Moving On Up

When your company’s office space starts to look like a Where’s Waldo picture, that’s the clue that you should be moving to new digs. As much fun as it is to see your employees scurry through the maze of cubicles to find the cheese bait you’ve left in the photocopy room, sooner or later your company’s productivity will suffer. Also, cheese goes bad quickly.

Like the Jeffersons, you have to move on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky, but there are three criteria that will govern your search for new space. First you have to find an office that will accommodate your business’s current needs. Second, your new space has to also allow for future expansion. Third, you have to find a landlord named “Weezie.” Actually, the third guideline is window to office ratio.

Every workstation should have access to outside windows. Scientific studies have proven that productivity increases if workers are exposed to natural sunlight during the work day. Think of your employees as plants. If you transplant them into the wrong office space, they can wither. But if you move them into a healthy environment, they can thrive and so can your company.

Unfortunately, not everybody can get a window. This fact makes the assignment of workstations a sticky situation. One bad decision can turn an employee-of-the-month into a disgruntled dog pretty quick. Staff will try to choke each other out to get prime office space and this will kill productivity. Do yourself a favour and employ some preventative measures. If you’ve got cash, install a skylight. If you’re budget-conscious, hang prints of windows on all your employees’ walls. If you’re stingy, then spread a lot of “fertilizer” on your windowless workers so they think you like them best.

There is one way to avoid all this mess and that is to build your own office space. For those of you interested in this solution, I’d suggest you play The Sims, the computer game that allows you to build, furnish, and decorate your own house. This will give you a sense of how many issues are associated with building from scratch, and how hard it will be to please everyone. Also, if you install the world’s ugliest lighting fixture, then the cost of replacement will only be simoleons and not real dollars. If you’re really serious about building your own office space, I’d suggest you buy all the expansion packs for The Sims. No, it won’t give you further insight about your own office space; I just have stock in the company.

Whether you decide to build or rent office space, you must remember to keep the future in mind. How fast do you anticipate your company to grow? I know of one short-sighted fellow who thought his dot-com company would expand exponentially during the glory days of tech stocks. He ended up with a warehouse-sized space, and barely any staff. Although, they did convert it into a rad indoor park for skateboarding, which is pretty much all his employees do these days.

In business expansion, size does matter. Bigger isn’t always better. Imagine yourself as Goldilocks looking for the office space that is just right for your company’s needs. Also, bear in mind the most important thing: where to put the cheese.

Marty Chan is the playwright-in-residence at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre. His mother would like him to give up writing and be an accountant.

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