We are in the middle of having a new office built for DS Recruit.
Having worked out of a ground floor office on a busy road, and then a dark old house by the beach (big spiders, snakes, fleas…), followed by our current temporary office where a freaky black cat constantly tries to sneak in and hide under our desk line, we are pretty well positioned to tell you want you want to avoid in a suitable office space.
We have been spending a fair bit of time researching the best way to create a productive office space. We generally find that the same three things coming up.
1.Have comfortable furniture
Doing a bit of research into what other recruitment companies do for their office spaces shows there are a lot of cool, funky offices out there. Spencer Ogden is one example of a recruitment company with some pretty cool looking offices. Have a look around their website at the different cities and you will see what I mean https://www.spencer-ogden.com/singapore . I know a lot of IT companies also have similar types of offices. The one thing that always stands out to me is that these types of offices always look great, but without having worked in one, I am not sure they are functional.
As I recruiter, I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk, so I want a good ergonomic chair and a desktop computer to help keep my posture correct. Having nice leather sofas and funky benches and stools is great, but they get pretty uncomfortable if you are sitting on one working on a computer for too long.
Standing desks are also becoming more and more prevalent. Here is a good article about someone who changed over to a standing desk Standing Desk for One year
2.Have as much natural light as possible
One of the great things about the old house we worked out of was that it stayed nice and cool for most of the day in summer time, so there wasn’t much need for air conditioning until into the afternoon. The downside was that it was really dark, meaning it was hard to see the spiders and centipedes until they crawled over our feet and we had to sit under all day under those lovely bright fluorescent lights that abound in older Japanese buildings.
Studies show that employees feel more comfortable working in natural light, and this feeling of comfort can be enhanced by placing plants around the office.
3. The colors in the office make a difference
The colors in the office have an effect on productivity and mood. White, blue and green have been found to have an effect on productivity and perceived work performance in employees. If you look at the color of the recruitment company logos listed here https://www.dsrecruit.jp/en/company-directory/, a large number of them contain a shade of blue. I would be interested to know if that was intentional or subconscious when the logos were designed.
There are also some logos containing red. I wonder if you could say those companies have a more aggressive style of recruitment….笑
We’d be interested to hear from people who work in new offices with all the bells and whistles, and if they think their work productivity and general mood is positively affected.