Businesses are increasingly utilising flexible office spaces. These enable businesses to respond to shifting market demands without making large upfront financial commitments. To cut expenses, businesses can take advantage of the sharing economy, where individuals rent goods rather than buy them. They can avoid spending money on pricey workplace furnishings and equipment this way. They can instead rent it from people who already own those things.
The layout of offices should encourage teamwork among workers. What does that signify, though? How would you create it? What should you be cautious of?
Office rental is a significant proportion of the cost of running your business. You can vary it by varying the size of your office space. Make sure there is adequate space per person to work together efficiently without feeling crowded. How can you be sure that you need a certain amount of space? You can use this office space calculator to discover how many team members are proper for your office square footage.
Decide How Much Space You Want Per Employee
You should first choose the type of space you want before calculating how much space you need for each employee. Do you prefer open floor layouts, private offices, or another type of model? After that, you must decide where each employee will work. There are many options available if you are setting up a new workplace, including co-working spaces, shared offices, virtual offices, and dedicated offices. You can start figuring out how much room you need once you know the location each employee will work at.
Consider the scenario where six employees are collaborating in the same space. In this situation, everyone would need around 60 square feet. However, you could easily treble that number if you wanted to divide the area into other rooms. Say there were four persons there, dispersed throughout three rooms. You would need 120 square feet per person in this situation.
The most important thing to keep in mind is to round the calculation down to the closest hundred square feet. Therefore, 200 square feet would be needed if there were five employees in a large space. However, you would want 400 square feet if your ten employees were spread out among three smaller rooms.
- How is that Space Divided
First, we go over what to include in your square footage. Apart from desk space, you need to include space for facilities like breakout spaces, coffee shops, meeting rooms, and other collaborative spaces. Calculate the square footage based on your workforce size and the kind of structure you are in.
- Workstation Size
In general, the space per employee allocated in Indian offices is between 50-60 square feet. This refers to the individual desks. If you are considering providing all or some of your employees with private office spaces, you will need to add that to your total footage. Alternatively, some offices prefer to have a common table in large open spaces, with a bench. This approach can help seat 4-8 people at the same location while increasing collaboration and reducing space.
- Common Space
Now, you should add the communal space an employee will use, like a shared cafeteria, lobby or washroom. This extra space typically accounts for an equal to the desk space.
The Need for Flexibility
Flexibility is essential in both households and workplaces.
Office layouts should be adaptable to changing needs. Businesses can use the sharing economy to cut expenses. If you want to compete in today’s cutthroat industry, flexibility is essential. Traditional offices and coworking spaces are both available in a variety of sizes and shapes.
There are other office work arrangements, such as “pay as you go,” which enables you to increase your workspace without making a significant upfront investment.
The (new) purpose of your office space
The layout of offices should encourage teamwork. Once remote work becomes the norm, workers will perform in a different manner. Your new workspace should accommodate your business needs as you expand.
In summary, you should consider these factors when choosing the right office layout:
- The amount of space required by each worker
- The number of people who will share the space
- Whether you require private offices or not
- How flexible the layout should be
- What kind of company culture you want
