High productivity and employee retention are key to the success of any business. To achieve this, employees must feel comfortable in the office. This means the office needs to have enough space for employees to move around, store information for projects they are working on, a healthy balance of silence and work noise, plenty of light, and a private enough break room to get away from it all during their break times. If any of these essentials are being compromised, you may be running out of office space.
To be fully productive, an employee needs space that is free of clutter. When designing your office space, you should think about how to maximize your employee’s comfort so that they want to come and work. You also need to think about how to keep the space clean so that there are not too many distractions while your employees are working. You also want to make sure that your office looks presentable for clients to come by and check the space out.
Signs You Are Running Out of Office Space
Two major signs that you are running out of space in the office are increasingly dissatisfied employees and the inability to find new places to put things. Other signs include:
- Workflow has moved into the breakroom
- You no longer have meeting spaces because they’ve been replaced with desks and storage spaces
- You keep having to shove desks closer and closer together
- You keep losing important documents because of the clutter
- Employees are complaining that they don’t have enough space to work
- People keep running into each other or equipment
- People are leaving, refusing to come into the office, or threatening to quit
- Communication has broken down
- It’s too loud
- You don’t have a space to put clients
Assessing Your Space Needs
What do you need in your office space?
You need a space for each of your employees to be productive, healthy, and safe. This means plenty of access to light, enough space to move around, normal work-noise levels, a certain degree of work-acceptable privacy, and an actual break room. You can ask your employees, too, what they would like to see in the office. Use their feedback to help you plan what you keep in the office.
What don’t you need?
The answer is to keep unnecessary documents lying around. Storage furniture, like file cabinets, is bulky and takes up space. This is where off-site storage can help. Off-site storage can help you eliminate excess clutter in the workplace while providing storage and protection for sensitive documents, extra equipment, and items you want to keep somewhere, just not in the office.
Other benefits of off-site storage are the ability to easily retrieve necessary documents in case of a cyberattack or natural disaster, protection from the liability of potentially losing important documents, and space to put inventory within an easy-to-manage system.
Off-Site Storage Is the Best Solution
Off-site storage is a cost-effective way of storing essentials and opening up more office space for better workflow. Utilizing off-site storage means that you do not have to move your business into a new building, lease new property, or split employees between two office spaces. When you have off-site storage, you can keep non-essential items out of the office and keep it from being cluttered. You can still keep your important items safe in an off-site storage location.
Instead, you can store what you don’t need every day and redesign the office around whatever space opens up after you’ve moved things into storage. All that’s left to do after that is grow your productivity. More space. More productivity. It’s a win-win. The best companies are successful because of their employees.e
