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Finding the Middle Ground; How to Foster Productivity, Collaboration, and Innovation in the Workplace

Finding the middle ground within the workplace has never been an easy undertaking. From startup to Fortune 500, and everything in between, finding this sweet spot is no cakewalk. Ensuring that your team of hardworking employees comes into an office setting each day that allows for creativity, idea exploration, collaboration, and of course, productivity can be an understandably difficult medium to reach.

Now more than ever, we must take all of these factors into account when designing the layout and relative environment of our working spaces. New considerations are beginning to emerge out of this pandemic, such as extra spatial separation, clean fresh air, the ability to work in solitude, and more. So, what are some of the most important interior design elements to tackle in the workplace and how can you provide the ideal environment for your workforce? Below we have all the necessary ingredients to inspire your office improvement plan.

Allow for Space

Creating more physical space in a typically cramped office environment can be challenge. However, with the dangers of the Coronavirus still very serious, it will be necessary in the coming weeks and months to reconsider your office interiors. Not only will interior improvements help keep your employees safe and their minds that ease, but it could also allow for a more comfortable, breathable working environment for your workforce to enjoy in the long term. By installing spatial dividers that allow for visibility and natural light to pass through, you can successfully integrate separation but maintain a feeling of togetherness that your workers will greatly benefit from. The use of glass wall partitions, sliding dividers, and floor-to-ceiling room dividers offer the following:

  • Enhanced safety
  • Curtail Unwanted Foot Traffic
  • Allows for heightened productivity and focus
  • Increases employee concentration

Open Air Environment

The transition away from dark, dim, cubicle-lined offices and into bright, light, fresh, open-air collaborative workspaces have been extremely well received in the work world. Open-air environments offer a sense of ease, comfort, and increased mental capability for anyone working indoors throughout the day. After all, we all need plenty of natural light, visibility, and the feeling of existing harmoniously together with our workmates. Offering a modern glass solution to the obstructing cubicles and walls of the past will foster a much more pleasant, workable office space for everyone. Easy to install modern folding glass doors, and interior sliding doors achieve this medium flawlessly.

  • Allow for enhanced visibility
  • Increase natural light
  • Bring the outside in
  • Breeds feelings of comfort and home

dentist office with office dividers

Create Community

Lean into community within the workplace. Encouraging your employees to talk, collaborate, pass ideas around, and generate an exciting think-tank environment will help to increase group morale, as well as bridge the gap between ideas still in the incubation phase. Most startups and tech companies utilize this structure because they see how beneficial it can lend themselves to the creative process. Here are some of the ways you can integrate community throughout the office:

  • Provide shared desks and large, team-sized tables that encourage discussion
  • Offer communal spaces throughout the office such as comfortable lounges, a communal kitchen, a few conference rooms of varying sizes
  • encourage friendship and collaboration by providing group games, group lunches, and comfortable break room seating that makes employees feel at home

Transition your workplace into a flexible, communal, productivity powerhouse by integrating more community-oriented spaces, sliding glass walls, office wall partitions, and stacking sliding doors to allow for needed separation while still maintaining a community feel. A “separate but together” floorplan will become a crucial element throughout this reintegration process to safeguard everyone in the office from the current pandemic. Visit Space Plus, A Division of the Sliding Door Company online to view our online catalog, and Get a quote from one of our professionals today.

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