Playing 'Musical Chairs' in the Office Can Spark Creativity and Productivity
Think back to your first day of high school or college. New, heavy books in hand, you entered your first classroom’s door to glance around in order to find the perfect seat. Do you know anyone you can sit by? Is this a subject you plan on being heavily involved in when it comes to class discussion, or maybe a subject you’ll definitely want to see the board in (like math)? All of these factors play into where you take your seat on that first day, but once that spot has been chosen no one moves around the room too much after that, so you better like your seat choice because it’ll probably end up being yours for an entire semester. For that semester, your participation, productivity, and concentration can largely be affected by where you sit.
Now think about where you sit at work. You probably sit in an island formation of desks, alone in your own office, or in a cubicle on your own floor, depending on how big your department is.
Like in your school days, where you sit, and the company you keep in said seated area, can largely affect the quality of work you’re producing. However, if you work within an office where it’s possible to move departments around and play a game of office musical chairs, it can produce some really positive outcomes.
Change Can Do You Good
A change of scenery can completely alter how you get through a day. Maybe you work best when working by a window, or you need to be in the back of the room where it’s less noisy and there’s less foot traffic. Before you decide to switch up seating arrangements, talk to your employees about where they think they will work best and what gets their creativity flowing. There are only so many window seats in an open floor office plan, so you may not be able to please everyone with the exact spot they want, but if you can improve the scenery for a large portion of your team and revitalize their ability to focus, that’s a good start.
It Makes You (Really) Aware of What You’re Working On
When you’re working in the corner of the room with no one behind sitting you, it can be easy to slip onto Facebook, send personal emails, or visit job listing sites for a couple minutes between tasks. However, if you’re seated in the middle of the room, or anywhere near a large group of people with the ability to see exactly what it is you’re working on (or not working on), you will most definitely become more aware of which websites you’re visiting.
Take care that you aren’t visiting or spending a prolonged period of time on any websites that your team members might not be thrilled to see you on. The office gossip grapevine travels fast and the last thing you need is your boss calling you in to discuss your Google history that day.
You Get to Socialize with Some New Faces
It’s amazing how little employees can actually know each other in an office. We spend at least eight hours a day with the people we work with and yet, unless your company takes the time to do team-building exercise, there’s a lot we don’t know about one another! And vice versa -- sitting next to all of your close work buddies can be great, but may hinder the quality of your work and how quickly you’re able to meet a deadline for it. Embrace moving to a new seat in the office instead of digging in your heels. There’s always a possibility that you could end up next to your new best friend.
GPB News wrote an article on why it matters where you sit in the office, and the overall takeaway was that “it requires some thoughtfulness, some planning […] If you decide to take this on, gauge your group. See if they like it. Keep polling them.” The most important thing to remember when moving your employees around is that, in the end, this is for them. If they like it and it works, great. If not, there’s no rule that they need to stay put forever either.
How can you arrange everyone to create the best possible work environment?
