One of the perks of being an entrepreneur is when you get to the stage of being more financially stable, you are able to start thinking about designing the layouts of your workspaces. You don’t need to follow a typical floor plan and keep the walls exactly where they are. We’ve taken a couple of different workplaces and have put together a few suggestions of ways to lay out the space to maximize its potential.
The Office
Offices can suffer from following the traditional layouts of offices from 50 years ago. A few ways to counteract this problem are as follows:
Remove The Cubicles And Walls – Having people isolated and unable to talk to each other properly doesn’t make for a good working space. Removing the walls will open up the floor and make communication easier between staff members.
Put In Standing Desks – The health benefits for the employee are varied. From encouraging people to move around more and an increase in productivity. Standing desks take up less space than normal because there are no chairs.
Put In A Relaxation Space- Make a dedicated part of the office for relaxation and without work based stats. Decorating a space to encourage “chillout time” would be to put down armchairs or beanbags. Or have a music player with various types of music to suit people’s needs, and putting up photos or pictures. Plus it adds a new age appearance to the office if you are looking to make your environment less on the office side.
Restaurant
The design of a restaurant sets the stage for customer’s dining experience.
Create The Right Ambience – Loud music, Formica tables and plastic cups sets a different mood than smooth jazz, linen tablecloths and china. Depending on what your style of restaurant and the food you wish to serve, the ambience of the place needs to be factored in.
Be Economic and Stylish in Equal Measure – You need to turn in a profit after all, so you need to have enough seating to match the interest. But you need to give enough space for customers to enjoy their dining experience. There are many restaurants where the focus is purely on the seating capacity rather than the interior design. Diners, for example, have more seating capacity while fine dining restaurants tend to focus more on ambience.
Address Customer Issues – Issues where dining experiences are concerned include customers not wanting to sit in certain places, like tables near the kitchen entrance, restrooms and front entrance. To offset this, consider installing a waiting area with a bar so customers can enjoy a few drinks while waiting. Or make a problem area somewhere that staff members can congregate instead of making it a nightmare when it comes to food safety. Another trick is one you can do before you open your restaurant. Sit at each dining table so you can see if there are any problems arising from the location of the chairs.
The ideas are limitless when it comes to making a space your own. So, start thinking about what you want to do to create your dream workplace!
