How We Structure Our Office to Stay Productive
At the end of January 2024, we will be moving out of our current office and into a brand-new space that we can’t wait to show off. But though we’re looking forward to the change of scenery, it will be hard to say goodbye to the Yurt. Beyond just being our home for the past few years, it’s also a place we worked hard to turn into the perfect office for our team.
We put some careful thought into how to design and decorate this place in a way that matched our outdoorsy, Pacific Northwest brand while, more importantly, lending itself to peak productivity. So, before we pack our things and move on to our next adventure, let’s talk a bit about some of the decisions we made that ended up curating that productive environment.
1. Setting Up The Yurt
As we move offices, we’re excited about the change and opportunity to make our new space entirely our own, but there’s no doubt that we’re all going to miss the Yurt. Our meeting room has been a part of who we are since we moved into our current office, and we put a ton of thought into ensuring it looks as on-brand as possible.
But we all love the Yurt for more than just how nice it looks. We’ve put a lot of effort into designing the space to match our brand, but also to be as conducive to our shared productivity as possible. For example, all our seating revolves around the corner TV, so everyone in the room can get a good view if one of us is presenting something. Similarly, we’ve put our chairs, couches, and meeting table in spots where everyone can see one another and feel like a part of the conversation no matter where they are.
Our long, hand-crafted meeting table is our highlight among highlights of the Yurt, and much like the other elements, it serves as much of a practical purpose as it does an aesthetic one. The table is big enough to house our entire team, with space to spare in case we have guests or clients. We also installed charge ports in the center of the table so we can keep our laptops with us during team meetings.
Overall, the space is perfect for all-hands meetings, after-work gatherings, and anything in between. Some of us also use it as a quiet workspace if other folks have meetings or if we just need a change of pace from our desks.
2. Segmenting The Space
One thing we like about our current office is how open and connected it all feels. No one workspace is too far from the others, which is perfect for a smaller, friendly office like ours. But while that layout is great for all of us keeping in touch with one another, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the most productive work environment. For example, our kitchen area is directly in between the Yurt and our busiest block of offices, and if all three spaces are in use at the same time with nothing dividing them, the conversations from each area are going to bleed together and make everyone’s day miserable.
Creating clear divisions between each of our spaces was crucial to keeping sound from one area from interrupting sound in another and maintaining our office productivity. Now, we can have non-business-related conversations in the kitchen and common areas without ruining the work of our coworkers on calls in their office spaces.
3. Making The Office Dog Friendly
If you ever visit our office, you’ll find out quickly that we work in a dog-friendly environment. It’s important to us to have our pets close while we’re on the job, but that means creating an office that keeps the dogs happy enough for us to stay on task without distraction.
We’re lucky that the space we currently have came equipped with a long hallway for the dogs to run through and play around in and a grassy area in the back for their bathroom breaks, but the other ways we made our office dog-friendly were within our control. You can check out some of the tips we used to make this space as much a home for our dogs as it was for us here on our blog.
Segmenting the space the way we did also helped ensure we could stay on task even if the dogs are making noise. We’re able to create quiet pockets of the office in case we have calls that require our full attention. In other words, if we need a couple of hours where we’re sure we’ll have a quiet work environment, we’ll move to a space where nobody else is on a call and where we can shut the dogs out for a bit.
We’ll be bringing the same productivity-friendly mindset to our new office as we finalize the layout, and though our goodbyes to the Yurt will be tough, many of the things we’ve loved about the space will be coming with us.
