Office Design Archives

7 Essential Types of Furniture and Appliances to Have in the Office

What furniture and appliances are essential in offices?

Computer equipment
Communications
Desks and worktables
Comfortable chairs
File cabinets
Microwave and refrigerator
Whiteboard wall

When working in a virtual office in the Philippines, the furniture and appliances found in the workplace play a major role in productivity. We often take basic pieces of furniture like desks and telephones for granted. Nonetheless, investing in the best types of office furniture will make a big difference in the productivity and mood of everyone who works there. Here are some essential appliances and pieces of furniture needed in an office.

Computer equipment

No virtual office in the Philippines would be complete without desktop computers and necessary accessories like keyboards, mouse, and more. You will also need to install various software into each computer for protection against viruses, word processing, backing up of data, and other needs of your office. Besides this, it is also ideal for every office to have a multifunctional printer that can fax, scan, and photocopy in addition to printing documents.

Communications

Another essential for offices is to have communications systems including a telephone line, internet connection, answering machine, desk telephones, and more. Nowadays, it is next to impossible for an office or any workplace to function without internet and telephone systems. Because of this, it is important to invest in a reliable communications system to avoid encountering problems in the future.

Desks and worktables

Obviously, you can’t have an office without desks to work on. To make the most of your space, make sure to invest in desks that come with storage space like drawers and cabinets. These will come in handy for storing desk supplies like pens, post-its, paper, and other personal items. In addition to individual desks, you will also need larger work tables for group meetings.

Comfortable chairs

Another must-have in every office are comfortable chairs. Because people will be spending the majority of their day sitting at their desks, comfort is an obvious priority when buying office chairs. One common type of chair found in offices are ergonomic chairs, which have adjustable parts to provide maximum comfort for a range of people. Additionally, this type of chair is known for correcting posture and supporting your back very well.

File cabinets

Staying organized is extremely important when working in an office so having organization supplies like file cabinets, folders, and envelopes will surely prove to be very useful. These will keep all of your important documents in one place and avoid any of them from getting lost or messy.

Microwave and refrigerator

Give your staff the option of bringing their own packed lunch and snacks to work by providing a communal microwave and refrigerator for the entire office.

Whiteboard wall

Another incredibly useful tool to have in the office is a whiteboard wall where you can write notes during meetings, place schedules, stick up announcements, and many more. This will also mean stocking up on whiteboard markers, erasers, and magnets.

Key Takeaway

Even though many of these seem very trivial, no office could function well without them. Investing in basic furniture that is both high-quality and practical will make a big difference in making life in the office easier and more productive.

Cheap and Easy DIY Projects for Personalizing Your Office Space

What are cheap and easy projects to decorate and organize office spaces?

Framed to-do list
Typography art
Muffin tin as storage
Turn cereal boxes into magazine holders

One fun way to brighten up your coworking space in the Philippines is to decorate it. Adding personal and handmade decorations can easily make you feel more at home while working in an events space in BF Paranaque.

Rather than being limited to the generic designs of products sold in stores, you can easily create your own decorations and office supplies with whatever color, design, or picture you want. Here are some simple and affordable projects that you can easily do in order to transform your office space.

Framed To-Do List

To-do lists are an essential tool to have in your office space and can be both practical and decorative at the same time. To create a framed to-do list, all you need are an empty glass frame, a colored or patterned piece of paper, and a whiteboard marker.

Simply insert the background of your choice to the frame, and use the glass of the frame as your makeshift whiteboard and to do list. Another plus of this is that you can easily change the background or pattern anytime.

Typography Art

Having artwork and quotes displayed around a coworking space in the Philippines can make a big difference when it comes to the mood and motivation of employees. One way you can inspire yourself and others during work is by placing typography art of motivational quotes around the office. Typography art comes in many forms and can be placed anywhere, from clipboards to mason jars.

Muffin Tin as Storage

One clever desk organization hack is to use a muffin or cupcake tin for organized storage space. Having a muffin tin in your desk drawer will help you organize and prevent you from losing small items like binder clips, keys, tape, paper clips, and more. You can either keep the muffin tin as is or you could make it look more attractive with spray paint or washi tape.

Turn Cereal Boxes into Magazine Holders

Another affordable and creative way to organize an events place in BF Paranaque is to design your own magazine or file holders out of cereal boxes. This is a cheap and eco-friendly alternative to spending on magazine holders from the store.

