How can you create a workspace that enables productivity?
Business owners are often looking for ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of their workforce, but how can you create a workspace which enables this?
Here at Geeks, we’ve recently completed an office fit-out with refreshed furniture and equipment to create an exciting space which will enable our employees to work at their best, and we’re about to move back in!
September also brings a ‘return to work’ feel, with summer almost over and holidays coming to an end. So, we thought we’d share some productivity tips on the return to work.
Quality IT equipment
Monitors
Not only the quality but also the number of monitors can play a part in helping increase productivity. A high quality LCD monitor can reduce eye-strain and improve the user experience, we recommend at a minimum, monitors are at least full HD. The higher the number of pixels a screen can show, the more detailed and high quality the image will be.
The number of monitors can also help productivity due to the additional screen space. We recommend that where possible, users have at least two monitors to work from as employees can then run more than one application at a time without having to change windows, this can simplify a workflow, making it easier to view multiple documents side by side, drag and drop or copy data from one application to the other and swap between applications quickly.
Laptops and desktops
Knowing when to replace laptops and desktops can be difficult, many business owners want to hold on to existing devices for as long as possible which means businesses often wait too long to replace them.
Now more than ever we rely on technology, devices with aging specifications may well be performing poorly when compared to your newer desktops and laptops, and where possible, we would suggest considering a replacement for devices aged 5 years and over as this allows staff to benefit from modern devices which have the latest hardware and software updates as well as performance improvements to handle to the ever-increasing demands of newer applications and workflows.
We recommend that laptops and desktop have at least Windows 10/11 Pro, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, a full HD screen and a new (11th or 12th gen) processor.
Meetings
Productivity can be improved in the way you conduct meetings too. Inefficient meetings which lack agenda and focus can hinder productivity, here’s a couple of ways to overcome this:
Arranging meetings
When arranging a meeting, it’s important to consider what the agenda will be and how long you will need to achieve the meeting goal.
Meetings can inhibit productivity when they lack planning and last longer than necessary. Therefore, to enable meeting productivity, a well-developed meeting agenda should be agreed beforehand. The agenda should be discussed at the beginning of the meeting, so all participants are aware of what is to be achieved.
You should also try to keep meetings as short and concise as possible; you’ll often find that meetings will likely stretch to fill the scheduled time, but this length may not be necessary. To combat this, you can set a time limit for shorter than common meeting lengths, Microsoft have released a feature which means that Outlook can shorten your events to allow you to build in travel or buffer time. You can see how to set this up here.
Hybrid Meetings
The way we work has evolved over the last few years, nowadays many businesses are allowing employees the freedom to split their time between the office and home working. However, this can present a challenge when not all meeting participants are in the same place at the same time.
Creating a meeting space in your office for hybrid meetings can overcome this, there should be a large screen and camera to video call remote workers so that they can join the meeting and be seen and heard clearly by both each other and in-office workers in the meeting room. By using applications such as Microsoft Teams to video call, participants are enabled to view documents and collaboration applications together to work productively no matter their location.
Here at Geeks, we have a state-of-the-art Teams meeting room with Microsoft Teams certified devices controlling the environment. We now have two large TVs in our Teams Room, meaning remote attendees and content can be displayed within the meeting.
If you’re looking to upgrade your office experience, be it a new fleet of laptops and/or desktops, or a new meeting room experience with refreshed cameras, we can help recommend what’s right for you. Get in touch via hello@geeks.co.uk or 0117 325 0370
