What Every Small Business Owner Should Know about Office Furniture
Outfitting a new office with the equipment and supplies needed to ensure staff can perform at the highest level is — or should be — a preoccupation for every business owner.
A workforce that is uncomfortable and starved of resources will never be efficient or productive, and if you want to make sure your team is doing everything they can to meet the expectations of partners, clients, and customers, you need to design your office for maximal impact.
And while most companies know they need to get the right tools into their workers’ hands, one thing that often gets overlooked in office design is commercial office furniture.
Many small business owners view furniture in a purely utilitarian way, but the truth is that good office furniture goes a long way toward making your workplace functional, pleasant, and easy to navigate, just as bad office furniture makes it significantly harder for your team to get their work done.
Furniture Sets the Tone for Productivity
Office furniture plays an essential role in shaping just about every aspect of how employees experience their workplace, and when you browse catalogues to order office furniture online you are making an decision that will have a far-reaching impact on your office. This includes:
- How social the workplace feels
- How much privacy or connectivity workers have
- The frequency of distractions
- Access to key resources (printers, phones, etc.)
- Overall sense of comfort and morale
Many small business offices, for example, are designed with open floor plans for maximal use of space. But open floor plans aren’t always the most productive, and workers may feel that they don’t have sufficient privacy to achieve real focus.
The decision to use workplace dividers to create more modern office workstations that give of a sense of privacy and ownership over individual space may seem like a small one, but it can do a lot to make your employees feel more comfortable.
Furniture Impacts Well-Being
According to a recent article in Forbes magazine, American workers now spend more time sitting than at any other point in history. This has led to a significant rise in health problems like obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol that have been shown to be associated with a more sedentary lifestyle.
This isn’t just a matter of concern for individual workers: a workforce that is more prone to health problems will cost employers over the long run through lower productivity, higher health premiums, and more sick days.
If you want to ensure that your staff aren’t sitting themselves to death, you need to invest in high end commercial office furniture ergonomically designed to reduce the impact of sedentary-lifestyle related problems, and make your team more comfortable in their day-to-day lives.
Furniture might be an afterthought for small business owners who spend their days working hard to drum up new business, hire new staff, and keep their existing customer base happy, but the truth is that if you want to get the most out of your team, office furniture is one concern you can’t afford to ignore.