For this project, you will need empty cereal boxes and sticker or contact paper. You will also need a pen and ruler to mark the areas of the cereal box that you will cut out in order to get the opening and shape of a magazine holder. Then, cover the box with contact or sticker paper with the design of your choice.

Key Takeaway

One of the biggest advantages of DIY projects is that they give you the opportunity to choose what design, color, size, and shape you prefer your supplies or decorations to be. They are also a creative way of taking everyday office supplies and turning them into materials that are decorative as well as practical.

How to Make Your Co-Working Space in the Philippines Healthy for Employees

How can you make your co-working space healthy for employees?

Create a “break” room
Get an air purifier
Offer foldable standing desks
Have “bring your pet” days

Business owners, in co-working spaces in the Philippines, are legally responsible for the health of their employees. They commonly fulfill this responsibility by offering sick leaves and health insurance. While these benefits help employees heal from their sicknesses, they do not address the factors which led to workers getting sick in the first place.

Sadly, a lot of these factors come from the office itself. The health of workers gets negatively affected by the mental stress and the dirty indoor air they deal with every day. Additionally, there is little space for any form of physical activity. Companies can simply solve these issues by adding health-boosting adjustments to the workspace.

If you want your co-working space to be healthier, these are the adjustments you can add to it:

Create a “break” room

In the office, it can be hard for employees to actually relax during their work breaks. A lot may just want to nap for 15 minutes, but the surroundings just seem too bright and loud. They end up pursuing other “relaxing” options that end up increasing fatigue. Drinking more coffee, stress- eating, complaining to other co-workers.

When employees find it hard to rest, they will also find it hard to be productive
Work breaks are the only times have to replenish the motivation and focus that was lost from working hard. A true break will let our brains to detach from office-related thoughts, do things that make us feel more positive, and actually move away from our desk.

To make your employees rest properly, you can turn an unused space into a “break” room. Since this lounge will be far away from their desks, just going there will allow your staff members to physically stop thinking of work-related issues. It does not have to be extravagant or filled with amenities.

What matters is that it is designed to be relaxing. For example, a start-up renting in an events space at BF Paranaque can make a rest space for their employees just by renting one small room. Then, fill that room with bean bags or a few mattress pads. Your employees can easily sleep, meditate, read, and do other energy-replenishing activities with zero disturbances.

Get an air purifier

Most people underestimate how dirty offices, such as some co-working spaces in the Philippines, can be. Even if you clean and wipe the floors till they shine, you cannot physically clean the air you breathe. In the office, indoor areas are unclean due to a lot of factors.

Air-borne illnesses from fellow coworkers
Outdoor pollution
Chemicals from workspace computers, carpet, and cleaning products

The indoor chemicals in your workspace, especially, can make employees develop “occupational allergies”, where they seem to only develop headaches and rashes in their workspace. Your employees may be allergic to these chemicals without their knowledge. While you can’t really remove illnesses and outdoor pollution from the office air, you can do something about the chemicals.

Air purifiers in the office can clear the air of these allergic-triggering chemicals. Additionally, you have options to choose from:

Activated carbon filters
Air purifiers using UV light, ozone, or ionization
Molecule air purifier

Offer foldable standing desks

More and more foldable standing desks are appearing in Philippine office spaces.

The standing desk looks like a flat board at first, but when you open it, a table and adjustable legs suddenly appear. Since it is small, it will easily fit in your work table and its height will push you to stand up while typing.

These structures were created so employees can add more physical activity to their work routines and its popularity grew thanks to studies highlighting the damage caused by too much sitting. Sitting for 8 hours straight can make you gain weight, more anxious, and prone to different diseases.

Because of these risks, employees are recommended to stand for 15 minutes after sitting for 45 minutes straight every hour in the office.

Have “bring your pet” days

Having animals at work every day can be a distraction at an events space in BF Paranaque. But, allowing them inside your workspace for a number of days can be beneficial for employees’ health. Allowing your staff to bring their pets can benefit them because animals are known to improve morale, employee satisfaction, workplace communication, and lower stress.

To make sure these pets don’t cause a mess in your office, you can do these things:

Plan with your staff, what are the most appropriate days for pets
Tell employees which rooms are “pet-free zones”
Create a pet committee to make things easier.

