Growing Your Team? Don’t Allow Your Office To Become The Bottleneck

Growing teams and hiring new personnel is typically a sign of healthy business development. More employees will increase the capacity of your company, introduce new skills into the process of work, and make possible tasks that your stretched team was forced to refuse from. However, growth poses an issue that is easy to miss.

An office designed for ten people will become inconvenient for fifteen people and inefficient for twenty.

Desk space is not the only thing to consider here. The lack of meeting space, the amount of available printers, the storage area, common devices, supplies, internet capacity, and even how people use space can lead to small bottlenecks in the working process that accumulate during the week.

The most effective moment to deal with them is before they start affecting your employees’ work.

Do Not Stop With the Desk Allocation Problem

The issue of desk allocation is the first that managers think about when they have to accommodate new employees. They estimate how many desks can be placed in the office and find the most convenient spots for them. This will solve the most visible issue but not necessarily the operational one.

Imagine yourself as a new employee and think about what he/she needs during his/her working day. Is there a possibility to call clients without distractions? Are there enough meeting spaces? Do employees have access to all necessary devices? Are all necessary supplies located close by?

By doing this, you can spot the simple issues that can ruin the process of your office functioning despite the fact that the amount of space will allow accommodating more people.

Common Devices Can Become an Unexpected Bottleneck

Common devices that worked perfectly fine for a small team will start struggling when there are more employees that use them. A printer that was used rarely will now become a frequently shared tool. The same applies to scanners, conference displays, charging stations, kitchen appliances, and other communal devices.

Printing is an issue that is underestimated until it becomes a problem. While everything works, nobody thinks about printing and its capacity. However, as soon as it is increased, finding a necessary cartridge or a lack of a correct replacement can affect several people, not just one. Using https://supplylinkusa.com for buying printer supplies is a good solution for maintaining the necessary printer capacity.

This principle can be applied to any shared resource – its capacity should match the capacity of the team coming to the office, not the previous team that used it half a year ago.

The Need for Storage Increases Much Quicker Than You Expect

Every new employee adds new belongings, equipment, documents, packing material, cables, stationery, and many other objects that need to be stored somewhere. Without a storage plan, all this stuff starts moving to places where it does not belong – desks, shelves, meeting tables, and other surfaces.

Good storage is not only about the order in your office. It reduces the time of looking for things and avoids occupying useful workspace by storing material.

You should consider dividing the storage space depending on how often these items are used. Everyday material should stay close to people who use it, while archived documents, extra equipment, supplies, and rarely used items should be located elsewhere. Periodic removal of unnecessary material from the storage is as important as filling it with new stuff as the company grows.

Your Team Needs Meeting Space Corresponding to Its Characteristics

The growing team typically realizes that the shortage of meeting space happens earlier than the shortage of desk space. A couple of departments can greatly increase the number of internal discussions, calls with clients, interviews, training, and other meetings.

This issue does not always require building new meeting rooms. Combination of different kinds of spaces will work better. Small booths can deal with personal video calls, small rooms can accommodate up to 2-3 people, and larger rooms can be used for meetings requiring their capacity.

Moreover, you should check whether meeting rooms are being used correctly. If there is a person using an eight person meeting room for a video call, it means that the problem is in allocating and not in lack of square feet. Good allocation practice and spaces designed for specific purposes can increase the capacity of your office.

Small Daily Frictions Start Accumulating As Soon as Your Company Grows

Little inefficiencies are easily tolerated in a small business. People walk across the office to get some paper, ask colleagues where extra cables are, wait for a meeting room, or realize that necessary material ran out. This kind of issue seems to be too minor for discussion.

However, growth changes the equation here. A five minute problem that repeats itself in a group of twenty employees for hundreds of working days is a significant loss of time.

Focus on the recurring disturbances. People repeatedly asking the same questions, waiting for the same resource, or inventing the same ways of dealing with problems provide you with valuable information about where your office is failing you. By fixing these little things, you can increase productivity much more than by changing your office layout drastically.

Design Your Office for the Next Stage of the Company

Office planning is not finished when the current hiring round ends. If your company plans further development, then decisions taken today should have enough space for the next team.

This does not mean that you should buy extra space right now. It means that you should avoid designing your office with systems that will quickly face the capacity limit. Modular furniture, flexible working space, reasonable inventory, scalable technology, and adaptive storage will help your office grow much smoother.

A physical office should work for your business growth, not for chasing it. Every new hire that requires a rearrangement of the office makes your business reactive. However, if your office is flexible enough to absorb the additional personnel, the process of growth will be much more comfortable.

A growing team already creates enough challenges by itself. Searching for extra space, supplies, devices, or a meeting room should not be one of them. Combining office planning with headcount planning can ensure that the infrastructure of your team grows with the company.