Aanya Rachel is the Content Manager at The Address, a coworking space in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge, experience, and extensive research in this field. She writes on a wide range of topics related to coworking, the growth of remote workers, startups, and real estate.
A coworking space is more than just a workplace setting.
It is the space where employees spend over 35 hours a week and potentially a lot more.
Further, they need to interact and collaborate with mentors, contemporaries, and teammates to deliver projects with tight deadlines while ensuring high quality. This rigorous work schedule can impact their mental and physical well-being, thereby reducing their productivity.
So, positive work culture is vital to boost team collaboration, creativity, and productivity.
How can you achieve that?
In this post, we will share the five best practices to increase productivity in coworking spaces, thereby helping businesses thrive.
A well-planned coworking workstation design can provide great comfort and flexibility to working professionals.
What's more?
Research reveals that office designs influence employees' job satisfaction levels, which is vital for achieving high productivity.
So, by updating the coworking space, firms can improve their productivity and ROI.
Here are a few tips to help you update your office design and interiors.
Deploy a Combination of Seating Arrangements
Every employee has unique workplace needs and expectations.
For instance, some employees may require tall-height desks because they may be conscious of lifestyle disorders like chronic back pain. Similarly, employees handling confidential data may require private desks with lockers to safeguard their crucial files. So, ensuring an array of seating options in workstations is pivotal.
Create Relaxation Rooms
Relaxation rooms can give a breather to employees working relentlessly for hours. Reports state that taking a break during working hours improves productivity and concentration, thereby reducing stress and burnout.
Even big brands like Nike and Google offer meditation sessions to help employees relax and work stress-free.
So, build relaxation rooms like meditation centers, gymnasiums, and indoor sports rooms, to allow your team to unwind.
Invite Nature in the Work Area
Studies affirm that professionals who keep plants near their desks feel less anxious and stressed while working. No wonder, one of the most beautiful offices across the world, Digital Luxury Group, follows this approach.
Notice their sophisticated interiors combined with greenery.
So, keep beautiful plants across your office and create a happy work environment without hassles.
Defining daily work processes and setting realistic goals are crucial for companies to improve their ROI.
This standardized way of working reduces the manager's burden of explaining repetitive tasks to the teammates. Besides, it allows employees to perform tasks without hassles and thus improve their efficiency.
Here's how you can do it.
Identify the gaps and employees' challenges concerning the current work processes.
Evaluate the work efficiency and your team’s professional strengths and weaknesses.
Assign tasks according to their strengths. This will bring out the best in them, thus contributing to high efficiency.
Set a SMART goal (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) for each. Create quality parameters and assign task deadlines.
Track the weekly output of the entire team and the individual work contribution of each member. Revise the plan if the expected business outcomes are unmet.
Pro Tip: Deploy the right tools to enhance your team productivity.
For instance, implement project management software to streamline the work processes, assign tasks, and ensure your team submits them on or before the deadlines. The software can offer a centralized view of work-related information, such as ongoing tasks, completed tasks, pending tasks, deadlines, and more.
For teams using Slack, project management tools like Workast can work wonders.
Workast's integration with Slack allows team managers to create tasks, add attachments, assign them to team members, add comments, set due dates, and get reminders of completed, pending, and ongoing status.
Notice the user-friendly interface of Workast. This project management app runs seamlessly on Android and iOS devices.
Similarly, you can implement business intelligence (BI) tools like Zoho Analytics and Oracle BI to visualize company data, extract crucial reports, and make the right business decisions.
Open communication signifies a work culture where a team can freely share their thoughts, ideas, queries, or challenges with their managers.
It can thus foster a happy work environment by empowering employees to speak their minds. For entrepreneurs and managers, open communication helps in understanding and addressing work-related challenges and ensuring transparency at work.
Here are a few tips for establishing open communication in your coworking space.
Organize team lunches or go for outings to foster an open and friendly work culture. If you are conscious of managing time effectively, walk to a cafeteria in the coworking space for a fun conversation. You may also arrange ice-breaker game sessions to encourage the team members to comfortably interact with each other.
