 6 innovative ways companies are using to improve productivity what makes an office space great the answer is not that simple it requires a lot of analysis about the work and people in a workplace it depends on your company s culture diversity of employees nature of work and employees preferences success follows automatically if office environment is right it s a challenge for facility managers and other decision makers of a company to get the right workplace for their employees  how can they set up a workplace that s not just a place to employ all employees but one that s a strategic tool for production teamwork and growth major workplace trends just don t evolve overnight there are people and organization who constantly works to achieve it after lots of changes failure and success they come up with some innovative ideas to improve a workplace it s a constant process let s discuss some proven innovative ways to make a workplace better for employee s collaboration and productivity  create some overlap zones in office  according to the recent research creating opportunity for unplanned interactions among employees improves performance design your office in such a way that increases the likelihood of meeting different employees without any planning the idea of overlap zone might not sound great but it s proven to inspire collaboration overlap zones are those areas of an office where employees are likely to run into each other for designing these highly interactive overlap zones you need to analyze a lot about your employee behaviors how do your employees go from a place to another in the office where do they go frequently washrooms cafeteria and or water cooler what sort of spaces causes them to run into each other more frequently once you find the answers to above question then you can easily think of the changes to be made to create overlap zones in your workplace unreserved seating plan or hotdesking  many bigger employers are using hotdesking these days it s a concept of unreserved seating arrangements in which an employee can sit wherever he wants thanks to portable laptops and wireless internet to make hotdesking really hot in hotdesking there are no desks assigned to anybody when the employee comes to work in the morning they can sit anywhere and start their work from open desks to more public spaces like couches and bean bags are the part of hotdesking concept for effective working of this concept a company must take special care while designing their office spaces so that employee can move from one place to another without any problem hotdesking might not be a good idea for few businesses so you need to act only after analyzing every pros and cons of it design and implement a superdesk  designing office around the concept of open office is in trends these days what about designing a shared desk for all employees superdesk concept is getting popularity recently bigger companies are now spending time and money in developing super desks where all employees can sit together to work and collaborate private discussion rooms can be added in a workplace in order to provide quieter space to some employees in need have a music room in office  music can boost employee s productivity and set a positive company culture sometimes employees need a break to blow off the work pressure and what s better than the music for a musically inclined person music rooms can be the real stress buster it s the demand of great work culture to design a super soundproof music room in the company employees can go to the music room alone or in groups to play the music and get energized the best example of this music rooms in office is linkedin headquarter in mountain view california they have a great music room with highend musical instruments like drums keyboards guitars microphone stands av equipment and even stage lightings allow pets in the office  it can be a topic of discussion that an employer should allow pets in the office or not but there are many companies that allow employees to bring their pets to work these days allowing pets in the office can help employees to improve their worklife balance and helps them to get rid of stress it requires some changes in the office space to accommodate pets comfortably you have to invest additionally for those pets in order to please your employees plants greenery in the office  who don t like the plants natural lights and greenery according to the latest research adding plants and greenery in a workplace can increase the productivity of employees by 15 some companies started investing in plants and greenery around the office to make their employees happy and healthy  for example google s office in tel aviv israel has an indoor orange grove it makes google employees feel that they are sitting outside in a park in addition to greenery natural light is very important for employee s health natural lights do a great job in reducing eye strains so these are the latest design trends in office spaces for providing better working conditions to your employees you might not be able to implement all but starting with few can give you the better results  your functionality and productivity  