The perk of being a freelance is you never become bored with your surroundings as you flit about between clients. The most familiar backdrop is the interior of a train carriage as you move about between meetings. I get to see a lot of different offices and work environments and the one thing that often strikes me is how the hell do people manage to work there five days a week?
Some of them are so scummy and worn. The trouble stems from familiarity, when you see the same space every day you don’t see the deterioration as it’s gradual, it’s similar to not knowing how old your wife is looking as you see her every day and it isn’t until your sister pays her yearly visit and points out how tired and old your wife is that you realise she is probably getting a bit grannyfied. It’s the ageing process. It’s completely natural but please be careful not to point it out to her. If you take a look at your office in the same way, you will see it has passed it's sell-by date too. It is also in dire need of a facelift.
The first thing that hits me when I walk into an office is the smell. Coffee is acceptable, curry is not. If you don’t have a separate canteen and allow your staff to eat lunch at their desks, your office will stink. There is no two ways about it. Maybe not so much in the summer when people are snacking on salads but as the winter months move in, the reek of minestrone and daal is thick in the air and it’s not pleasant.
Clutter is another way to make your office unappealing to visitors. If I walk into an office and there are files stacked up in the corner, twisted jumbles of cables, scraps of paper and yesterday’s Metro lying around then I assume you don’t organise your time well. Are you coping with your workload? Overflowing bins and shredders and ripped open reams of paper by the photocopier look bad. If you think you’ll just leave it for the cleaner then you don’t really care about your office, you need to take more pride in your place of work.
If it’s just you and your staff you can generally get away with it but if you have visitors to the office whether they are important clients or freelance staff then you need to tidy up a bit. All those books on the floor speak volumes.
Am I an obsessive compulsive? Not at all, you should see my house but when it comes to work, I always make sure I’m kitted out well to make a good impression. Quality threads, polished shoes, clean fingernails, I’m even careful about what I have for lunch before an afternoon meeting in case it makes my breath smell. If I go to all that effort and then walk into an office that’s like TK Maxx on a Saturday afternoon, my expectations of that company fall. Immediately.
Take a look at this blog with pictures of unique office surroundings of start-up companies. Look at how inspiring they are. Just for the record, I think half of these pictures are lies, they were taken before they were properly moved in to and became working offices, there is not a single trace of activity in some of them and they all look sparkly new but in the other half where the pictures are populated you can see work spaces that would fill a visitor with awe.
It’s the little quirky things that make the difference. Anybody can paint a wall a nice colour or think of funky names for the meeting rooms but the little quiet work areas where you can take you shoes off and lounge in the comfortable surroundings are brilliant, the swings and the telephone boxes are inspired. I bet they get a better success rate in their meetings and an increased creativity from their staff than the cluttered offices with curried air-conditioning.
Granted, most of these offices are bigger companies who have the money to employ interior designers but in my personal experience here in London, it’s actually the smaller companies who make the effort creatively with their spaces, smaller workforces generally imprint their own personalities more effectively. I’ve recently been in a management consultancy where they have trees with fairy lights and a children’s branding company full of beanbags, robots and toys - I didn’t want to leave either meeting. I’ve also recently called in on bigger companies which had sterile workspaces like institutions and going by the staff at a TV production company I frequent, I felt like I was in one. What is it with media luvvies? They’re all barking. I was also recently in a newspaper office and I felt like I was in 1970s Tehran, I was kind of hoping that Ben Affleck would break in and come and rescue me back to normality.
If your visitors feel like they want to leave as soon as possible, it’s obviously not great for your company profile. Take a leaf out of these companies' books, you don’t need a massive budget, just a trip to Ikea and a bit of creativity (and a big cupboard to hide all of your tat in.) It will make all the difference and it's actually a much nicer place for you to visit 5 days a week.
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