Designing and Setting up Your Serviced Office Space: Tips and Best Practices

When it comes to setting up your serviced office space, you might find that the default setup doesn’t best suit your needs. Whilst many serviced offices will come with furniture and equipment in place, others will be more of a blank canvas with room for you to add your personal touch. From choosing the right furniture to selecting the best lighting and technology, there’s a lot to consider. In this blog post, we’ll provide tips and best practices for designing and setting up your serviced office space.

Choose Comfortable and Ergonomic Furniture

The right furniture is essential for a productive and healthy workspace. When selecting furniture for your serviced office space, look for chairs that provide good back support and are adjustable to suit different users, then make sure the desks fit well with your chosen seating. Remember there’s no industry standard for chair and desk height so sometimes the two won’t fit together (armrests not fitting under a desk for example) meaning it pays to test things before move-in day. It’s also always wise to choose furniture that is durable and easy to clean. Antique pine might look lovely but from a practical perspective it’s a poor choice.

A study by the British Chiropractic Association found that 45% of office workers had experienced back pain from working at a desk all day, and 33% said they had taken time off work as a result. Investing in the right furniture can help prevent back pain and improve productivity, minimising days lost to ill health.

Of course if your serviced office comes with desks and chairs already it’s worth checking before you commit to that space that the furniture is the good stuff! All office suites at JetSpace are unfurnished so you can bring any existing furniture you might have or start shopping for whatever you’re after. With so many businesses downsizing from bigger offices at the moment it’s a great time to seek out second hand office furniture for some bargains.

Use Natural Light Where Possible

It might sound obvious but natural light has been shown to have many benefits for health and wellbeing, including improving mood, increasing productivity and reducing eye strain. When designing your serviced office space, try to maximise natural light by positioning desks and workstations near windows.

If natural light is not available, use a combination of overhead and task lighting to provide adequate illumination to all areas where people will be working. Choose energy-efficient bulbs that mimic natural light and avoid harsh or flickering lighting that can cause headaches and eye strain.

In JetSpace’s office buildings all suites benefit from plenty of natural light, with large bay windows front and back in our Brighton Grand Parade office. What’s more we’ve invested in high quality energy-efficient lighting across all offices and communal spaces, reducing our overall carbon footprint whilst providing comfortable lighting levels for all.

Create a Quiet and Calm Environment

Noise and distractions can be major sources of stress and will often negatively impact productivity. To create a calm and quiet environment, consider using acoustic panels or screens to reduce noise levels where necessary. Additionally, you could even provide noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs for employees who need to focus on complex tasks.

Research has shown that workplace noise can lead to stress, reduced productivity, and even health problems like high blood pressure and heart disease. By creating a quiet and calm environment, you can help reduce stress levels and improve productivity.

Of course you won’t always have direct control over the levels of noise in your serviced office space but at JetSpace we’ve done all we can to make sure every suite is a calm, noise free environment. The advantages of our Brighton office being in a wonderfully restored period property is that the walls are lovely and thick, keeping sound bleed between rooms to a minimum. Our Shoreham Airport facility is situated at the end of a working airfield so affords stunning views of light aircraft landing and taking off but obviously does come with a little noise as a result. This is really only occasional however and you’re certainly not going to find any noisy jet airliners causing a racket.

Invest in High-Speed Internet and Capable Technology

Fast and reliable internet is obviously essential for any modern office. When setting up your serviced office space, superfast broadband should be a given but it’s worth testing it before making a commitment, just in case the service provided doesn’t meet your needs.

To complement your speedy internet you may also wish to consider using cloud-based software and services in order to improve collaboration and efficiency. With hybrid working practices now the norm, giving employees access to essential docs and tools from wherever they may be is more important than ever and it’s no longer suitable to have everything stored locally in your office alone.

Additionally, you’ll want to provide employees with up-to-date technology and hardware, including modern laptops or desktops equipped to run all the required software, high resolution monitors and any external peripherals you might also require depending on business needs, such as scanners and printers. This will help improve productivity and reduce the endlessly painful frustration caused by outdated or slow equipment.

JetSpace provide high speed internet to all our office suites so connectivity is excellent but we can’t help you with your computing equipment so make sure your hardware is up to the job before moving your staff in!

Getting the right office space setup isn’t rocket science but it’s still easy to get it wrong. If you want somewhere that’s set up ready to go, get in touch with JetSpace!