This infographic, created by GXI Group, posits that your office’s interior design can have a whopping 86% effect on employee performance.
Think about it: have you ever tried to get work done in an uncomfortable, distracting environment? Uncomfortable desk chairs and rickety desks can have your back in spasms before lunch hour swings around, while noisy colleagues make it impossible to focus on complicated spreadsheets or important documents. Being chained to a desk in a gloomy, dark office is enough to have you near suicidal by 5pm.
You don’t necessarily need to give your office space a complete makeover in order to boost your employees’ efficiency, however. Even implementing relatively simple changes – like installing office dividers – can have a positive effect on their performance.
Here are some reasons why office dividers enhance employee performance:
Office dividers give employees their own sense of space.
Whether you opt for full length office dividers or desktop dividers, office dividers give employees a sense of having their own private space in which to work. The infographic points out that having their own personal space assigned to them makes employees feel valued by the company. On the other hand, employees who work in shared spaces – maybe crowding around one communal desk with three or four others – could feel marginalised, overlooked and ‘in the way’.
Office dividers can be made from a number of different materials, such as wood, plastic or glass. Frosted window vinyl applied to glass desktop dividers is a brilliant option. Frosted desktop office dividers are ideal in that while they help to isolate each employee’s workspace, they don’t completely cut the employee off from her colleagues. This is because the dividers are opaque, but not solid. Frosted glass encourages a feeling of collaboration in the workplace, whereas solid office dividers a can make employees feel too disconnected from their colleagues.
Office dividers have been shown to encourage productivity.
Office dividers block out distracting visual stimuli, thereby aiding concentration. The infographic suggests that office dividers encourage employees to focus more closely on the task at hand, because they are less likely to be distracted by other peoples’ discussions and activities when their view of the rest of the office is obscured.
Installing glass office dividers treated with frosted window vinyl is the most economical choice.
Eco-friendly design is a burgeoning field and new methods of saving energy in homes and workplaces are being developed all the time. For instance, some office dividers are designed to be more economical than others. Because frosted window vinyl allows 93% of natural light to pass through it, using glass office dividers that have been coated with frosted window vinyl saves energy by keeping individuals’ workspaces bright and well-lit, without the need for additional lighting.
As this infographic points out, the use of LED lighting is a great energy-saver. In fact, advances in LED lighting technology over the last few years mean that LED lighting is now much more powerful and is commonly used for lighting entire offices – not just small areas.
Office dividers give employees a sense of privacy.
People work better when they are relaxed and have a level of privacy. Privacy is especially important when making business calls, as some people find it awkward when the entire office listens in. Of course, office dividers don’t completely block out all sound. However, the psychological aspect of feeling as though one has a greater level of privacy already puts employees’ minds at ease and gives them a boost of self-confidence.
Seven reasons why office partitions increase productivity infographic
Infographic sourced from here.