As popular as the open-office floor plan seems to be, there is often a need for private workspaces. If you’re planning to install office cubicles, you’ve got a bit of organization ahead. To make the most of your space, you’ll need quite a few measurements to get started. If you’re not careful, you could end up making quite a few mistakes, and those mistakes could be detrimental in many ways. Let’s take a look at some of the most common issues that arise with office cubicle placement and how you can avoid potential disaster.
If you bring in office cubicles without a plan, you could run into some employee anger issues. The easiest way to alienate one or two of your team members is to construct the cubicles without any regard for the sizes of the workspaces. After all, you’ve only go so much room to work with, and that means you’ll probably have to squeeze a few cubicles in to make sure everyone has a space. The problem arises when three team members have plenty of space while a fourth is left with little room to turn around. That disregard for feelings can breed feelings of discontent that lead to worse problems down the road.
Before you begin building your cubicles, make sure everyone will get the proper amount of space and that no one seems to be singled out with larger or smaller spaces than the rest of the team.
Your next problem, once you’ve discovered how to place all your office cubicles in a way that gives everyone equal space, is where to place those cubicles to give all employees room to move around them. This could include narrow aisles between the cubicles and walls or a tight squeeze between the cubicles themselves. While this may just be an irritation during a normal day, those spaces become dangerous during emergencies. If your employees have trouble navigating the cubicles on a regular day, imagine how much trouble they’d have during a fire drill, when all team members are trying to squeeze through the same spaces at the same time.
You can only avoid this possibility by measuring the spaces between cubicles and walls to give people plenty of room to move. Most importantly, ensure your office layout meets all standards of appropriate governing bodies for circulation, and proximity to fire escapes.
In order to give people enough space in their cubicles while keeping all the aisles as clear as possible, you could find yourself designing some pretty incredible layouts. A large office space may seem like the best solution, but the truth is you could end up causing even more problems. The more room you have, the more likely you’ll be to set up a maze of office cubicles that could require a trail of breadcrumbs to find the way out at the end of the day. Groupings of cubicles are a great idea, but if you’re not careful about placement, you could just exacerbate the problem.
A great layout of your office space and some accurate cubicle measurements will ensure you don’t build yourself into an inescapable maze.
If all of these possibilities have your head spinning, it’s okay. You do have plenty of options to create a great workspace to give your employees plenty of room inside and outside their cubicles without setting up a labyrinth of epic proportions. In many cases your furniture vendor will have resources in-house to help you with your space planning. If you have recently undergone a major redecorating, your architect should be able to suggest ideas for you and redesign the workspace to meet your needs. Once you have the new layouts and the physical space has been reconfigured there isn’t a better time to implement space and move management software like OfficeSpace to help you more effectively manage your workplace.
Without the right plan, you’ll end up at the drawing board again and again, trying to come up with solutions that make everyone happy without putting lives at risk.
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