Interiors office refurbishment is a great way to improve your office culture, because they have experts who help design the best accommodations for you and your staff. Many start-ups run by younger employers have actually taken wholeheartedly to this kind of strategy. Many of them have standing desks, communal desks instead of individual cubicles, or open floor plans. These are all designed to create an office more conducive to collaboration.
How It Works
Office refurbishment works to change the culture by encouraging different people to interact with each other differently. For example, if you are in a cubicle, you have three walls that separate you from your fellow employees. If you want some help with a project, you have to go find somebody and disrupt what he or she is doing. If you refurbish the office to an open floor plan, your employees can see each other all the time, making it easier for them to ask others for help.
Standing desks have become incredibly popular as well. These are desks that are tall enough for you to stand at them, or they move up and down so you can stand or sit. They’re great for changing workplace culture because they get people up and moving. Being up and moving lifts the mood, increases circulation, and has actually been shown to increase productivity. Workers who are standing for short periods of time get more work done.
Changing your office furniture can change your entire office.
