Does your office match your ambitions?

The most ambitious and admirable companies in the world strive to have an office that matches their ambitions. And there's a very important reason for this: the office is where employees should spend a lot of time, or at least want to be - even if they can work from home. The only reason for employees to come into the office shouldn't be the free lunch.

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Good physical work environment creates flow

To get into flow and deliver on company ambitions, employees need a physical work environment that can handle the ambitions. If you ask employees to perform at their best and be inspiring to colleagues and customers, then what you offer the employee to show up for must be able to match their ambitions.

If, on the other hand, your company and office always take a long time to fix small issues such as a broken coffee machine or a malfunctioning door. Or even worse, have a dirty office due to poor cleaning or a boring lunch that always becomes a topic of conversation. Then you're not living up to your ambitions.

There's a bottom line in the balance between ambition for the office and the employee

Companies that work hard to create an office that matches their ambitions aren't just doing it for fun. There's a hard bottom line to it. When clothing brand Le Deux sets up an indoor soccer field in their office, or Google has free snacks and inspiring common areas, it's both to attract the best employees and retain current ones. Everyone should want to be part of the "club". This reduces recruitment costs as you get more applicants and can therefore be picky. It also ensures that employees don't suddenly leave - and every manager knows how expensive and difficult it is to hire new employees.

Minimize reasons to complain, it increases happiness and productivity

You can work strategically with the physical work environment, and the best ones focus on initiatives that aim to give employees fewer things to complain about. Simply because complaining creates a bad work environment. Complaints are quickly contagious and no one likes to work in a company with a complaining culture.

It's often the little things that can be objects of grumbling. It's important to practice what you preach. For example, if one of your company values is thoroughness, then it doesn't matter if the meeting rooms never work properly, are dirty or lack notepads and pens. You're likely to get snide comments like, "Why should I be thorough when the company clearly isn't?"

A good physical work environment is not expensive

It doesn't have to be expensive to create a good physical work environment or to run an office that matches your company's ambitions and brand. At Officeguru, we help hundreds of companies every year to create a better physical work environment. We are nerds in office operations and make a virtue of minimizing hassle. It should be easy for those in charge of the office to run the office so that it lives up to its ambitions. You can do that with Officeguru.

Book a meeting with us to talk about your office or find inspiration in one of these articles:

• Is your office not up to par with your home office?

• The checklist to make it attractive to come to the office instead of staying at home