Office Refurbishment - Millennium Storage and Interiors Blog | Millennium Storage and Interiors

Tag: Office Refurbishment (page 6 of 10)

3 Important Boardroom Design Considerations

The boardroom is the hub of your organisation where all the big decisions and deals are often made so it is important to make it a space fit for these purposes. With this in mind, here are our three most important boardroom design considerations.

Furniture
A tired old boardroom is likely to induce that same feeling of lethargy in meetings and conference calls. Investing in some new boardroom furniture including comfortable chairs and the right bright colours will liven up meetings and may even inspire more creativity.

Acoustics
The inside of your boardroom should at the very least be well insulated from outside noise from phones ringing and general chatter from staff outside. It should also have good acoustics on the inside so that everyone can be heard no matter where they happen to be seated.

IT Infrastructure
There is nothing worse than spending valuable time in the boardroom fiddling with monitors and fumbling around trying to get equipment connected. If you have potential clients sitting in your boardroom witnessing this, it will do little to inspire confidence in your business. A boardroom should be the flagship part of your office space and that should include seamless technology.

How To Break Down Office Barriers

February 10, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments

Nowadays retaining good staff is hard when there is so much visible competition and it’s so easy to find and apply for a new job often at the click of a button on a website. So it’s even more important to ensure that good staff aren’t lost just because of a poor working environment and lack of communication.

In many offices, the truth is there remains visible barriers to communication between staff, employers and management. These divides often make for disjointed teams rather than the more collaborative workspaces we find in contemporary offices.

So what are the ways to bring down barriers in your office plans and layouts?

The most obvious fix is to get rid of those private inaccessible rooms that literally put walls between management and staff. If everyone sits together, then collaboration will come more naturally and improve productivity.

Where there are rooms, there should be glass panels so that everyone can see what’s going on and there is a greater feeling of transparency. Meeting spaces where regular catch ups can be had between everyone in the company and they don’t always have to be formal affairs. Staff like to be treated like human beings who matter to a business.

Outside of work, regular social events are equally important as is the involvement of senior staff and bosses.

When To Use Cantilever Racking

January 20, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments

Cantilever racking is a type of storage system which is used for all sorts of purposes and typically appears in builder’s merchant yards and factories. Like any racking system, cantilever racking is very versatile as well as being strong.

Cantilever racking is at its most useful when used to store longer lengths of materials and items, which typically consist of sheets of wood, steel, tubes, pipes and so on. A cantilever system can also be used to effectively store odd shaped items which might otherwise take up a lot of space in a warehouse or other storage facility.

The typical cantilever systems we see in use today are used to store items that can be up to 10 metres long and up to a 30,000kg in weight. The arms used are usually around 2 ½ metres with adjustment possible depending on the size of materials stored.

The other great thing about using cantilever lever racking is the ability to add to it over time as storage requirements increase. You can simple add to the bays as time goes on to massively increase your storage capacity.

Cantilever racking can be used indoors and outdoors (as long as it is galvanised). Please get in touch if you would like to know about the racking systems we have available.

How Office Partitioning Can Improve Office Productivity?

December 18, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Most modern offices now adopt flexible working patterns which allow staff to better manage work life balance but there are still many offices that don’t keep staff happy and productive whilst they are in work.

The root cause of low productivity and staff unhappiness may not be the work itself but more to do with the environment they find themselves working in. Many people will quite enjoy the work they do but there may be things in their work environment that irritate them such as noise or a lack of quiet space to simply get on with work.

A simple change to this office environment may be all that’s needed to have boost productivity and the general mood in workplace.

Installing partitioning can create those quiet spaces some employees and bosses need, while glass partitioning can brighten up previously dark office spaces with natural light. Natural light also contributes to better health and studies have shown that it can also increase energy, all of which will contribute to less time off and better productivity levels.

Whether you own a small business looking for an office conversion or a complete change of your office design we can help you plan your partitioning and office layouts to create a better environment for you and your staff.

3 Good Reasons To Choose Glazed Office Partitions

December 10, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Glass partitions in offices are nothing new and the reason they have been used in offices for a long time are down to the obvious benefits they have over other types of partitioning. So if you have a large office space office that doesn’t have glass partitioning, let’s look at some of best reasons to opt for it over other alternatives.

Heightened privacy yet open
The modern office has collaboration at its heart. People like to feel that they are not isolated or segregated away from their co-workers and even bosses. Bosses meanwhile will still value the soundproofing glass partitioning can provide while at the same time letting their staff know that they are approachable and open to communication which is important for staff employer relations.

Letting in natural light
Another benefit of glass partitioning is that natural light can pass through brightening up a previously dark office space. There is nothing more off-putting for staff and clients than spending time in what look like a dark dingy office.

Savings on lighting bills
Dark offices mean high electricity bills if the lights need to be kept on all year round. Glass partitioning can help reduce those bills by making the best use of natural light.

Guide to Office And Warehouse Partitioning

September 19, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Making sure your offices reflect the ethos of your business can be a difficult task in some building but if you have enough space to play with, partitioning could be the answer.