Key Takeaway

Businesses should not only focus on helping their employees when they get sick but also focus on making the office as sick-free as possible. Employees can become ill with different diseases because they have to deal with so much stress, physical inactivity, and indoor pollution on a daily basis.

Companies don’t have to spend a lot of money to fix these different issues. Just making space for relaxation, utilizing air purifiers, or simply allowing pets in the office on certain days can make a world of difference.

Office Space for Rent Paranaque: 2019 Office Design Trends

What are popular design trends for office spaces in 2019?

Urban nature
More relaxation spaces
Smart technology

Office spaces for rent in Paranaque were designed in 2018 to be collaborative. There were no work cubicles and rooms allowed for several people to work together in a single space. In 2019, they will continue to have designs geared towards collaboration, with a few changes. These are the popular design trends which will change the way work spaces look next year:

Urban Nature

Businesses will be adding more greenery to their office work space in 2019 through these different means:

Placing a small cactus plant on a desk
Planting a vertical garden inside with plants that can survive in an office environment (ex. English ivy, Jade plant, Spider plant)
Placing artificial moss on the walls as decoration

According to numerous studies, people naturally love having greenery in their jobs surroundings because it brings about these numerous benefits:

Plants can reduce stress – A study from the New University of Technology Sydney focused on the effects of indoor plants on the negative mood of office employees over 3 months. At the end of the period, employees who worked in a space with the plants admitted to feeling 30 to 60 % less stress, while those without plants felt their stress increased by 20 to 40% over 3 months.

Plants can reduce sick leaves – 7600 workers in 16 countries became participants for a Human Spaces report in 2015. ⅓ of these participants were the only ones with houseplants inside their office spaces, and they reported a 15% higher score in terms of well-being compared to the ⅔ of the participants with no plants whatsoever. Additionally, introducing plants to one office in the 1990s led to a 25% decrease in illness symptoms.

This greenery trend can be easily implemented in any type of office, including co-working spaces in Manila.

More Relaxation Spaces

These spaces will serve as areas for employees to relax and recharge before they go back to work. With office spaces becoming more open to adding leisure in their design, it makes sense that companies like Google would also be open to investing in relaxation rooms for their people.

These spaces were meant to be a solution to the lack of work-life balance among office staff.

For 2019, these are different types of relaxation rooms that can easily be created in any office space for rent in Paranaque:

Meditation room

Just 5 minutes of mindfulness can greatly improve your workplace focus. Companies can make a room for meditation by just supplying yoga mats for their employees to use and have relaxing music playing in the background.

Nap room

Providing employees with the means to sleep is one of the most efficient ways of caring for their well-being. Working adults sleep less than 7 or 8 hours on average and it has caused offices to lose money because their staff’s productivity is low as well.

You can easily make a nap room by placing bean bags, hammocks, or even a few couches in one area.

“No electronics” room

Here, employees will not be allowed to bring their laptops and smartphones inside. People are allowed to fully rest without checking on social media and texts. Using electronics has been shown to make us more tired than energized to work.

Another relaxation space that will become more popular is a pantry. While this is not exactly a room, pantries have become sacred spaces for employees.

Smart Technology

More technological advancements will be placed in 2019 office spaces to fulfill specific purposes. These advancements include:

Shared screens

Office spaces will dedicate meeting rooms to video teleconferences. Companies frequently deal with planning challenges when it comes to meeting conferences. Since everyone needs to be present in one, just one sudden absence can cancel it and these leads to wasted time for all parties involved. This is the same for meetings with several teams involved.

To remedy this, offices in 2019 will link screens in of each team’s room together. Here, teams can have a shared conference, even in separate places, because their screens will allow them to talk to other people through video.

Electronic Trackers

With technological advancements, it will become easier for HR to track which staff members are coming on time and who are not. Trackers, thanks to technology, have become more accurate in capturing late and absent employees than ever before.

Electronic trackers for employees which will become more popular are:

Fingerprint scans
Voice recognition tools

Multi-Faceted Security

Good office security should be so subtle that no one knows they are being watched. Security will expand to other facades, besides the usual video camera in the wall. Other forms of security that will appear more in 2019 include:

Facial recognition
Fingerprint recognition
Doors that open to employee’s IDs

Key Takeaway

Office spaces in 2018 were designed to be collaborative. While this trend will continue well into 2019, there will be new design structures that will shake up the way work spaces look. These trends include more nature, relaxation spaces, and smart technology.