Open office layout ideas have been popular for quite some time in modern office interior design. Office space planning and designs have undergone rapid changes in the recent past. The traditional office setup is no more preferred by many companies. Businesses love open office layout ideas more than cubicles or fixed office setups. All employers who spring up to the contemporary ideas of open office layouts expect tangible results from the real estate investments and commercial interior design. They share some common objectives, which includes;

• Easily attract new talent to their company
• Recruitment becomes an easier task
• Enhanced productivity in the work place
• Promotes innovation

Open office layout ideas increase density even in the expensive markets, which lowers the cost of real estates.

Budding recruits and existing employees have differing opinions about the open office layout ideas.

The young generation of current millennials prefer the open office plans. For instance, they are quite comfortable to work in any coffee house. Some employees however, have different perceptions towards an open office layout plan like the lack of privacy.

We have collected a seven step process as a guide. It helps you manage the office plan changes successfully.

Learn about the office space layout ideas planning requirement

Whether you plan for setting up a new office or decide to renovate the existing the layout, note down the three reasons to validate your decision in commercial interior design.

At times, the best office interior designers in Mumbai, can find solid reasons to renovate your office plan layouts. It can be due to an acquisition, merger, and lease, relocation of your company or a necessity for consolidating space with existing departments.

Some of the reasons may not be straightforward; whatever you should spend quite some time to analyze all facts during the beginning of the process. It helps you understand the process, convey your ideas and plans, and challenge each of your ideas in office interior design.

For instance, if you do not have sufficient space, you can simply redesign to increase the density of your office. It costs low than moving to a new place. Just in case, if you are not satisfied with the existing layout of the office, is renovation the right solution?

Second, as stated earlier, identify three objectives that you think about setting up modern office designs.
Some of the likely reasons may include the following:

Prepare your office for growth

Enhance productivity and increase efficiency

With modern office design concepts, you can project a contemporary brand to all audiences.

Setup a sense of pride

An easy way to attract younger talents

Next, you should do some investigation. Take time and assess your competitors in the relevant industry. You can learn a few best practices from the contemporaries who innovate regularly. For instance, a software company office layout differs a lot of from a real estate office. Similarly, a legal firm’s office won’t be the same as the bank’s office layout. Make youself informed about the trend and the basic requirements. Make visits to the reputed offices pertaining to your industry. Or, just use the social media platforms, like YouTube, and Glassdoor to know more about the current open office layout ideas and trends. Create a ‘mood board’. Don’t panic. This is not a fancy term. It is just a simple way to accumulate your thoughts and ideas in a single place. Write and pin-up all the ideas, concepts, and suggestions you collected. Definitely, the mood board will help you when you plan your space and design it.

Based on your top three goals, you should consider the functions of all departments. If you wish to increase the density of the office space and reduce the cost, think how it may affect each department.

If you wish to promote innovation in your workspace, breakdown silos, etc think about combining the departments that might work together.

Sometimes, you may want to involve the employees to work together as a team. It might require more space to conduct meetings.

To end with, look for the practical needs of your office. You should have more room for expansion, provide sufficient space for technology like computers, networking, etc allocate space for departmental storage. If you opt for the open office layout ideas, you should consider the safe storage of the files to ensure the confidentiality.

Also Read: Breakout Areas In Modern Office Interior Design Increase Productivity

Choose the right open office layout design to build your brand

How do you wish to project your company to the world? Your brand, products or services, etc influence the office layout plan. On the other hand, you may choose to renovate to boost the internal culture. Here are some suggestions from the best office interior designers in Mumbai.

It is common that people change their opinions quickly. So, visitors show both positive and negative impression in a few seconds. Creation of a strong visual image is essential to make your brand impressive. It supports your objective and helps brand promotion.

Next, who visits your office? Is your office, ‘back-office’ that has no visitors or head-quarters that receives a lot of visitors, recruits, press, bankers, members, investors, etc.?

Your office visual design makes a strong impact both on your employees and the visitors. It can be the biggest inspiration for your employees. It helps affirmation of your company objectives.

Some of the modern office design concepts make yourself familiarize with the trending industrial designs. These designs employ an urban and contemporary loft. It emphasizes realism through the raw materials.

Another modern office design concept involves incorporation of the comfiest home designs. For instance, it includes comfortable home furniture like sofa, typical residential features etc. This concept gives the feel like being at home.
The biggest invention in the office space layout planning is you can easily manage the change in the modular furniture.
You can do it quickly, in a few seconds. You can destruct it quickly; it looks contemporary, meets the purpose. Above these, whenever you want to change your interior, renovate the office space, you can easily change it. Re-assemble it any time as you desire and create new designs with no hassles.

Besides, if you wish for leasing your office, negotiation becomes easier. Whether your office furniture is leased or purchased, you can disassemble and assemble without any damages. It saves your cost, your investment and also helps you get credits on LEED sustainability.

Encourage collaboration of the employees

Many employers consider improvement in productivity, performance, and efficiency of the employees while designing a new layout for the office. So, the list includes encouragement of collaboration among the employees.

High on the list of goals for many employers contemplate a new office layout is improving productivity by encouraging collaboration between workers. It also offers a great benefit. You can get the most desirable office design when done in the right way.

