Most Americans spend one third of their lives at work. Now that we have you suitably depressed, here’s the good news: your workplace doesn’t have to be drab and terrible. In fact, it can be a place that brings joy and encourages employees to strive for greatness. And the best part: you don’t have to build racquetball courts or hire masseuses to make this possible: after all, not every business has the deep pockets of Google.
Architects and building planners have long recognized that ugly, overly functional, and claustrophobic workplaces harm worker productivity. As these particular brainiacs explain: “Temperature, air quality, lighting, and noise conditions [can negatively] affect work concentration and productivity.” Well, of course! If you’re cold and can’t see, it’s pretty hard to be a productive employee. It’s difficult to be a happy worker bee if you’re stuck in a small, windowless office like this poor schmuck.
For this reason, GOS emphasizes our commercial interior design services, as well as office furniture, to make your employees productive, and your clients happy. It’s great to have comfortable chairs, but if you have a terrible workplace layout, it doesn’t matter if your employees are in La-Z-Boys: productivity, along with customer and employee satisfaction, will suffer unless you optimize both the furniture and the layout. Businesses need the whole office interior design package.
Below we’ll give you a taste of GOS’s design specialists’ expertise by answering a few of the pressing questions about interior design and furniture for commercial spaces.
Are Filing Cabinets Necessary?
We work with hundreds of the world’s largest manufacturers of office furniture and employ a crack staff of interior designers. And these manufacturers and designers will tell you: filing cabinets are relics of the bygone days of office design and layout, where functionality trumped every other consideration.
Check out the various workspaces from our interior designers below. From our Executive Suite to our modern Office Cubicles and Partitions, we eschew filing cabinets like a bad flu.
Because here’s a little secret that the business furniture bad guys won’t tell you: there are ways to store your paper and documents other than filing cabinets. Such as:
- A handsome dresser (as seen tucked into the corner of our Executive Suite layout above)
- Shelves
- Desk Drawers
- Plastic Bins (not our favorite option we admit, but still better than this monstrosity:
With so many ways to store paper, we have to wonder why more offices haven’t embraced the GOS’s anti-filing cabinet position.
What Makes a Good Breakroom?
The question of what makes a good breakroom introduces another equally important question: what is the benefit of a breakroom? Keeping in the tradition of HuffPo’s newsworthy and hard-hitting journalism (also see: “Is Your Cat Depressed or Just a Cat?” [Feb 2017], and “How to Tame Your Imaginary Dragon” [June 2018]), their Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists also published a piece called “The Truth About Breakrooms.”
In the article, Neal Jenson, the Walker Cronkite of the Internet Age, offers this nugget of wisdom: having a breakroom “can make things more pleasant for customers. In my experience, if employees have nowhere to go for a break, they may hang around the main working area” not helping customers. Thanks Neal!
In truth, employees need breakrooms: they are places where they can socialize with their coworkers and decompress. Now onto the second question: what makes a good breakroom. Obviously the snacks, which GOS provides as well, but also the layout and furnishings. How comfortable are your employees in the office breakroom? Have you been curious about how they feel about the coffee machine you stuck in the corner next to the collapsible plastic table?
The interior designers at GOS have some general tips for the best breakroom furniture and how to lay it out.
You should have different heights and sizes on your table and chairs. Pair regular tables and chairs with café-style hightops. Throw in some bar stools. Make sure that your breakroom doesn’t look like the cafeteria in a prison. Lastly, think about how the style of your breakroom fits with your business’s overall aesthetic.
The best part: you can absolutely afford breakroom furniture that doesn’t break the bank. GOS works with businesses with all size budgets to design supercool breakrooms.
What Are the Best Computer Desks?
Productive workers need to be healthy workers, which is why GOS’s interior design team spends so much time thinking about computer desks. As office interior design and office furniture experts, we want your workers to be comfortable.
From ergonomic desks with a standing option to more traditional computer desks, we will advise you on what office furniture to buy, how to arrange it, and accommodate for the size of your floorplan, while taking into account the particularities of your office, the type of business you’re in, and what you want your office space to communicate to your customers.
Good interior design begins with good office furniture. Quality workplace furniture not only makes your employees happier and more productive—it’s also a reflection of the value a business places on their employees. When customers or clients visit your office, you should be telling them that you not only value their business by making them as comfortable as possible, but that you value your workers as well.
How Can I Make My Waiting Room Better?
When it comes to a business’s interior design, it begins and ends with your waiting room. Have you ever been to a doctor’s office with uncomfortable chairs in reception? (GOS is not picking on doctor’s, but don’t they always seem to have the worst chairs?) Not pleasant, right? The last thing any business owner or professional office needs is for their customers to come in for an appointment only to leave with a spinal injury.
Know the 4 “Cs” of waiting room interior design and furnishings: comfort, comfort, comfort, and…comfort. Upgrade your waiting areas with comfy couches, sink-in sofas, and stylish loveseats. Maximize the relaxation you provide customers with a complimentary coffee bar and end tables. And, please, for the love of all that is good, ditch the industrial and fluorescent lighting in your waiting rooms! Stick some nice lamps on those end tables with soft incandescent bulbs. After all, as a business you should want to make your customers come back, right?
Lastly, if you’re offering reading material, it wouldn’t kill you to make sure that your magazines aren’t from 2011.
