An office redesign is an exciting opportunity to improve how your workplace supports your employees day to day. It allows you to evaluate your current layout, furnishings, and overall environment, and make changes that better align with how your team works.
Before making decisions about layout, workstation types, or furniture, it’s important to gather input from the people who use the space most. Your employees can provide valuable insight into what is working well and what could be improved.
Asking the right questions helps you make informed decisions and ensures your office supports productivity, comfort, and collaboration. It also helps you prioritize improvements that will have the greatest impact on your team.
WHY EMPLOYEE INPUT MATTERS BEFORE AN OFFICE REDESIGN
Your office environment directly affects how employees focus, collaborate, and perform their work. According to one often-cited statistic, employees spend up to 90,000 hours in the office over the course of their careers. Even small changes to layout or furniture can improve comfort, efficiency, and the overall workplace experience.
Gathering employee feedback helps you:
- Identify challenges within your current workspace
- Understand how employees use the office
- Prioritize improvements that will have the greatest impact
- Make better decisions about layout and furnishings
This information creates a strong foundation for effective space planning and design. It also helps you better understand how workplace design can support your team’s productivity.
What Do Your Employees Need Most From Their Space?
Office layout, furnishings, and amenities influence the way employees feel about being at work and, consequently, how much work they get done. Even small details like a lack of privacy, cluttered storage, or an unpleasant break room add up to an unpleasant experience or distraction from work.
Asking employees for input before a redesign shows that you value their experience just as much as you value the overall look and image of your office.
5 Questions to Ask Employees Before Redesigning Your Office Space
These questions will help you get to the core needs and challenges of the current layout, design, and atmosphere in your office.
1. What is one thing you would change about your current workspace?
Be prepared for broad and specific answers. For example, some of your employees may want more comfortable furniture in the company break room, so they can relax when they step away from their work. Others may ask for specific ergonomic features at their workstations or a certain type of standing desk option. Depending on the current office layout, others may want private areas where they can concentrate and have some quiet time.
Understanding these responses helps you identify patterns and prioritize improvements that will benefit your team.
2. Do you spend more time working independently or collaborating with others?
Even if you have a sense of how they will respond, ask employees if their work style is more collaborative or if they tend to work independently. Between personal preferences and the nature of their work, this question will help you decide on the design and layout of your office and ways to accommodate different work styles.
If most employees work in teams, consider an open office plan with tables and meeting spaces. If the majority of employees work alone, consider offering more private areas. Either way, it’s always a good idea to have at least some space available for both working styles.
3. What type of work environment helps you be most productive?
This question helps you visualize the new space as a whole. This may include colors and furniture styles (i.e., cubicles, movable walls, closed offices), themes (i.e., modern, nature-inspired, industrial, formal, casual, artsy), and the image your business wants to project to employees, clients, and visitors.
Creating a cohesive environment helps to set a consistent and predictable tone. This can be especially important in fast-paced or client-facing work settings.
4. How helpful is your current workspace location in supporting your daily work?
Some employees may like to work close to their coworkers for ease of communication instead of taking the time to walk over several aisles. Other workers might prefer being farther away from the rest of the group for better concentration and to avoid distractions.
This question will help you gain a better understanding of how your employees work together and how you should organize desks and workstations. Even if employees prefer to have some distance between their workstations, it's still important to create clear paths for efficient movement and flow throughout major areas of the office.
5. Where do you spend most of your time when working in the office?
Depending on their role and tasks, each employee probably has one or more go-to areas in the office where they work most efficiently. If most employees work in different areas throughout the office, assigned desks may not be the most effective solution. In this case, prioritize group work areas with larger tables, chairs, and power outlet access.
In contrast, some of your employees work best when they have an assigned desk of their own where they can store personal items and concentrate. Ask your employees where they are most productive and use that feedback to guide decisions about layout and furnishings.
See how our space planning and design services can help.
Using Employee Feedback to Guide Your Office Redesign
Once you’ve gathered employee input, you can begin evaluating your current office and identifying opportunities for improvement.
Many organizations discover that adjustments such as reconfiguring layouts, improving workstation comfort, or introducing more flexible workspace options can significantly improve productivity and the employee experience.
Here are some tips for making sure your pre-design questions glean helpful information about what your employees actually need and want:
- Don’t make assumptions about groups or types of jobs. What they need might change depending on the type of job and responsibilities they have.
- Listen to every answer. You never know where an idea might lead.
- Ask open-ended questions. These uncover more detail than yes-or-no questions and, more importantly, reveal the reasons behind the answers.
- Ask follow-up questions. Prepare some clarifying questions to check your understanding of their answers, but don’t lead the conversation.
Watch our Space Planning Video to see how thoughtful design decisions come together.
Partner with Space Planning and Design Experts You Can Trust
Asking for employee input before an office redesign shows that you value their contributions and appreciate them as people, not just as workers.
The knowledge you gather also allows you to make data-driven decisions, and might even provide new perspectives you hadn’t considered. And while it’s not possible to implement every idea, you will be able to see trends and set priorities more easily.
What if this exercise raises even more questions? That’s when partnering with an expert like Office Basics can help. With years of experience working with clients across corporate, healthcare, education, and other industries, we can help you assess your current space, identify opportunities for improvement, and develop a workplace that supports your team and your goals.
Office Basics is your one-stop partner for support with planning and design services, furnishings, supplies, branded apparel and printing, breakroom solutions, and procurement. Contact us to learn more or to schedule your free consultation today!
