The warehouse office interior can be overlooked in comparison to operations on the warehouse floor. The space may be comparatively smaller, but making the most out of this space can have huge benefits to your business...

The environment offered to your warehouse office team has a direct impact on their productivity, wellbeing and happiness, and can also impede or enhance both your employee retention rates and recruitment process.

Does your team have an environment they enjoy working in? Does it help them to thrive in their roles? Warehouse-based businesses are becoming savvy to the benefits of a wellbeing-focused and optimised office space, so don’t fall behind!

Here’s how to get more from less with your warehouse office space:

1. Creative Furniture Solutions

Don’t overlook your office furniture. Warehouse office furniture has a direct impact on the productivity, health and happiness of employees, so it’s important to make the right investment. Not only this, but the furniture within your space also affects the activities that can efficiently take place within it.

From office chairs and desks to storage and soft seating – furniture significantly impacts the look, feel and purpose of your warehouse office interior. It’s not about spending a fortune, but making investments that count.

Refreshing your interior with creative furniture solutions can help you to optimise its function and improve the employee experience!

2. Get the Lighting Right

Natural lighting in a warehouse environment can be limited. Often, there are little to no windows. If you do have natural light in your warehouse office space, your workspace should be designed around access to this natural light, by positioning workstations close by. This has huge benefits on the wellbeing and alertness of your staff.

If you don’t have access to natural light in your warehouse office space, it means that the type of artificial lighting you introduce into the space is even more important. Poor lighting can cause eye strain and headaches, and can even go to the extent of affecting people’s circadian rhythm, which can have a further impact on their health and wellbeing.

A well-lit space, on the other hand, can improve concentration, alertness and productivity. In addition to this, innovative and unique lighting features can help to transform the warehouse office interior into a creative and fun space to work in.

3. Incorporate Your Branding

Brand identity is hugely important to the growth and success of a business, both from a customer and an employee point of view. Your workplace should be an extension of your brand in more ways than one. What would people perceive your business to be based on your warehouse office interior?

Branded elements such as brand colours, logos and slogans can be both motivational and inspirational to employees, helping to give your office team a sense of belonging. Creatively featuring these throughout your office space – without going overboard, of course – can not only improve the aesthetics of your space, but also the feelings of those working and visiting in it.

What are your company values? These should also be reflected in your office design. Are you innovative, creative and efficient? Make sure your office interior mirrors this to employees and visitors.

4. Create a Multipurpose Space

The office is no longer thought of as a place to simply sit at a desk 9-5 and leave at the end of the day. This has particularly changed following lockdown and many people’s abilities to now work remotely. Innovative companies are recognising the importance of offering employees an agile environment that facilitates different activities and methods of working within it.

There are some fantastic benefits of office breakout spaces, for example, with wellbeing, interaction, collaboration and movement being among them. Movement is key, too. By defining different areas within your space, you can promote movement within it and provide employees with a choice as to how and where they work within it.

5. Feature Biophilic Design

Metal frames, corrugated walls, concrete floors… these are all commonplace in industrial units. It’s a huge contrast to the outdoors, but bringing the outside in can have important advantages for employees working inside, particularly within industrial environments.

This is particularly beneficial if there are limited - or no - views of the outdoors from the warehouse office, but is still important if windows are present. Introducing greenery into interiors is linked to a boost in wellbeing and happiness, and living plants can also improve the air quality within your warehouse office too. Not only this, but greenery has many aesthetic advantages too, of course!

6. Prioritise Your Floor Plan

No matter the size of your space, it’s in the best interest of your business and people to optimise the space available and ensure you are getting the most out of what you have. It’s best to call in the experts at this point, who can create a space plan developed around the space you have available, the number of employees you currently have, expected team growth, the activities that need to take place and safe physical distancing regulations to produce an optimised space plan. This will help your staff to work effectively and productively, whilst optimising the employee experience and ultimately helping you to maximise output.

Investing in your warehouse office interior can go a long way in complementing and boosting the efficiency of your overall warehouse operations. Happy employees are productive employees!

We offer a turnkey industrial design and build solution to help you improve your industrial interior. Get in touch to make a step towards an optimised future!