University researchers, management consultants and interior designers have all come together and compiled four critical elements to productive work environments to bring your office out of the dark ages and right into the 21st century.

Take a look at your organization, how it runs, the company culture; and using these four key elements, find the best ways to benefit the people you work with. For as everyone in business school learns, the number one asset of any company, is its employees. Take care of them and they will take care of your company.

• View each individual's workspace as a tool that will help them perform the job and not as another costly expenditure against your bottom line.
• Provide comfortable, ergonomic workspaces and seating that will allow your employees to work without injury
• Design acoustically sound environments that will reduce the amount of disturbances to personnel and provide appropriate levels of privacy for the work being done. Consider area rugs and wool rugs for the floors for improving insulation.

• Create a work environment that has a natural flow. If the accountant works with Human Resources on a regular and daily basis, do not place them on opposite ends of the office. The travel time alone will eat away billable hours everyday.
• For those that are often in meeting with coworkers, such as managers, create a small conference room within their offices. Instead of having to constantly find an available conference space, allow them to swivel around in there chair and call employees, clients, and partners right in.

• Supply the right equipment need to do the job. Design is now readily integrated with new technologies allowing a flexible work environment with more choices than ever.
• Allow more employees to focus entirely on what you are saying and noting on the board with new products that allow brainstorms and notes taken on the white board to be photographed and emailed to the entire office with just a few clicks.
• While these key components are essential elements needed to improve efficiency and performance of the individual employee, team and organization in every office, they are merely a starting point.

• Design a space that will help you hire and retain effective personnel and management. Easier said than done, right? Wrong. Think about where you would like to work; the ideal place to spend 2080 hours or more per year. Create a hearth at your office. Start by placing the break room in prime real estate - the spot with the best view, even if that means you, the CEO, lose the corner office with downtown views.
• Create a team atmosphere that will facilitate communication and interaction between teams and personnel that do not typically interact. Take that break room with the amazing views and place key, shared office functions around this point such as the mail room, supply storage, and copy area. More ideas will cross team here than in any conference area or bull pen.
• Allow employees to have input as to how their own space is designed. Even if all you have to offer them is a 6' x 8' cubicle, they will be more content if they have a choice as to what type of storage or arrangement it is they will be working in for the next several years.