Small offices have a compactness that becomes inimical for efficient offices. For one, offices must have privacy. Between all that exchanges between staff, we have instances when we need confidentiality. To overcome this shortcoming, one may use pre-fashioned cubicles or partition walls. Additionally, enough scope to use rooms improves productivity and efficiency.
Make Flexible Workspaces
Use many smaller tables to make a bigger one when you begin group conferencing. Split tables up and it becomes individual workspaces. This is good for a small office building with limited floor space. You will need square or rectangular tables that can fit together. Moreover, we could use a few foldable training tables, so we can put some away when we don’t want them. This will open up more space for colleagues and us.
Use Workbenches
Instead of private cubicles, we have a long bench where we arrange desktops side by side. This is suitable for a sales company or a promotion firm where frequent chats between its workers is a necessity. Of course, like always you can put your individual tables together or use a continuous bench. A plus point in using benches is that it does not move around much, and so it creates a much more stable environment. The clatter of moving tables will be a distraction to workers.
Keep a Private Office
When things need more privacy such as when one is taking a sensitive call from a client, you need personal room. You should reserve one or two such rooms in the office for this purpose. A small office might have such rooms or if it doesn’t, then use a partition wall to set off this private space. A private one helps workers take a creative break after a stint of hard labor. On another note, if a room is big enough, then you can use it as a meeting room or conference hall. It will not disturb the routine activity going on inside the room.
Fashion Workstation Space Barriers
Use your workstations as space breaks in our office. Make cubicles with our desks and chairs so you have individual working space. We will have to figure how traffic flows around a room before we do this. Remove tables and it goes back to being an open office design. Since there are many ways we can form barriers, we can change a look of an office with different arrangements every week. This will help improve the working atmosphere.
Need for Space
In a small office building design, we see a need for an open office layout. It needs to have interactive spaces that allow workers to mingle freely and exchange thoughts and words between works. Anyway, too many cubicles or partition walls kill creativity. This open room means there is less number of barriers in it. It might be just an open room with many tables and chairs put in it.
Closed Design
When the office rooms open into each other in a row, an innermost room has least access. If a person wants seclusion, then this is a good solution. A manager may choose this room because of its privacy. However, a salesperson would not find it convenient. A closed design is useful in keeping noise levels down. A complete cover may be three or four layers thick for a person in an innermost office.
Rent space out for more than one office. We can save on rent by using the space that goes empty. Here is how it works. We lease out space to two or three businesses that want a business address in the center of a business locality. This allows us to make more money and reduce our expenditure. Since we do not have any extra overheads for each office, we will save money that way also.
Open up Back-office Spaces
Use back rooms that we use for storage by moving things out. You can use the back entrance as another entrance in a small office building design. This will get you more space for operation. You only have to move two or three tables to the back rooms, and you will be ready to go.
Remove Physical Barriers
This means that every kind of physical barriers such as dividers and partition walls that exist between workers inside a room gets torn down. By coming closer to each other, workers produce much more and there is lessening of tensions. This is much like the open room only here you are actually starting from a room that was not an open office. It is becoming one due to your effort to tear down the walls.
If you have a huge room and a tiny room, use one for managerial staff and keep the other for workers. Alternatively, segregate the women and give the gents enough room in the big room. This might not work always. Sometimes, you will need to keep the design staff together. At other times, your field staff will need a conferencing room. Using a flexible design helps you keep the small office building functional always.
