Choosing the right office for your business can be tricky, but there is a recipe to it! Making sure you hit all the right boxes is crucial to guaranteeing you, your staff and your clients have the most fruitful experience possible in that workspace.
That’s why we threw together a quick list of the ten most important things you should consider when picking the perfect new office space.
1. Pick the Right Location for You, Your Team and Your Clients
Everyone’s going to be annoyed if the London office is a million miles away from where they need it to be. No one likes an extended commute even if it does mean the business is saving a little on office rental costs, generally because it feels like you’re picking up the bill, so make sure you take location into account. London Executive Offices released a study recently showing the true value of a London business address.
2. Choose a Location that Suits Your Business
Don’t go with minimum cost industrial-looking areas if you’re trying to cater to the luxury crowd, it just doesn’t make sense. Choose the area that matches up to your image, as well as your clients. Location is important to people, it can really play into how they later view your operation.
3. Room to Expand if Needed
Leasing an office that doesn’t have room to expand is like committing to fail. Nearly all business models factor in some kind of growth or expansion, hiring new staff, taking on more and more clients, whatever, and your office premises should represent that.
4. Watch Out For Any Hidden Costs
Like buying or renting basically anything nowadays, there are a lot of offices that come seemingly with a great price, only for you to discover annoying regular hidden costs. Service charges, insurance costs, moving expenses, whatever. Extra hidden costs can be a burden, especially for a smaller or newer business, watch out! It might be right for your business to look into serviced or virtual offices, to find out more click here.
5. Watch Out for Insecure Lease Rates
Certain offices can and will raise rent rates after a certain period, once you’ve been suckered in by a lower rate, generally. You want the lease rate locked down as much as possible. You don’t want to find yourself being charged consistently more as the months go by.
6. What’s the Parking Situation?
If you’re a bigger office that’s going to be hiring a larger number of people, or you’re going to regularly be having a lot of visitors, you need good, convenient parking, nearby. If you’re a smaller operation, it doesn’t have to be as much of a concern.
7. How long is The Lease?
You should try to get the right length of lease to match your business plans. You don’t want to be paying for offices months after you move out, so make sure the lease length matches up with your plans.
8. Do the Aesthetics Measure Up?
Appearance is important, and your office atmosphere and design needs to match up neatly with your branding. If you want a carefree, casual or arty environment, make sure your office reflects that, for instance. Incongruous office/business pairings will just throw everybody off.
9. Sharing Can Be Cheaper
Are you the kind of business that would work well in a shared environment? If so, going with a shared office can be cheaper, as well as cultivating a friendly, open and varied environment. Ideally, you’d share with a similar enterprise, although maybe not a direct competitor!
10. The Office needs to Have Full Disabled Access
Here in the UK, disabled people are guaranteed complete access and facilities within the workplace by law, and your office should reflect that. Not only do you need to make sure of it for your clients and employees, it’s a legal requirement!
