Inside An Office

• An office is the center point of organization. It is a place to perform different activities of a business organization. The office is the brain of a whole organization.
• The office performs a clerical function such as information collection, recording analyzing, distribution of information and executive function such as planning, policies formulation, organization, decision making etc.

Office Spaces:

To aid decision-making in workplace and office design, one can distinguish three different types of office spaces:

• Work spaces
• Meeting spaces
• Support spaces

1. Work Spaces:

Work spaces in an office are typically used for conventional office activities such as reading, writing and computer work.

Work Spaces	Description
Open Office	1. An open work space for more than ten people. 2. Suitable for activities which demand frequent communication or routine activities which need relatively little concentration.
Team Space	1. A semi-enclosed work space for two to eight people. 2. Suitable for teamwork which demands frequent internal communication and a medium level of concentration.
Cubicle	1. A semi-enclosed work space for one person. 2. Suitable for activities which demand medium concentration and medium interaction.
Private Office	1. An enclosed work space for one person. 2. Suitable for activities which are confidential, demand a lot of concentration or include many small meetings.
Shared Office	1. An enclosed work space for two or three people. 2. Suitable for semi-concentrated work and collaborative work in small groups.

2. Meeting Spaces:

Meeting spaces in an office typically use interactive processes, be it quick conversations or intensive brainstorms.Let’s see some of them.

• Small meeting room: An enclosed meeting space for two to four persons, suitable for both formal and informal interaction
• Large meeting room: An enclosed meeting space for five to twelve people, suitable for formal interaction

3. Support Spaces:

Support spaces in an office are typically used for secondary activities such as filing documents or taking a break.For example:

• Storage space
• Print and copy area
• Locker area
• Library

Office Structure:

Choices include, how many people will work within the same room.

• At one extreme, each individual worker will have their own room;
• At the other extreme a large open plan office can be made up of one main room with tens or hundreds of people working in the same space.

Open plan offices put multiple workers together in the same space, and this can improve short term productivity, i.e. within a single software project. At the same time, the loss of privacy and security can increase the incidence of theft and loss of company secrets.

A type of compromise between open plan and individual rooms is provided by the cubicle desk, which solves visual privacy to some extent, but often fails on acoustic separation and security.

Office Buildings:

• An office building, also known as an office block or business center is a form of commercial building which contains spaces mainly designed to be used for offices.
• Requirements can be both legal (e.g. light levels must be sufficient) or technical (e.g. requirements for computer networking).
• The primary purpose of an office building is to provide a workplace and working environment primarily for administrative and managerial workers.
• An office building will be divided into sections for different companies or may be dedicated to one company.
• In either case, each company will typically have a reception area, one or several meeting rooms, singular or open-plan offices, as well as toilets.

Importance of office:

• An office is an information center which provides information relating to business transactions.
• It keeps relations with all departments and deal with information necessary for effective coordination.
• An office acts as a control center. It helps to monitor plans and policies which help in the implementation of proper working environment.
• An office works as a service center. It provides services to all the department of an organization.
• An office provides wages, salaries to their employees.

Interesting Facts:

• Over two-thirds (68%) of workers complete their jobs in a traditional office, which shows that offices are still the most popular workplace option.
• Managers are 9% more likely to work from a traditional office than individual contributors.
• Private offices are the most common office arrangement for traditional office workers: 38% of workers have a private office compared to a shared office (31%) or cubicle (25%).
• Over half (54%) of employees who have multiple workspaces think they’re more effective when they work outside the office.
• The most popular reason for working outside the office is work-life balance (26%).
• Spontaneous collaboration (25%) and personal and professional growth (22%) are the most popular benefits of coworking spaces.