How we can help you reflect your brand into your office interior

Have you ever considered the role that your office interior plays in the brand image of your company? As one of the leading office refurbishment companies in Birmingham, we've seen offices at both ends of the spectrum – those with interiors that really resonate with their brand, and those that are little more than functional spaces in which to get work done.

Don’t get us wrong – functional is good. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary. But there’s also much to be said for a company that knows how to communicate its values with the world through well-branded touch-points.

Get to Know Your Brand

Your brand is a living, breathing entity. If defines who you are as a company, and how you would like to be perceived by others. With that in mind, good branding is really about authenticity – about understanding your company and the role it plays in the market.

It’s important to recognise the role that authenticity plays in the success of your company. There is plenty of research suggesting that consumers are thirsty for authentic brands with a strong social purpose. This trend is growing as well, perhaps due in part to the increasingly virtual state of our business affairs. With so much buying and selling taking place over what are essentially anonymous channels such as the Internet, people are eager to find and connect with a brand that they feel genuine and authentic.

In order to appear authentic to customers, your company needs to internalise its brand – make it part of the fibre of its being. When you really succeed at this, your target customers will take notice. They’ll appreciate your company for being true to itself, and for being honest to them.

Opposite this, it’s important not to underestimate your audience’s ability to sniff out authenticity. If your advertised brand says one thing about the company, while its products, representatives and other markers say another, the public is going to smell a rat. And these days, with the speed at which information travels over social media and other online channels, the tides of public favour can change seemingly overnight.

Interior Design as a Branded Touch-point

Your office’s interior design is one of several branded touch-points through which others interact with the company. The colours they see, they textures they feel and their experience when passing through this physical space all contribute to an overall impression of your company.

Most of us readily accept the role that product packaging plays in a brand. A prime example of this is Amazon’s ‘frustration-free packaging’, which is designed to allow customers to open their parcels with minimal fuss and without the so-called ‘wrap rage’ that too much packaging incites.

This branded campaign has become so successful now, that the act of unboxing something ordered online is practically a rite of passage. These days, video reviews of products that are available online inevitably include some ceremonious unboxing, during which the reviewer comments on the order of assembly, the location of various parts or the overall ease of getting started with the new product.

This is a prime example of a branded touch-point – be it an experience, physical feature or interaction – that makes a real impression on customers. By the same token, your office’s design is a form of branded packaging. Just as the act of unboxing a product can reflect on the company that packed it to begin with, interacting with an office space can reflect on the company that inhabits it.

Branding Your Office Interior

Of course, accepting the need to extend branding to your office’s interior is one thing. But actually making that happen is quite another. However, an experienced office refurbishment company will be able to help you with this endeavour – whether that means consulting with you on a primary basis or referring you to an interior designer who specialises in branded spaces.
Along those lines, here a few tips for how to go about branding your office interior:

Begin with the obvious

Your company logo, mission statement and other brand icons are an obvious place to start. These elements play an inevitable, front-and-centre role in the company’s identity, and they’re certainly going to be present in a well-branded office space. Just understand that there’s much more to be done in addition to this.

Think about colours

If your company already has a strong brand image, then there are certainly one or two brand colours associated with it. If this is not the case, then you may want to start by hiring a brand consultant to help flesh out these matters. Your brand colours should be present in the workspace – though they don’t need to be dominant. Instead, look for opportunities to use theses colours as accents. Say, for example, yellow is a prominent colour for your brand, a bit of yellow trim or a bouquet of yellow flowers on the welcome desk will be much more effective than, say, painting the walls yellow.

Move on to more abstract concepts

Your brand colours simplify the decision-making process when it comes to painting, upholstering and decorating, but what about the even less tangible aspects of your brand? Here are a few questions to consider:

What are your company’s values?
What characteristics or personality traits describe it?
What do others think of in relation to your company?
How would you like customers to feel (beyond ‘happy’ or ‘contented’) when they interact with your brand?

The answers to these questions may guide you to some important interior design decisions. For example, a firm that views itself as ecologically friendly may use recycled materials for some of its interior furnishings. Or a fun-loving company may stock its reception area with puzzles or games. Both examples reinforce brand traits.

Office Interiors that Are True to Your Brand

If you’re interested in updating your office interior in order to bring it more in line with the company brand and culture, feel free to contact us. Our extensive experience as office refurbishment means we’re well-equipped to help create a space that resonates with your brand culture.

5 Reasons why you should conciser an office redesign

Why Consider an office redesign?

There a many reasons for an office redesign, but before you start take a look around – is your office environment inspiring an energetic and dynamic workforce? Or is it sucking the life out of them? It may not be top of your priority list when looking at business goals but the working environment impacts so many areas of business that it really should feature as a key strategy.

