When it comes to figuring out how much office space your business needs, there are quite a few things you need to consider:
1. How many employees do you have?
2. How many more employees are you likely to have in the future?
3. How much equipment do you need to accommodate?
4. Do you have any special equipment to accommodate e.g. servers?
5. What style of office suits your business?
6. What do serviced offices already provide?
How Many Employees Do You Have?
So you know the number of bums you need to fit on seats, but this doesn’t easily translate into the number of square feet you need (which incidentally is just one of the reasons we market our offices based on the number of workspaces; to keep things simple).
How Many Employees Are You Likely To Have In The Future?
It’s important to consider an office space that’s not only big enough for your business as it is at the time but also for any immediate growth plans as well. You may also need to think about the size of your meeting space and kitchen too. Could the entire team fit into the meeting room for a company-wide brief or not? Is it taking over an hour for people to get through the queue for the microwave?
That being said, one of the major benefits of serviced offices, is that you don’t need to factor in mid to long-term growth at all. Instead, you can expand within the same building as your team grows. Lots of our clients at Bracken Business Centre’s choose to do this, with some of our clients now on their third and even fourth office with us!
By only paying for space you need when you need it, you’re not paying for unused space, which in turn helps keep your overheads down.
How Much Business Equipment Do You Need To Find Space For?
When it comes to offices, you also need to make sure all your key office equipment fits in too. Things like printers, photocopiers and servers, in particular, can take up a lot of room and may even need special housing or environments to ensure they work most effectively, so don’t forget to factor in the space for them as well.
What Style Of Office Suits Your Business?
What your company does and how it is structured in terms of staff can have a huge impact on the type of office you need. For example, highly collaborative businesses consisting of different teams that often work closely together can benefit greatly from an open plan office space. However, if your company has need of private offices and more distinct work areas then an office with internal offices within it could work better.
What’s Included With Serviced Offices?
This is a question well worth finding the answer to before you commit to a new office space. At Bracken Business Centre things like meeting room facilities and kitchens are provided meaning you won’t need to worry about paying rent to house these things within your office.
Better still, meeting room facilities like the ones we have across our three centres typically come fully equipped with the latest technology such as conference phones and smart screens so you can have all the benefits of all this expensive equipment, without the huge costs of buying it yourself. There’s also a choice of meeting room sizes, so you can pick the room that best suits your needs at the time.
Breakout areas in services offices are also a great resource and well worth taking advantage of as they allow employees to get away from their desks during break times to refresh and recharge. Often it is these kinds of spaces that simply don’t make it onto the priority list when it comes to renting a private office as the space needed can typically push rents up too high.
It’s not just the kitchen itself that comes as part of a serviced office either. Tea and coffee are included too and we all know how many businesses rely on these key supplies to keep going. Better still, this is all maintained and cleaned for you as part of your monthly fee, so there’s no need to employ your own cleaning staff or get bogged down in trying to make sure you’re existing staff are doing it between them.
All in all, taking the time to plan and ensure your new office space is the right size is well worth investing in because comfortable and happy staff means a better more productive business.
If you need more help discovering how much office space you need,
speak to one of our friendly team today and we can help you find the right space for your business.