Many types of research and studies state ideal designs/distance for collaboration.

A research done by Cornerstone OnDemand states that the perfect zone for collaboration is a maximum of 25 feet radius. It results with a 13 % gain in overall productivity of the employees. When high quality employees are seated closer to high volume contributors, it enhances the effectiveness by 17 %. The high volume contributors provided a high quality of work naturally, and vice versa. However, there is a possible downside. There is a need for effective management of distracting and disturbing behavior, which is termed ‘toxic behavior’ of the employees. We also created a few guidelines for the managers to deal with the employee issues related to behavioral issues.

The one major drawback of the open office layout ideas is noise! Distraction due to noise is a major concern that you should address when you plan for the office layout. Just in case if you construct a new building to setup your office,  you are fortunate enough to explore many ways to isolate the noise and create a pleasant ambiance.

Noise issue and the distraction have different perception in a different generation of employees. They also react in a different way. However, it certainly affects the privacy.

While the employees of the millennium love to embrace a musical ambiance, it may discourage the older employees. There are many options to explore different ways to reduce the noise in your existing office. You can create noise-free ambiance and employees do not experience any difficulty in doing the tasks.

Modern office design concepts are not just the only area where you can think about the collaboration of the employees. Open office layout ideas give you multiple opportunities to setup space for quick meetings, lunch, cafeteria, exchange ideas through chit chat, etc. Just make sure you allocate sufficient room for casual meetings with a comfy seating arrangement.

Never overlook the benefit of collaboration. It provides a positive work atmosphere. Also, do not forget including a spacious conference room.  Include the provisions for different means of official communication to make the conference more professional.

Give priority to design the workspace, productive for employees

The phase of designing the office layout plans is the best time to create a productive, safe, and healthy workplace for your employees. Many times, chances are there that may lead to accidents like trips, falls, and slips. Create non-slippery pathways, secure the way to steps with solid hand holds. If there is a requirement of heavy lifting objects in your office, you can either design it with mechanized lifts or use custom furniture. It helps to prevent injuries.
Liberty Mutual states that the top reason for injury in the workplace is due to overexertion, which is caused by lifting, pulling, carrying, or holding. Provide comfortable seating arrangements both in terms of size and proportions. Ensure to arrange for ergonomic desks. Besides, remember, all employees have the need to move frequently. Sitting at the desk for hours leads to several health consequences. You can include creating pathways in your open office layout ideas.

And, you can save a lot by using the energy saving lights. Harness the power of green technology as a part of your modern office design concepts. It makes the workplace pleasant. It also saves you a considerable amount both in investment and minimizes the cost of energy.  You also gain a social responsibility by using green lights to improve environmental sustainability. Reputed designers and architects use biophilic design which is comfortable for the employees.

A few special considerations for small offices when you create an open office layout plan

Layouts for small offices may appear a difficult task.

First, you won’t be able to provide a dedicated space for the cafeteria. You can have the flexible, customizable, and easy-fit watchwords for the small office layout plan.

You can include a compact kitchen mess. By adding some doors, you can transform it into rooms for a meeting. Besides, you can design custom mobile desks as rolling workspaces during the forenoon. And the same can be aligned as a conference table or co-joined workspace in the afternoon.

Be wary about your budget: Use your calculator too

If you look for open office layout ideas, calculate the floor space you need.

This is the core of the planning your work layouts. It involves counting on the number of employees, private cabins, conference rooms, utility rooms, storage rooms, kitchens, etc.  You can get the instant estimate based on the space requirement using the free office space calculator online.

Some of the inspirational examples of open office layout ideas

Aeria Games

Based on Berlin, this is a Gaming company, features spacious and bright open office space for the main workplace. They didn’t use prefabricated desks. Rather, they choose to fill the workplace with custom tables. The layout has room for conference spaces in case of necessity.

Hudson Rouge

Hudson Rouge is a luxury brand advertising company. It has open space office layout and harnesses brightness to enhance the brand.

The main work place of this company is designed as an open plan studio. It facilitates both official and casual meeting, as well other collaboration areas. The highlight of the design – Light. The open studio features the unobstructed views to all directions except east. It allows maximum penetration of daylight. The entire office as well the rooms are transparent. They used frameless glass fronts to facilities clear vision on the entire office. The unique combination of the open office layout ideas creates solid vision and sense of ideation, which boosts the brand’s creativity.

Kixeye

This is a gaming company, based at San Francisco. It is a small office with brilliant open space office plan. The company used echo-reducing panels on their ceiling to reduce the noise disturbance. Besides, the company also offered headphones for the employees.

Economia

It is a Newspaper and Magazine publishing company in Czech. Brilliant use of fun elements cleverly adds compelling vision. The design features huge letters, which effortlessly breaks up the office space as well as appears whimsy.

Economia has a massive open office space layout, spans more than 2 lakhs square feet. You can easily fit many JP office workstations in this spacious open office space.

One Workplace

A furniture company, rather a deal harnessed their office serving as a showroom and a work space. The company span across 25,000 square feet, inclusive of warehouse. Warehouse depicts the latest designs and products in style, which also blends with the workspace. It helps enhancing the services to the customers