Before considering which partitioning is right for your workplace, some important questions will need to be answered first such as will it reduce noise levels? Should you go for glazed or simple stud partitioning? What colours should it be? Should these colours be the same as your branding? This process will be made easier by consulting a specialist company to help sort out your partitioning requirements.

In terms of choice, the 2 most common types of partitioning you will come across are:

Stud partitioning
This is an incredibly versatile type of partitioning which is as useful for warehouses as it is for offices. It is a great choice for those workplaces that need to reduce noise levels. IT can then be decorated using your own choice of colours and finish.

Glass partitioning
Glass is ideal if you want to let in plenty of light and gain the benefits of partitioning. It is also very flexible when used in offices. If you do require privacy, then you can also add blinds but glass is less effective at reducing sound levels.

How Furniture Can Solve Staff Productivity and Wellness Issues

July 20, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Furniture may be taken for granted in many offices but there is a quiet revolution going on in furniture design that aims to improve staff productivity and their sense of wellbeing.

At first glance, you might wonder how office furniture can have such an profound influence on office environments. Ignoring the importance of good furniture however can create the kind of environment that breeds hostility and discontentment.

Business owners can avoid this by investing in the latest innovations in office furniture that not only facilitate interaction amongst workers but also improve health and productivity. ‘Healthy furniture’ such as treadmill and sit stand desks could well become commonplace in the offices of the future.

Charging stations are also likely to become an important part of the contemporary office as more people work on portable IT equipment and need the freedom to move around different areas of offices to aid collaboration.

There are also signs that the traditional open plan office layout of recent decades is likely to be replaced by more separation. Rather than a return to compartmentalised offices, however, the emphasis is likely to be on separation within open spaces and good acoustics.

Important Things To Consider In A Modern Office Design

July 10, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

So you want to plan an office layout that will keep all your staff happy and productive? This might sound like a straightforward task but getting it right means balancing out a variety of factors including the following…

The size of your space
The size of your office will have the biggest impact on your decisions. If you have a large office space, then the challenge is whether to create a light open plan or build in cubicles. Most contemporary offices adopt the former approach creating collaborative spaces for staff, however open plan spaces can prove to be distracting. Smaller spaces meanwhile can be challenging and staff can become demotivated and unhappy if they feel closed off.

Exposed Offices
If you have an office that is visible to members of the public, clients and guests, then it is important to maintain a professional appearance. Perhaps the more playful office designs adopted by trendy business are not best suited to exposed glass fronted offices if it appears staff are busy playing table tennis rather than working.

Acoustics
Spaces large and small can benefit from careful consideration of acoustics. Excessive noise can be stressful for staff and reduce productivity. A few simple measures to dampen noise levels can work wonders.

Time and Space
How long are people going to linger in different areas of your office. Will you provide hot desks for staff who regularly work from home? In these cases space can be saved and equipment can be kept to a minimum freeing up space for other purposes in smaller offices

Should You Go Google With Your Office Design

June 20, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Google’s influence on our lives cannot be understated and its office layouts have become an inspiration for many companies hoping to copy its office design styles. But is a Google style office right for your business?

When people were first introduced to the inside of a group of offices known as the Googleplex they were puzzled by the all the toys it contained. At first people viewed the whole thing as a gimmick and many will have laughed at staff working near sand volleyball courts or taking time out on adventure playgrounds.

It wasn’t long before people stopped laughing and started to imitate what they saw until Google style offices with dedicated leisure and play areas for staff became almost commonplace particularly among tech companies keen to attract staff to their playful work environments.

Like all fashions, however, there are signs that the playful office design layout might be coming to an end or at least it will be toned down. Design magazines are already suggesting that staff are fed up with the noise of co-workers having fun which could be detrimental to business.

While Google has no plans to ditch its playful office spaces, the many smaller businesses around the world adopting their approach might well be considering a change of direction to something that appeals to all staff rather than just the few who like to play while at work.

3 Ways To Impress Millennials With Your Office Design

June 10, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

As time moves on so does the age of your employees and most office chairs will now be filled by a generation of people collectively known as millennials or those born between the early 1980s and just after the year 2000. As millennials are now so essential to businesses, how do you go about attracting them and keeping them in your office rather than those of the competition?

Most millennials don’t like conventional offices
If you want to retain your younger staff members it’s time to ditch the traditional office layout and go for something less conventional. Millennials despite their reputation are hard working on the whole as well as being career focused. They can be trusted to work in collaborative spaces with flexible furniture.

Millennials Want To See Up-To-Date Technology
Some business owners are hopelessly out of touch with technology and these are the ones that tend to have a high staff turnover. No self-respecting millennial is going to want to work in an office and make do with poor outdated equipment when they have superior technology at home.

Flexibility
The days of travelling to work every day and going through the motions from 9 am until 5pm are coming to an end for many private firms. Flexible working is now demanded by many people as is a flexible approach working remotely. IT infrastructure should be set up to allow this and enable millennials to enjoy a better work life balance.