4 Remodelling Tips for Your Office: Small Changes, Big Impact

A study by the British Council of Offices and Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment on the impact of office design on business performance notes reports of the workplace being responsible for:

●      24% of job satisfaction

●      5% of individual performance

●      11% of team performance

The same study also cites a UK call centre’s staff turnover dropping by 11% after moving to new offices, and a Sydney financial services company’s staff turnover decreasing by 14% after an office refurbishment.

Could installing Betap Vienna floor covering to your office help you accomplish something similar?

The following are minor changes you can implement in your office that can significantly impact employees’ workplace experience. At the very least, these can help improve job satisfaction and individual and team performance, as well as help reduce staff turnover.

In other words, the following measures can potentially improve employee productivity and increase staff retention.

1.   Change to Carpet Tile Flooring

The importance of focus in an office setting cannot be overemphasised. Employees need to have a single-minded focus on their tasks to be productive. This is hard to achieve, of course, especially in a workplace full of noise and distractions. The average desk employee loses over two hours of work to distractions and interruptions every day.

Therefore, one thing you can do to enhance employee productivity is to reduce such distractions and interruptions. An excellent way to do this is to eschew the open layout for private cubicles.

Barring that, however, one minor change you can implement is to cover your old, scuffed and noisy flooring with carpet.

Wall-to-wall carpeting is the luxurious option, with its extra-plush backing that provides that gloriously soft, foot-sinking sensation. It is, however, a lot more expensive and might be less practical in high-traffic areas. Therefore, instead of wall-to-wall carpeting, why not change your old floor to carpet tiles instead?

Like the Vienna line of carpet tiles by Betap, carpet tiles are ideal in commercial spaces for the following reasons. 

Acoustic Benefits

Carpet tiles have a layered structure that helps them absorb sound. Specifically, they help deaden the sound of footsteps, structural sounds, and all other types of noises, even in high-traffic spaces. 

Design Versatility

You can configure carpet tiles in various ways to create a virtually infinite number of designs. There are solid-colored tiles and patterned tiles. You can go with the default design or shake things up a bit by combining different-colored and different-patterned tiles to create attractive bespoke layouts.

Practicality

Carpet tiles are also more practical than wall-to-wall carpets, especially for high-traffic areas. When one of the carpet tiles is worn out, you can take it out and replace it with a new one. While spot repairs are also possible with wall-to-wall carpets, spot repairing a carpet is more complicated than tile replacement.

2.   Change to Wallpaper

 The whole ambiance of your office can change with a change in wall colour and design. A simple colour change can uplift your space and make it feel more welcoming instead of drab and lacklustre.

Yes, you can bring about the same change by having your office repainted. However, wallpaper is better if you want additional noise reduction benefits.

 Acoustic wallpaper can provide such benefits. For instance, Texdecor’s acoustical wallcoverings have a sound absorption coefficient of 0.15 to 0.3, which means they can help dampen reverberation and resonance noises that distract and cause discomfort.

The only thing better than acoustic wallpaper in office spaces is soundproofing your walls. However, this might involve ripping the drywall in your existing walls (perhaps even the ceiling) so you can fill the space with fibreglass and insulation. You can just imagine the amount of expense and work this involves.

You can also install acoustic panels instead. This is a less involved process than filling walls and ceilings with insulation material, but it is still more complicated, not to mention costlier than installing acoustic wallpaper.

3.   Reupholster Your Furniture

Have the seats in your office seen better days? You can get them reupholstered in a different fabric. This will not only give your office a fresh look, but it will also give you the chance to improve the experience of your guests.

There are so many performance fabrics with superior abrasion resistance, lightfastness, colour fastness, and pilling resistance, among so many other wonderful traits. They will elevate the way your sofas look and feel and provide a remarkable change for your office as well.

4.   Let In More Natural Light

If you can, ‌add more windows to your office. This will amplify the amount of natural light in your office, which will drastically improve your space. Greater exposure to daylight has been known to improve mood and morale, as well as reduce fatigue and eye strain.

If adding windows is too expensive, you can do the next best thing: change your lighting to something that approximates daylight.

Changes for a Better Workplace

You can increase staff productivity by enrolling your employees in reskilling and upskilling programs.

However, do not neglect the work setting and how it affects how people work. There are minor changes you can implement in your office that can significantly impact people’s productivity and how they feel about their work.

AUTHOR BIO

James Prathap is the General Manager at NGC Nafees, top importers and exporters of wallpapers, flooring and fabric in the Middle East. The business also offers high-quality panoramics, coordinated fabrics, and creative stickers for residential and commercial projects.