We know this can often be overlooked when other business factors take priority, however here are five significant influences on business achievement that should trigger a review of how your office looks and feels.

1. Staff Retention

It sounds like a cliché but it is entirely true – any business is only as good as its people.  Organisations that struggle with retaining key staff are always playing catch up. Recruitment and training is expensive and continuity of service for clients is adversely affected by changing personnel.

High employee turnover is usually a symptom of deeper issues within an organisation which could include low morale, absence of staff recognition, poor management or perceived lack of career path.

The working environment can play a central part in developing company culture, maintaining energy levels and productivity, and generating a healthy and comfortable workplace. If you’re business is suffering poor staff retention levels the physical environment is a key strategy to review. You could start by looking at the 7 things to consider when designing a productive office space.

2. Overcrowding

Without regular reviews of the office layout it is likely that new employees are squeezed into the existing office layout, with an additional desk put on the end of an existing row or accommodated in what was an existing meeting or breakout space.

Losing break out and meeting space can have a hugely detrimental effect on collaborative working and therefore overall productivity. Most modern ways of working, in particular agile working rely on different working areas being available for different types of task.

Losing the space to have this flexibility can also impact on staff wellbeing. The feeling of overcrowding, either by the number of people or the clutter around, has been linked to a decline in productivity and creativity, particularly on more complex tasks. These issues could be overcome by the reorientation of workstations, reducing the lines of sight across the office, and where possible providing views through windows.

3. Customer Impressions

How you present your office will say a lot to prospective clients about your company. Whether you recognise it or not, the first impression your working environment gives will either help or hinder you chances of winning or retaining business.

If a prospective or current client visits you in a clean, smart and organised environment, those qualities will reflect on you as a business. Particular businesses will need to live up to the expectations of their clients in order to create that good initial impression. Law firms for example must but smart and modern and the creative industries should make that extra effort to showcase their flair. Conversely, if a new client arrives to a tatty, cluttered space that poor first impression will be extremely hard to shift.

If you are welcoming prospective new clients to your offices and your conversion rates are falling, addressing this first impression could be a very wise investment.

4. Corporate Identity

The idea of a strong corporate identity is that it reflects that business’ values, culture and personality. Through a corporate identity it is easy for internal employees and external contacts to tell what an organisation is all about – how it wants to do business and how it will treat staff and customers. In short, the Corporate Identity is the visual representation of a brand.

How does this impact office space? Implementing an environment that maintains visual continuity and is recognisable, not just to internal staff but to visitors as well, can be a primary strategy in reinforcing the core values of an organisation.

5. Collaborative Working

Increasingly, people from different departments, backgrounds and roles need to share ideas, work on the same tasks and contribute to larger projects together. This need for collaborative working necessitates a more modern approach to the work environment. Office layouts that divide staff into distinct functions/roles can encourage separation and an ‘us and them’ mentality between departments. Offices designed with collaboration in mind should encourage circulation and interaction between staff, whilst equally providing support for individual tasks.

An example of a design that fosters collaboration could be an array of enclosed workspaces surrounding a public space that allows people to meet and interact.

CONCLUSION:

Working environments can be the catalyst for success in business, but also one of the reasons for failure. Regular reviews of the use of office space are essential to make sure your team is motivated and productive. If you have any of the 5 triggers above on the horizon this is an opportune moment to look again at what modern design and an optimised workspace could do for your business.

6 tips for a successful move to agile working

1. Profile your workforce.

Assess how seismic the shift will be for different staff (baby-boomers, X-generation, millennials etc.) and plan how you will communicate the change.

2. Explain.

Communicate what’s happening and why, the benefit to the business and individuals.

3. Let staff touch and feel it.

Involve staff and give them a chance to see the plans, sit on the furniture, use the work settings, ask questions and seek reassurance.

4. Support it with training.

Don’t just expect staff to understand their new environment, or newfound autonomy, explain how to get the most from it.

5. Accept it’s not an overnight change.

Give your employees time to adapt.

6. Make sure your workplace is fit for the job.

The right tools for the right job, a well-designed workspace will support the shift.

8 Office Design Tips to Increase Productivity

If you’re trying to boost employee productivity, take a look at the environment they’re working in. A well-designed workspace can have significant benefits, and if yours isn’t quite up to par, a few simple changes can reap big rewards.

1. The Ergonomic Office

Human bodies come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, and there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to office furniture. Every employee should be able to adjust their desk and chair so that they can sit and work comfortably for extended periods, without suffering from common problems like neck, back, or wrist pain. This is an important thing to reinforce on a continual basis—it’s easy to slip into bad habits—so it’s helpful to display graphics that model the correct way to sit and provide information about furniture adjustment.

