How to Bring your Office into the 21st Century

Given the rapid pace of technological advancement and the impact that this has had on the workplace, you could forgive some offices for having lost touch. This lack of awareness can be counter-productive, however, as according to Office Principles a well-designed and updated workspace can actively increase employee productivity by 25%. This is a significant rise, and one that underlines the importance of bringing your workplace into the 21st century.

Bringing your Workplace into the 21st Century in three simple Steps

While there are many legislative changes that you can make surrounding flexible working directives and dress-codes, it is the integration of technology that will truly help your business. With this in mind, here are three simple modifications that can drag your office into the 21st century: –

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1. Introduce Hot-desks

As the freelance community has grown, many brands have reduced their number of permanent staff and invested more in temporary (but specialist labour). This has altered the layout of offices around the world, with flexible hot-desks now preferred over permanent fixtures with plugged in desktops.

Regardless of the nature of your workforce, hot-desks enable you to create an open working environment where employees can quickly establish a temporary workspace with their laptop and smartphone. In line with flexible working directives, this makes it far easier for employees to split their time between their home and office for an improved work-life balance.

It also creates a more connected and fluid space where productivity can be optimised on a daily basis!

2. Leverage Technology to create meetings on the go

The new century has seen the marginalisation of traditional meeting formats, where attendees would gather in a single space often to the detriment of their productivity. Instead, modern meetings are often conducted on the move, as technology enables participants to connect virtually through a range of devices.

There are several ways that you can create virtual meetings, from the release of interactive podcasts to simpler techniques such as connected attendees through Skype and similar video-communication technology. By enabling mobile staff to log or dial-in to a central location, you can strike the ideal balance between informing employees and driving productivity.

3. Immerse yourself in the Cloud

For years, businesses have been dealing with paper documents or sharing Word and Excel docs through email. Despite the relatively cumbersome nature of these tasks, many companies remain loath to abandon them in favour of contemporary alternatives such as the Cloud.

Make no mistake; however, embracing the Cloud can save your business money in licensing while also creating a fluid and instantly accessible document sharing format. Tools such as Google Drive enable documents to be saved and shared publicly in an instant, for example, while those with permission can make the necessary edits and immediately post these for feedback.

Not only does this negate the constant exchange of emails, but it also means that you no longer have to invest in costly licenses for Microsoft packages and applications.