Everyone in their office has desks. The desk is where most of the work happens. However, the work being done on the desk requires direction. What needs to be done and who needs to do what are all essentially intangible questions that need to be answered before any business can get down to doing anything. Where do these questions get answered? Why in the office conference room of course!
The office conference room is easily one of the most important rooms in any office. This is where the senior management and the visionaries of the company sit down to make all the critical decisions. This is where all the great ideas are bandied about and the right ones implemented. This is also where tasks are assigned so that those ideas get implemented successfully.
What all this means is that you can’t be casual about the office conference room. You need it designed in just the right way and equipped in the right way. You need to avoid bad mistakes pertaining to the office conference room. Avoiding such mistakes becomes easy if you know what to look out for. Here are six most common office conference room mistakes that people make.
Relying On Just One Office Conference Room
One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when it comes to their office conference rooms is that they think that one is enough.
This is usually a result of miscalculation of the organisation’s needs or simply not enough space for there to be more than a single office conference room. While for many organisations, a single office conference room may work perfectly fine, it may not be ideal in most organisations.
One of the most difficult challenges associated with such a decision is that designing an office conference room that fits all potential needs can be difficult. In fact, when people try to do this, they end up cramming too many things into the room simultaneously. Subsequently, these things start clashing with each other to a point where none of them perform their primary function to the full.
Office Conference Room Too Large or Small
The usual fallout of an organisation trying to work with a single office conference room is that the room either ends up being too large or too small. Conference rooms that are too large counter the creativity of employees while smaller conference rooms affect their physical comforts.
Whether the creativity suffers directly or gets suppressed by physical discomfort, the end result on the business is negative. The decisions are either not made or the wrong decisions are made.
Thus, when it comes to your office conference room, you should carefully analyse how many people may be using it in the future before deciding on its size. In fact, if conference rooms are going to be important to your business, then you should have more than a single one with each of them sized differently.
Excessive and Harsh Lighting
Excessive or harsh lighting has the same effect on the creativity and efficiency of an individual that overcrowding has.
However, many people don’t realise this and instead think that their conference rooms should be bright and well lit.
In fact, it’s the opposite that is true. Creativity and efficiency is always highest when the surroundings are calm and non – distracting.
Think about the places where you find yourself the most relaxed, creative, and productive. Aren’t those places gently lit and calming but not too dark? Your office conference room should also be like this. Its lighting shouldn’t be too hard and harsh.
At the same time, it shouldn’t be too dark either. The ideal lighting for an office conference room will be in the midrange. Alternatively, certain areas of the conference room can be lit with highlights while others can be left subtly lit. It all depends on the design of your conference room but the one thing you should always keep in mind is that it isn’t dark or too harsh.
Choosing the Wrong Equipment and Furniture
Deciding on the office conference room is all about finding the most optimum conditions for your employees. The reason is not only to make them most efficient and productive but also keep them from getting distracted. Just like spatial designs and lighting considerations, you also have to consider equipment and furniture.
Similar to how you decided the size of your conference room on the basis of the number of people who will use it, you have to decide what type of equipment to put in the conference room.
Consider what the purpose of the conference room is and decide which equipment will facilitate that purpose most. In terms of furniture, you need to again focus on the comfort of your employees. As long as they are comfortable, they’ll not only be happy to brainstorm but also be their most creative when required.
Screen Size Too Big or Too Small
Modern businesses are all about communication. Communication, as a matter of fact, is the backbone of most firms these days. Because of this, an office conference room needs to have the right equipment for communication. In the majority of cases, this means a big screen that can be used to share videos, explain ideas, and give presentations.
This is another area where most people have glaring misconceptions. People think that the bigger display screens are the better they will be able to serve the conference room.
However, this isn’t entirely true. As in the case of room size, neither too big nor too small is right for the display screen. Instead, the right size depends on the number of people who will be using it as well as the orientation of the room. The display screen needs to be big enough for everyone in the room to be able to see it while not being so big that it overpowers and intimidates all other thought in the rooms.
If you get the size of the display screen in the office conference room right, then it will become a tool as opposed to becoming a hindrance.
Technology Being Too Advanced
Technology is as important to business operations these days as communication. However, like the display screen size, technology is supposed to facilitate the mental processes that are supposed to take place inside the office conference room.
It isn’t supposed to become the object of discussions. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens when businesses try to install the latest technologies in the conference.
This happens especially when there isn’t anybody in the office proficient with the technology that was installed. If there’s no one in the office who knows how to operate this technology, then it would turn into a melee where everyone would want to try their hand.
Needless to say, this would take the focus, emphasis, and attention away from the subject matter that was being discussed. So, it is advisable to install technologies that can be handled by people in the office as opposed to something so advanced that no one knows what to do with it.
Designing and planning an office conference room is all about common sense and marrying potential needs with solutions. If you keep these six mistakes in mind as well as the basic concept, you can easily avoid not just these mistakes but all others pertaining to office conference rooms.
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