2. Reduce Clutter

Should you be enforcing a clean desk policy? It’s probably not necessary to go that far, but it’s definitely good to encourage employees to keep their workspaces well organized and free from clutter. Maintaining a reduced-paper or paperless work environment is useful too—the clutter-free concept can work well in the digital workspace as well as in the physical one.

3. Back to Nature

If making larger-scale changes to the office environment isn’t possible, the simple addition of living plants to a work environment is a quick and easy way to boost productivity, as well as improve the office’s air quality. All that’s needed is a small potted plant at each desk, and there are plenty of easy-care flowering plants that can thrive indoors.

4. Change the Colour Scheme

Colour has huge effects on emotion and productivity, but don’t just look at colour—saturation and intensity of colour is important too. Yellow promotes creativity, green calms, and blue is stimulating, but softer shades of these colours are more soothing than bright ones.

5. Let there be Light

Natural light can boost employee energy, creativity, and productivity, but that’s not the only benefit. In a retail or sales environment, it not only improves employee performance, but also increases the time customers spend in stores. While most offices probably aren’t going to be able to make the kinds of changes that involve adding skylights or windows, one thing you can do is maximize the number of employees who work near a window or have a window view.

6. Rethink the Open Plan Office

Open office plans have long been considered the gold standard, based on the idea that they promote employee collaboration and productivity. However, open plan offices also tend to reduce employee job satisfaction, largely because they lack privacy. In most open plan offices these days, what you see is employees wearing headphones to create the illusion of privacy—and little collaboration, because when the entire office can watch you and hear what you’re saying, conversation is somewhat intimidating. Again, an office redesign might not be possible, but employees should at least have access to private rooms or spaces where they can work undisturbed when necessary.

7. Provide Opportunity for Movement

It’s well known that most people perform best in spurts, and that the opportunity to take a five minute break every hour or so results in employees who are overall more productive. And yet, many managers still insist on virtually chaining employees to their desks, not realizing that they’re reducing office productivity in this way.

8. Remind Employees that their Work Matters

Working every day at an office job isn’t exactly glamorous, and for many employees it becomes a grind. They forget that the work they’re doing is important, they stop caring, and productivity plummets. This is where office branding can come into play—it reinforces your company ideals, reminds people of where they work, and can help them remember that while they might only be a small cog in a large machine, the machine still needs that cog to function.

How Agile Working can boost creativity and productivity

Open-office plans, popularized by tech giants like Facebook and Google, are believed to promote collaboration and creativity which is probably why 70% of all offices in the UK today are open-plan workspaces. In an office where everyone can see and hear each other, how do you make sure your employees are productive? A lot of this has to do with the design of the space. Little tweaks here and there can keep employees comfortable and boost productivity.

These innovations may be more expensive at first for employers, but, in the long run, could help workers be happier, healthier, and therefore, more creative and productive.

Moveable furniture.

Open-office spaces are believed to promote collaboration, but this is mostly helpful for extroverts who typically socialize more than introverts. For workers who need the privacy to concentrate, open-office plans can be distracting.

This is where moveable furniture is helpful. Desks and cabinets can be reconfigured so that employees can work individually or collaboratively. Today's workplace needs to be able to switch to different work modes, since we're all working with much less personal space than in past generations.

Seating alternatives.

As we all know sitting at your desk all day is not only tedious but very unhealthy. So what should you do instead? Provide areas for employees to stand while working, or encourage individual standing and treadmill desks. Yoga balls and kneeling chairs can also be better alternatives than traditional chairs because employees are able to get a bit of exercise while working. Even if the exercise isn't strenuous, it can still boost energy and productivity and contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

Small spaces for thinking.

There will be times when employees need areas to put their heads down and concentrate on a problem or strategy. An open-office plan can hinder the progress of this individual work. How do you create private spaces in an open-office plan? Use furniture and designs that can easily be turned into other spaces. For example, employers can position couches, moveable walls, and desks in a way that prevents employees from seeing one another — a big distraction — while in these private spaces.

Areas that promote collaboration.

A lot of people like working in a coffee shop because they enjoy the sea of people and comfortable furniture all around. Employers can create a similar vibe in their office to promote all kinds of interactions whether that be socializing, brainstorming, or collaborating. 

No assigned seating.

Employees who are able to sit wherever they want may be more productive and collaborative. Flexible seating arrangements enable workers to find where they work best. For example, some people prefer sitting next to a wall, while others like to be in the middle of the room. Some people want to sit next to quiet colleagues, while others want a more talkative neighbour to bounce ideas back and forth with.

If you would like more tips on how to make your workplace more creative and productive get in touch with us!

