subject: 9 Best Practices In Office Workstation Design [print this page] The notion of an office designed around cubicles is rapidly becoming outdated. Firstly, an office has a far different function than a bay of 'mens' or 'ladies'. Secondly, the traditional cubicle is neither good for musculoskeletal or mental health. Lastly (but not least), collaboration and productivity suffers when office workstation design is poor. Here are 9 best practice guidelines to keep in mind when designing your Melbourne office furniture layout.
On a macro (whole office level):
1.Know Your Office Hotspots
Before you start redesigning your commercial office furniture, start with a little in-house research. Do a traffic survey for a full week (to allow for weekly patterns and variations), and note which areas are most frequently visited. You'll need to know this for planning your commercial office furniture layout.
2.Be Prepared for New Hardware
Just about everything we use in an office nowadays needs a power point. If you are prepared to bring the mountain to Mohammed by installing new powerpoints you'll get much more flexibility in your design.
3.Utilise Your Natural Light
It's amazing how many offices are designed with floor to ceiling windows ... and a massive bay of cubicles in the centre, under a fluorescent light farm! Get next to those windows for better atmosphere, less eye strain and happier workers.
4.Pull Out Your CAD Files
If you have access to them, the CAD drawings from when the office was built will be invaluable for planning your office furniture layout.
5.Work Together
Cubicles arranged around a central point are becoming more and more common in offices. They look good, encourage collaboration and focus.
6.Ask Your Employees!
Almost everybody has a preference for working either with their back to the wall, or the back to the walkway. Although it is not smart to plan your entire office layout around the people you have at this exact point in time, you can get a feel for the proportion of people who prefer each style of workstation layout. These proportions should remain stable over time, and even new employees will have the opportunity to work in the environment in which they are most comfortable.
And on a micro (single workstation) level:
7.Reach for the Sky
Consider much higher desks than the traditional height. Standing height desks allow for workers to either sit down or stand up, through the use of high ergonomic chairs - and can improve health as well as productivity.
8.Consider Curvature
Curved desks allow people to get much closer to the keyboards and screens, while still maximising the amount of working space available in the workstation.
9.Jiggle It
A new range of workstations actually have height adjustable desks. You don't necessarily have to use a palette of other adjustable items to achieve optimal ergonomics ... simply move the desk up or down!
Follow these best practices, and you'll soon discover how much of an effect our environments have on our mindset ... and how strongly those benefits flow over into the business itself!
