One of the most important questions you are faced with during an office build out is how much space you plan to designate to each employee. You don’t want to provide too much space per employee, but you also don’t want to provide too little space—as either one can cause issues, either with the budget, or with employee turn over rate. To help ensure your employees remain happy and comfortable and your business runs smoothly, it’s important to carefully consider this important element of office design.
The first thing you need to do is answer a few questions about your workplace:
- How many people work there?
- What do employees need? Do all employees need individual desks, or could some potentially share without issue?
- Do you plan to expand your business even a little in the coming year(s), if so how much room should you set aside for additional employees?
- The staff you plan to hire, what sort of office space do they need? Or rather, what role in the business will they play, executive, administrative, sales, etc.?
Once you calculate how much space you need for your current employees, it’s important to factor in the space you’ll need for future employees if you plan to expand at all, as most businesses do. By planning ahead for this you prevent costly expenses in the future when you have to readjust to accommodate new employees.
The Winning Amount Of Space Per Employee
The actual number of square footage an employee needs depends on the type of work they are doing, if they need their own desk, etc. The smallest amount of workspace for someone that does not need for his or her own desk would be 150-square-feet. For employees that require more space, 350-square-feet is a more normal number to shoot for.
The square footage each employee needs will generally fall between 150 and 350 –square-feet. A good way to get a mental picture of just how much space this really is, try physically creating the space using duct tape. Then, see what you can comfortably fit inside.
Does Your Office Have Enough Space?
Before you even begin an interior office build out it’s important to crunch the numbers to make sure the space you have in mind is actually big enough for your needs. You can do so by multiplying the number of employees you currently have by how much square footage they require.
For example, let’s say you have 20 employees working for you, and they all need 250-square-feet of space.
20 x 250 = 5,000-square-feet
But wait, that’s not all. Say you plan to add 3 new employees in the next year, you need to decide if that means adding an additional 750-square-feet of office space for future employees. Not to mention, what about the year following that, do you plan to hire more new employees?
Office Designs That Match Your Space & Budget
Depending on the size of your building and budget there are different design ideas that might work best for you. If you are working with a smaller space and need to pack in a lot of people, you may want to consider an open floor plan, in which you can group together desks and have people work more collaboratively. This describes a work environment that could offer as little as 150-square-feet of personal space to each employee.
If you have more room and a bigger budget to work with you may want more walled off, traditional offices. For instance, law offices are usually formatted like this with many private offices and only a few large meeting and gathering areas, such as conference rooms or libraries. Every business is different in regards to style and ways of doing things, pay tribute to your particular brand in your office design.
Putting The Pieces Together
You don’t want to forget about making room for a kitchen/break room, bathrooms and other important elements every office needs. If you take up too much space giving each employee ample room, you may find people are literally working in the bathroom—and that won’t pay well in regards to employee happiness.
It’s not easy to manage an entire interior build out project; there are so many different pieces to the puzzle. Perillo Construction Inc is the number one trusted name for project management you can trust. Let us score you the best deals on vendors and materials every step of the way, while keeping your project on track in regards to timeline and budget.