These advantages typically include:
- Lower rent and bills
- Easier communication between colleagues
- Less maintenance
Of course, there are also disadvantages, including:
- Limited space for employees
- Less space for equipment/resources
- Less of an impression on clients
These disadvantages can motivate many business owners to move to a larger office, especially when going through growth. However, upsizing your office may not always be necessary.
There are many ways to overcome the pitfalls of minimal space but still take advantage of reduced costs and tightly-knit collaboration. Below are just a few ways we discovered:
Embrace flexible working
Many companies have started to embrace flexible and remote working, allowing employees to choose their hours and work from home.
Allowing flexible working could enable you to hire more employees than your office capacity allows by having employees work from home on certain days and come into the office on other days. You can give employees the choice of when they want to go into the office by using desk booking software. In addition, priorities can be given to those that may need to use the office for meetings or training.
Many employees are likely to appreciate the ability to work flexibly – it can help employees improve their work/life balance. Giving employees the option to work from home has also been shown to reduce sick days and greater productivity. It can also reduce your company’s environmental impact.
Go paperless
Paper filing cabinets, printers, and scanners can take up a lot of space. If you have a tiny office, going paperless could be a way of freeing up the room. It could also save you money.
Running an office without paper is easy nowadays. You can share so much information now via email, instant message, or the cloud without printing it off; signing contracts electronically. You can even use a virtual mailbox, redirecting your physical mail to a remote location, so you can send as a digital copy.
Meet clients out the office
You may feel embarrassed about inviting high-profile clients to your office if it is minimal and cramped – especially if you want to give off the impression of being a large, established company.
A solution to this is to meet clients out of the office. For example, you could meet for lunch in a coffee bar or restaurant. Alternatively, you could outsource meeting space.
Alternatively, you conduct meetings virtually via video call. Neither party has to travel, saving costs and preventing clients from having to visit your office.
You can also conduct meetings out of the office or use video calling when conducting large staff meetings.
