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An office space is one of the most overlooked components of a brand. You want your office to mirror the image you project through your website, email campaigns, social media, and more. When considering your office as an extension of your brand, you want to factor in not only your logo and color scheme, but your workplace culture and overall mission.

Look at our space: Price Modern had a dark, industrial office with employees packed in tight quarters. This office space didn’t mirror our brand image.

It was time for a change. Here are the three principles we used to re-brand our office:

1. Design the Floorplan to Boost Productivity

Think about your space and how it can influence your employees. Our office was originally located on the ground floor of our building. However, the 3^rd floor of our building has a tremendous amount of sunlight. By moving our employees from the ground floor to the third, we were able to create an instant mood boost for everyone.  We designed the space to complement how various departments work. By creating department specific stations — a sales station, a coordinators station, a designers station — we were able to cater to everyone’s personal needs. Not everyone works the same, and it’s important to provide versatile work environments. Different departments prefer different work environments. Making this change proved to be an instant productivity booster for our employees.

2. Get Employee Buy in

When you are redoing your office space, you’ll also want to find ways to incorporate the company’s guiding principles to help shape the work environment. Create a theme or rallying cry to influence the change. One of the ways we were able to pull in our culture to our design plan was to integrate our “IZE” into the look. “IZE” adds energy and motion to the end of the word. We often ask ourselves if “Are we tough enough to get our goals accomplished, or do we need to “IZE” it?”

You don’t always have to think big. In fact, start small. Minimal objects can make a big impact. Whatever you do, make sure you involve your employees. We asked our employees what their favorite “IZE” word was and incorporated it into the design. This gave everyone ownership over the design and had an added benefit of being a great conversation starter with visitors.

3. Reflect Your Mission

Your office should reflect your overall mission. You want to be able to instantly create credibility with your visitors. Incorporate your overall mission in order to communicate to prospective clients. People are visual beings, and an office design that reflects your mission will have a great first impression. Your corporate culture will be instantly recognized, and credibility will be established from the first time your visitor steps into your office. The goal is to have the space reflect what they have come to expect through your marketing campaigns so that everything feels connected. When people step into our office, they can see that we use the pieces we sell and have an office the accurately reflects what we strive to be — modern, innovative, and passionate about our clients and employees.

If there is a disconnect between your online presence and your physical space, your visitors will think twice about working with you. It’s an almost subconscious conclusion that they will make based on how the brand was communicated to them before their visit and how they feel when they are in your office. They will begin to question what was presented to them prior to their visit and look at the company through a lens of distrust.

Branding your space doesn’t have to be a complete office overhaul. Think about the small efforts you can make to incorporate elements that make a big impact on your brand. Be smart about creating areas that make your employees in those areas more conducive to how they like to work. This can have instant impact to your employee morale, productivity, and visitor credibility.

Price Modern is a proud AMA Baltimore sponsor. To learn more about Price Modern, visit their website: http://www.pricemodern.com/. Photo supplied by Price Modern.