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There was a time when office spaces were filled with soulless cubicles, filing cabinets and stuffy beige boardrooms.

Well, thankfully that is a thing of the past!

Today’s workers don’t want to spend eight hours a day in these antiquated spaces. They want the office to feel comfortable, homier and more flexible.

After all, we spend so much of our lives at work, it’s important not just to enjoy your job, but also where you spend a huge portion of your day.

An inviting and functional office space can inspire creativity and lead to increased productivity and innovation. It can also increase staff attraction and retention rates, so this really is something you need to be thinking about right now.

So, if you want to reinvent your office this year, we can help. Check out our guide to creating a modern office space.

Let nature in

There are lots of reasons that you should bring nature and biophilic elements into the office. For too long offices focused on this ‘concrete jungle’ aesthetic, often being enclosed, beige, and let’s face it, boring.

But studies have shown that nature leads to more positive emotions, like calmness, joy and creativity. It can also facilitate concentration, all of which is good news in a workplace.

With this in mind, it’s a good idea to sprinkle some nature into your space. This might include natural elements like wood or stone, indoor plants, water features, earthy tones and even pictures or paintings of natural landscapes.

You should also try to flood your space with as much natural light as possible. This might mean incorporating bigger windows or using glass partition walls for meeting rooms to ensure light can still flood the room.

Choose the right furniture

How can anyone expect to get the most from employees when they have to spend their days sitting on rigid, uncomfortable chairs? This is because the wrong furniture can lead to problems like back, hips or neck aches, which can eventually lead to employees taking time off to recover.

With this in mind, your modern office space needs to embrace modern furniture trends that will benefit employees. This includes ergonomic and active furniture like comfortable seating, sit-stand chairs, adjustable-height desks, and chair balls.

If you’re unsure which furniture will be best received, you could run a survey or gather feedback from your employees to see what they’d prefer. Not only does choosing ergonomic sitting and work-surface options support employee wellbeing, but you can also modernise your office space as these come in a range of styles and finishes.

Set up for hot-desking

Earlier, we mentioned that traditional, outdated offices had lifeless cubicles and this meant that employees had their workstations and didn’t move. However, modern office design should reflect changing attitudes, in particular, hot-desking.

Hot-desking can be more inclusive towards mobile and hybrid workers, which is important given that an increasing percentage of the population is choosing to work this way. Plus, adapting your space for hot-decking encourages better communication and collaboration amongst your teams and employees.

What’s more, this is the ideal way to utilise space and believe it or not, can be far cleaner and more hygienic than set workstations. This is because these tend to accumulate dust, dirt and a lot of germs, but when we’re constantly moving around, areas are emptied and cleaned far more often and effectively.

Cleanliness is more important to today’s workers and has become a key focus for lots of people in a post-pandemic world.

With this in mind, your modern office should be set up to allow hot-desking with no set workstations, or separate areas where teams can go and sit and have meaningful conversations without being chained to their desk.

Seamlessly integrate technology throughout the office

Finally, in today’s technological world, almost everything we do is connected and your modern office has to reflect this. This is particularly true if you encourage hot-desking as we mentioned above.

The best way to seamlessly integrate technology throughout the space is to have convenient and accessible plugs, tools that support mobile technology and digital collaboration, and of course, elegant cable management to ensure there aren’t wires everywhere.

Another resource that has become increasingly important over the last few years is video conferencing tools. So make sure these facilities are available, along with simple and quick ways to connect to these. You should also ensure strong wireless connectivity at every point in the office.