Be available on emails, calls, and online communication channels to provide a timely response to your team. This gesture can encourage them to share their concerns without hesitation.
Provide constructive criticism and guidance to help your team improve their work performances. This can imbibe a sense of security and trust within your team.
Create a weekly schedule for face-to-face meetings with the team to discuss individual goals, task-related challenges, deadlines, and more. For instance, observe the following template from Workast.
Notice how they've prepared a meeting schedule using Google Calendar. Frequent meetings can boost seamless communication and help managers establish trust with their teammates.
Check out the top four expert tips to conduct effective meetings.
These steps will help you create healthy professional relationships with your team.
Networking events allow employees to collaborate and interact with experienced mentors, contemporaries, and peers. They can exchange innovative ideas and learn new skills to keep up with technological advancements in their field.
It can help companies gain a competitive edge while skyrocketing employees' professional development.
The best part?
Arranging networking events can be a cakewalk for coworking companies because of the availability of neighboring firms. They can personally meet and contact mentors for the session.
Thus, networking events can be a win-win for all.
Here are a few crucial tips for arranging successful networking sessions.
Determine a clear purpose for arranging the session. Specify the expected outcomes or goals you want to achieve.
For instance, you can arrange a session to educate your employees about tools and strategies to boost their work productivity. Your goal could be to enhance their work efficiency by 30% and accomplish more tasks.
Find subject matter experts or experienced mentors from your neighboring company or others that can help guide your team on the specified topic.
Use platforms like TheMuse to connect and invite top industry leaders to your event.
Send email invitations to understand the availability of the mentors.
Fix a date and time for the networking event and send email invites to your team members. Note the number of participants in advance and book spacious conference rooms in your coworking space.
Ensure the conference hall or meeting room is available at a scheduled time and date.
Use social media channels like LinkedIn to create awareness about the initiative. Run adsto reach like-minded people who might be interested in your event.
Besides, encourage your team to attend networking sessions, conferences, and online webinars of experienced CEOs and mentors. This can help them gain industry insights.
Pro Tip: There are several companies offering business courses for entrepreneurs to learn leadership lessons, strategies to cultivate a happy work environment, business psychology, and more.
Register yourself for these business masterclasses to understand the needs of modern-day business and master entrepreneur skills. Arrange networking events based on your learnings. This can help you meet and exceed your business goals.
Hectic work schedules can blur the lines between professional and personal life.
Working round the clock can lead to frustration and chronic stress and impact employees' mental and physical well-being. Besides, it can result in sedentary lifestyle diseases like heart disease, obesity, and more.
So, entrepreneurs and managers should track employees' work routines. They should ensure the team is not burdened with extra work.
Here are a few tips to help maintain your team's work-life balance.
Allow your team to take frequent breaks between work hours. Make sure your cafeteria has snacks and beverages of their choice. This can help them stay energetic and happy throughout the day.
Provide work timing flexibility and equip your team with essential tools. This can help them accomplish more tasks without being overwhelmed.
Recruit an in-house psychologist to help your team deal with work pressure. This can ensure their mental well-being, which is pivotal to keeping them calm and relaxed.
Introduce a health insurance policy to provide healthcare benefits to your team.
Allow flexible leaves to help your team rest on days they don't feel like working. You may also arrange vacation days for the entire team every year.
Notice how Amdocs’ new work model offers unlimited vacation days to its employees.
So, create policies like these to keep your team in a happy mindset.
High productivity reflects good work culture and is the key to thriving businesses.
While coworking in itself is a commendable step towards building a great work culture and efficient workforce, businesses need to go the extra mile to ensure long-term success.
Businesses should track employees' well-being and performances while ensuring work distraction minimization.
The shared practices can help you maintain an equilibrium between work and fun, thereby encouraging your employees to stay productive. So, implement the above-mentioned strategies to scale your business.
Workast
