When you’re starting out in small business, you become highly adept in the fine art of doing the best you can with what you have. In order to keep your startup costs manageable you invest only in the areas where you can be sure of a healthy return on your investment and look for opportunities to drive down expenses everywhere else. As such, while you will likely have a criterion for your first premises, you realize that concessions must be made. You want to get started as quickly as possible and in this light you may relax your standards slightly in the pursuit of a premises that will allow you to start trading as quickly as you can.
However, there comes a point where you may feel that you have outgrown your original premises. Not only do you struggle to contain your operation within its walls, it also presents you with certain logistical issues that impinge on your productivity. If you feel as though the following are happening way too often, it may be time to consider a move…
The parking situation is a nightmare… Every. Single. Morning.
The first two hours of the day are arguably the most potentially productive. Unfortunately, the way in which most of us spend our mornings is rarely the most conducive to productivity. What’s more, it can be hard to start off the day in a productive and proactive manner when you roll in 20 minutes late having spent 25 minutes trying to find a parking space.
This is a recipe for late employees who show up to their desks angry, stressed and irritable. Not a great way to start the day. If you have the budget to get a civil engineer in to design a new car park this can make for much happier and more productive mornings. If not, it may be worth considering taking your business elsewhere.
Your spotty wireless network leads to endless downtime.
More and more of today’s businesses do their work not with desktop PCs but with laptops, tablets and other mobile and IoT enabled devices. These require a robust wifi network to ensure peak productivity… And when your premises has a number of wifi black spots or areas where connectivity slows to a crawl, this can lead to potential productivity issues (not to mention frustrated employees on the verge of throwing their devices out of the window). If this happens on a daily basis and signal boosters prove ineffective, it may be worth considering moving to a premises with a more robust Wifi infrastructure.
Your employees are crammed in too tight.
One could be forgiven for thinking that it’s best practice to have all of your employees in close quarters where they can easily see and communicate with one another (and where you can easily keep a close eye on everybody). Be wary, however! You may not be giving your employees room to breathe. Research shows that productivity is actually hampered when employees feel as though their managers are standing over them. Employees who are crammed in too tight and feel as though they do not have enough space are rarely at their best.
Take a long look at your premises. Is it really doing all it can to boost productivity?
