Company culture is the backbone of any successful organisation. From driving employee engagement to retention, even overall business success, it offers many benefits as well as defining your company and all that you stand for.
What most entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs often overlook, however, is the role of the office in shaping this. Ensuring you create an innovative space that inspires and motivates your team (for all the right reasons) is a secret weapon to creating a successful company culture.
Defining Your Company Culture
Your company culture encompasses a variety of things; your values, beliefs, behaviours and traditions to name a few. It sets the tone for how your employees interact, collaborate and innovate. For example, you might place a huge emphasis on sustainability, or maybe you’re a family-run business (just like us!) that values a close-knit team.
A strong company culture will also foster a sense of belonging and purpose that is key to driving employee engagement and loyalty, all while attracting top talent.
“But how do I create an awesome company culture?”, we hear you ask. Well, your office environment might help.
The Role of Office Design in Company Culture
Your office design influences many aspects of your company that you may not even realise. A big one is employee experience and whether this is a positive or negative engagement. For customers, it can also shape their perceptions of your brand.
The layout, furniture, colours and amenities of your space will impact various characteristics, from productivity to ease of collaboration. Updating your office design to align with your company values and goals, therefore, will influence the employee experience and perception of company culture.
The Proof is in the Pudding: Our Case Studies
We’ve helped numerous clients transform their offices to reflect and enhance their company’s culture. From start ups to established firms, here are some proven examples of the impact of interior design on your company’s values.
Embracing a Sweet Culture with OV Group
For this project, we designed and built a workspace that embodied OV Group’s sweet company culture. This meant incorporating their fun and vibrant brand colours throughout the furniture and fabrics, as well as planning an agile space to shift their culture towards collaboration and innovation.
Connection, Communication and Collaboration with Workplace Interiors Co
Although a close-knit team, our parent group, Workplace Interiors Co, felt a slight disconnect between brands. Whilst this was largely due to separate office buildings, we created a more collaborative office environment with their latest refit. It’s important that this comes naturally to our team members in order to share resources and optimise innovation. We created these relaxed, breakout spaces for informal meetings, one-to-ones or just a break. No booking is necessary, and we’ve found our company culture is much more cohesive thanks to it.
Welcoming a Hybrid Work Model with Signal
After the pandemic, Signal was looking to relocate into a workspace with a fresh design. Taking this as a new opportunity, they wanted their space to be designed to support a hybrid work model. This means they wanted it to be as seamless as possible for remote and in-office employees to connect. This impacted their overall office design, with multi-purpose spaces, bookable meeting rooms, informal breakout spaces and desks for diverse types of work, as and when it was needed.
The Next Steps
Convinced? Good. If you’re ready to support your company’s culture through office design, here are some actionable tips to get you started:
- Company Assessments – One of the best ways to understand your company’s strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement is through a company-wide assessment. Send out a survey to your employees and ask for their feedback as this will help you to decide what’s needed to create the company culture you’ve dreamed about.
- Consider Branding – Ensure that you have consistent and strong company branding. This will avoid confusion and reinforce your values. It can also be fed throughout your office design to subtly reinforce this to your team.
- Foster Collaboration – Company culture starts and ends with your people. With any office, we often recommend collaboration areas that teams naturally gravitate towards in order to create cohesion between employees and set the foundation for your company’s success.
- Prioritise Wellbeing – If your employees aren’t supported whilst at work, they won’t be happy. And this will impact your company culture (not to mention your retention rate). Something as simple as ergonomic furniture, natural light or incorporating biophilia will help them feel happier and more relaxed, associating a positive experience with your company.
- Consult Professionals – Our team take on a collaborative approach with all our clients. This ensures we deliver a bespoke package that’s tailored to the patterns and preferences of your staff members. For the best advice on how your office can cultivate the ultimate company culture, be sure to reach out to our team.
Office Design and Fit Out in Gloucestershire
Your office is more than just a physical location. It’s a reflection of your company’s culture and values. Let us help you create that business you’ve always dreamed about. To discuss your office design and fit out, get in touch today.
