Is your company opening a new office or relocating? Before you start searching for upmarket commercial offices, or planning an expensive office refurbishment, it pays to do your research to understand your employees’ needs first. You may be surprised to find that a simpler design approach, and focus on sustainability, is more likely to attract and retain staff.

If you have just started your search, luckily for you offices have become more accessible with the new changes of structure to Use Classes.

What employees want

A recent survey found that a comfortable office and the length of the commute were more important to employees than amazing views or trendy decor.

Over 80% of those surveyed indicated that the following factors were important in their ideal workplace:

– Comfort of work area
– Length of commute to work
– Cleanliness
– Cost of commute to work
– Lighting
– Temperature
– Noise level
– Air quality
– Quality of Wi-Fi technology

Keeping these factors in mind can give you a couple of important benefits:

1. Save money on refurbishment of commercial office

If you’re wanting to attract top employees, then you don’t have to spend a large amount of money on refurbishment to do so. Choosing an commercial office in a good location will always outweigh any fancy design features, or that state-of-the-art coffee maker which employees don’t really care about. This is good news for companies looking for commercial property in areas with high rental ceilings.

2. Create an environmentally friendly work space

Cleanliness, lighting, temperature and air quality are all key factors for an ideal workplace. So it’s a good chance to create an eco friendly office using carbon neutral and renewable materials. The environment is a hot topic and can be used as a selling point to showcase your company’s commitment and responsible attitude to sustainability.

Summary

Office trends are increasingly driven by employees, who are the most expensive and important part of a business. Therefore it’s important that companies understand their employees’ needs when they start searching for commercial offices to lease.

Doing your own survey to discover what’s important to your employees can be a worthwhile exercise. Involving them in the fit-out process, can also lead to better retention rates, especially with millennials who tend to switch jobs more often than other generations.

At the end of the day, if you can provide a clean, well-lit office in a good location, install sustainable heating and cooling, and cut down on travel costs, you’ll be ticking most of the boxes for an ideal workplace.

How to prepare an office for commercial use can be difficult to get your head around. If you’re looking to learn more about this or you require something else, give our expert team a call on 020 8800 4321.

Sign-up to our monthly newsletter to keep up to date with the property market and the latest news.

We respect your email privacy and you can unsubscribe anytime.

What Employees Want in Refurbished Offices in 2020