Is your team working towards the big picture?

Written by Admin on 18/04/2017. Posted in Workplace

Every day, millions of people around the world go to work. But how many of them put in their best effort to fulfil a true business vision, either their own or their employer’s? Defining and communicating your company’s purpose and then creating an office design that reflects your vision will pay amazing dividends. Evoke Projects shows you how to make it happen!

Define and communicate your vision

Companies often do this through a mission statement and corporate objectives. These can be useful summaries, but it is worth asking employees how they relate these statements to their daily work. How does it affect their attitude and behaviour? Are the statements meaningful at a grass roots level?

Ensure your vision is relevant and easily translated into day to day actions.

Create an office design that reflects your vision

The next step is to create an office design that is optimised for achieving your vision. In Anetta Pizag’s book Create a Thriving Workspace,* she examines seven design principles for high-performance work environments. One of these principles is the creation of ‘space for a visionary business’.

She writes about a workspace that reflects purpose, values and brand—a workspace that ‘embodies the DNA of your organisation’. What a great analogy! At Evoke Projects, our office designers explore the brand, culture and values of a company to help us design office fit-outs. Nobody wants their investment in an office refurbishment to look like the place next door. Staff should come to work and identify strongly with their environment and the subtle messages that office design gives to the team.

Anetta Pizag’s book has many wonderful office design ideas for the visionary business. The Evoke team picked our top five and made our recommendations on how to implement these into your office design:

1. Decorate your office walls in a way that shows how your organisation makes this world a better place.
   This could be through the products and services you provide, or the charity initiatives that your profits support. Photos of staff, a storyboard, thank you notes—they can all give character and depth to your office design.
2. Integrate your products or services into the office fit-out.
   Think about the customer experience and bring it in to work. At Virgin, the communal space looks like an airport viewing deck, complete with a full-size cockpit and a row of check-in desks.
3. Attract and retain team members who are striving towards the same goals as the company.
   This point is not so much about office design, as the people who work in it. But people who come for interviews will make a judgement about your office design and whether it’s a good fit for them. And once they join your company, the environment will have a big impact on how long they stay.
4. Match your values with the physical space.
   This is about ‘walking the talk’. If your brand values include innovation, try to plan regular office refurbishments to keep the fit-out fresh and dynamic. If you promote health or fitness, consider adding plenty of water stations or a desk treadmill in the office.
5. Review the environmental objectives of your business, and set up your workspace accordingly.
   This is something we feel strongly about at Evoke Projects. We are asked by most office fit-out clients to help them make their offices more sustainable or environmentally friendly. Yet it can mean so many different things to different people and businesses.

The success of any ‘environmental’ initiative will depend on the willingness of the team members to embrace it. Consult the staff who will be responsible for making it work on a day to day basis and set the objectives together. Once you have defined objectives, the office design and subsequent office fit-out will be sustainable in more ways than one!

Please call Evoke Projects to find out more about an office design and refurbishment that reflects your company’s vision. Telephone 1300 720 692.

* http://pizag.com.au/create-a-thriving-workspace/

Book a meeting Call 1300 720 692