There is a good reason why most people don’t find the idea of spending most of their day in the office as exciting or creativity-inducing as business leaders would prefer. And before you say it’s because of work, let us say in advance – it isn’t. Instead, it has more to do with the office environment itself and how it’s designed to instil productivity and motivation in employees. Today, many offices remain guilty of following the aged cookie-cutter design featuring the uninspired rows of cubicles and shared work areas flanked by private workspaces.
While this setup may have proved sufficient for the older generation of professionals, the same cannot be said for today’s millennial workforce. Hence, companies have begun to acknowledge that the psychology of office design cannot be ignored and are thus breaking away from the confines of traditional office design.
The Power Of Office Design
The office and its commercial interior design can significantly impact an employee’s attitude toward work deep into the psychological level. If it is not conducive to the way a company’s employees work best, it is only a given that their productivity, work quality, and overall job satisfaction will reflect it.
This is where environmental psychology comes into play. It is defined as the study of the relationship between humans and their environment or surroundings. In short, if a person enjoys being in the space they’re in, it will have a corresponding positive effect on how they think, act, and feel, and vice versa. Below are some key takeaways as to what environmental psychology tells us when applied to the office environment.
The Office Spaces Affect Employee Happiness
If you want to see improved productivity among employees, you should first determine if the office they’re in is designed for it and evoke the other qualities you wish to promote, like creativity. One of the most glaring issues that stifle creativity is the lack of flexibility and freedom on how, when, and where employees want to work.
A constricted office design can be demoralising for today’s generation of professionals. Business leaders should not expect more extroverted employees to flourish in a cubicle or the introverted ones in a shared workspace. The bottom line is that modern professionals shouldn’t be thought of as being the same as one another. If employees are not comfortable in their workplace, companies can expect productivity, morale, and turnover rate to suffer as a result.
It Can Promote Or Hinder Productivity
More often than not, employers are left wondering why their employee’s productivity suffers when they have already focused on things like ventilation, lighting, and noise reduction yet neglected core elements like flexibility, function, colour, and layout.
For instance, brightly coloured areas tend to spur energy and creativity among their inhabitants. Interested to know how that works? Check out another piece we wrote detailing the power of colour in the workplace. Another aspect is the noise. While background chatter may be detrimental for those doing intensive work that requires high focus, it may energise others when collaborating in a shared work area.
The difficulty of all this is that there is no silver bullet solution that can be simply replicated. Office design psychology all depends on the workforce you retain, which is why incorporating flexibility into your offices is the best way of catering to every work style imaginable.
Your Office Space Attracts And Retains Talent
Every office you step into gives off a certain vibe that serves as your first impression of the company. When potential candidates visit for an interview, they get a taste of what it would be like to work in that environment. They see what the workplace is like and how the employees feel. Are they happy? Motivated? Content? What they see influences how they envision themselves if they choose to be with the company. Therefore, that image they conjure in their minds must be a positive one.
Final Word
Modern commercial office interior design in Singapore has evolved from the drab and mundane layouts of years past. In today’s business climate where every bit of employee productivity counts, it is all the more important for employers to pay more attention to their office design, the most fundamental aspect that influences many of the qualities they wish to see in their staff.