Beyond branding - How we incorporate a culture into the workplace

When it comes to the incorporation of branding and identity into a workplace, there is a simple option, which is to produce a design that faithfully incorporates the firm’s logos, colours and straplines in the interior. There’s nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that it is literally superficial and so may miss the opportunity to create an office design that scratches beneath the surface to reveal what lies beneath. When you get past the layers of branding and identity, you uncover something that we call culture. This can take things to a whole new level because the challenge becomes how to create a workplace design that communicates and fosters both the identity and the culture of the organisation. The benefits to the organisation can be enormous, not least because this approach bridges a number of disciplines such as human resources and office design and so drives a number of strategic objectives.

One of the most obvious examples of this is with the issue of employer branding, a subject that from a human resources perspective at least is about both the recruitment and retention of staff as well as the creation of a universally understood working culture, a subject that is of growing interest to organisations as they adopt more agile working practices.

A multi-faceted challenge

Of course, the issue of how to convey organisational culture and identity is complex, multi-faceted, fast moving and demands a multi-disciplinary approach. It is certainly likely to require input from HR and IT and will attract the interest of managers across the organisation. It incorporates a wide range of factors from working culture, working methods, interior design, technology and the physical environment.

Addressing all of these cultural issues is all inherently good for the business and there’s growing evidence to suggest that a clear focus on culture is important to the outside world too, including investors.

Moving beyond branding

So whereas branding the workplace may once have focussed on replicating a corporate identity, there is now a far greater focus on reflecting culture and values to staff and clients. Where once you had logos in the carpet, we now have visualisations of how the company addresses business and environmental issues, the intelligent use of colours and materials to convey ideas and emotions, cultural imagery and manifestations of the outside world. For workplace designers, this all represents a twofold challenge. Firstly they must understand the culture of the organisation and secondly they must find a way of conveying it in the spaces they help to create.

A multi-faceted solution

Developing an understanding of a business’s culture cannot happen unless there is a great deal of trust between the designer and client combined with the capability of the designer to ask the right questions, listen carefully, observe minutely and gather information from a number of sources. This is not simply a matter of taking a brief then responding to create the physical embodiment of an organogram overlaid with manifestations of the firm’s mission statement and values.

It is also about understanding how the firm is perceived and wants to be perceived, how information and ideas flow and develop, how the workplace fosters creativity, how individuals relate to work and how they find the balance between work and their personal wellbeing. It is about understanding how technology integrates with both the physical environment and the firm’s processes and channels of communication.  It is about understanding how the firm wants its working environment to serve visitors as well as employees. It is about all this and more.

How this is then translated into a workplace design that is unique to the organisation is down to the ability, creativity and experience of the designer. We are fortunate these days to be able to draw on a wide range of working models, interior elements and technologies that free designers to create genuinely tailored solutions. The days when the choices were generally limited to either open plan or cellular office design are long behind us, and we are now able to apply a variety of work settings and working methodologies which, when combined with the right branding and identity, create a that reflects and supports the firm’s culture.

Designing an Office for All Generations

Today, it isn't unlikely to have three different generations toiling together in the same workplace. With varying work styles and mind-sets, Baby Boomers along with Generations X and Y are working side by side. To overcome these differences, managers are increasingly turning to design to accommodate their needs while also harnessing the potential for cross-generational interaction.

In the 1980s, Boomers had a need for things that were more hierarchical and formal, and these are still needs that we have to address. As we moved into the 1990s, there was a shift to more flexibility, defined technology, and non-hierarchical spaces. In the 2000s, design became transformative. There was leverage on humans and their interaction with space so office designs provide spaces that are branded, mobile, and more interactive with a sense of openness. As we look at the next generation coming into the workplace, Collaborative and Agile design is the key.

By providing areas that people can personalize, younger generations want to put their mark on the space whereas older employees are used to the more corporate and formal feel.  Usually it often depends on the managerial style or direction that the business allows. If you work for a startup, the freedom and the flexibility is greater because you often have multigenerational teams. At its worst, if the brand is established and has very little flexibility for mutigenerational types of differentiation then it becomes a very standardised space.

We try to introduce environments that are collaborative, flexible, and technology-driven. The challenge is to attract and retain workers who are very used to spaces that shift, change, and transform. So companies who want to better position themselves are going to provide that kind of flexibility and agile working environment.  However there will always need to be some type of mix between environments because of different personality types in the workplace. Regardless of age, more introverted workers want the privacy to concentrate and complete their work tasks whereas the extroverts are comfortable working in more open environments.

We design a lot more open areas that have multiple functions; there are still the tea points, sort of the central hub on every floor, but by migrating these areas closer to the major exit of the floor, we can help to promote collaboration within the generations. Work places are becoming much more mobile and compact so offices won’t require all of the square footage that they are utilizing today which will obviously save business’ overheads as well and producing more productive staff.