How to personalize your home work spaceBusiness leaders everywhere know how valuable personalization can be to their customers. Your clients expect you to create meaningful moments for them when they’re purchasing products and services from you, based on their interests and needs.

The more relevant you make your sales strategies and marketing messages, the more likely it is that your customers will continue buying from you.

So, why is it that many of us fail to use the same successful personalization techniques when engaging our team members?

Just like your customers, your employees benefit from having a working environment that’s customized to suit them. We are all individuals who operate differently.

Knowing how to personalize your workspace for your employees could mean that you benefit from less staff turnover, happier team members, and higher productivity.

So, where do you begin?

 

#1 Look at Office Design

Office design has a significant impact on how your employees feel. Your team members spend a considerable portion of their lives sitting in your office. They’re going to be a lot more motivated and productive if they like the environment around them.

There are a few ways that you can make the office more appealing to everyone, such as sending out a poll asking for advice on what kind of color schemes to use, or which furniture your team members would like most.

However, you can also appeal to the people in your team that have different preferences to the rest of their colleagues.

For instance, rather than just designing an office with the open-plan layout to appeal to workers who like being connected with their pals, create something that works for both sides of the coin.

Design an office that includes an open-coworking space, and private environments for people who need quiet and distance to be productive.

 

#2 Reconsider Training Opportunities

Employees in virtually every environment crave training opportunities. All of your team members want to feel as though their work is heading somewhere – whether it’s towards personal accomplishments, promotions, or even new career opportunities.

Investing in your people with regular training keeps them motivated and allows you to benefit from introducing new skills.

However, not everyone in your team will need the same kind of training. Having one-to-one conversations with each employee and finding out what they want to accomplish in the next five or ten years will help you design a custom training plan.

Remember that it’s not just the topics available to learn about that you need to adjust to suit each employee. You may need to offer different kinds of learning, from one-on-one lessons to virtual education.

Speak to your team members about what they need from you and how you can make their learning opportunities as immersive as possible.

 

#3 Deliver the Right Tools

There are a lot of different tools in the modern working environment, and they can have a massive impact on your employees.

For instance, some of your team members might prefer to talk to their coworkers with a quick video conference rather than pulling everyone together for a lengthy board meeting. If that’s the case, make sure that they have the software in place to launch those video sessions.

Depending on your business, you can allow your employees to choose the systems that are most suitable for their skills and expectations.

Just make sure that all the tools you’re using integrate well together. Otherwise, you could end up with information silos that make it difficult to track your teams.

Speak to your employees about the services that they need to use with things like communication, file sharing, and collaboration.

Remember, when employees can shape their workplace and the tools they use, they can also accomplish more each day.

Offering a degree of personalization doesn’t just make your employees happier; it makes them more productive too. Instead of having to struggle to use tools that they’re not familiar or comfortable with, your team members will be able to get work done faster and to a higher standard.

 

#4 Offer Different Styles of Work

Finally, in today’s digital world, work doesn’t have to be just a place that people go to anymore. The cloud and the flexible internet environment means that team members can remain productive wherever they are. The age of the flexible work strategy has arrived.

Because of this, many business leaders are discovering the benefits of letting employees choose their own work style to a certain degree. If you have team members who can work from home instead of coming into the office every day, allowing them to do that could be a great thing.

Even if your employees only work remotely part-time, they’ll enjoy a better work-life balance and more flexibility.

Remote working perks can make it more likely that your employees will want to stick with you through thick and thin. Remote working is one of the most popular office perks today.

What’s more, if you have more team members working remotely, you can reduce the overhead costs for things like furniture and energy in your office too. It’s a win for everyone.

You might even find that you attract some top talent from overseas to your remote-working business that you couldn’t have accessed before.

 

Personalizing the Workspace

Personalization is a powerful tool. We all have different needs and expectations in the work environment, but often we’re forced to struggle and adapt to what’s available, rather than using what we need.

Business owners who can be agile enough to pivot to their employee’s needs will benefit from a happier, more efficient, and more productive workforce.

When your team members have a level of control over how they work, and the environment that they work in, they can craft the spaces that are most valuable to their success.

Don’t underestimate the importance of giving your team a choice.

 

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Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and an ultimate techie. When he is not working his magic as a marketing consultant, this incurable tech junkie devours the news on the latest gadgets and binge-watches his favorite TV shows. Follow him on @bmorepeters