Here at Urban Group we are seeing organisations of all sizes beginning to understand the importance of culture and as an extension, the employee experience or their workplace.

Your workplace environment is now far more than walls, desks and computers. Instead, it serves as a second home for some employees, a recruitment tool for hiring and retaining top talent and, most importantly, a place to inspire and grow your team. Bringing your brand to life in your physical work environment plays a huge part in motivating people to work hard in shaping and evolving your brand.

Define your values

Take some time to define the experience someone has with your company. Think beyond logos and colors to the values that permeate your organization. Every single person who comes into contact with your company—employees, job applicants, customers or clients—have the power to influence your brand perception, but it all starts with you setting the tone.

Create physical extensions of these values

Once you’ve established your core brand values, it’s important to live these out internally. Your values should lead decision making to show your team that you genuinely believe the values you promote. This is also a great way to encourage your employees to practise those values as well. Here are a few ideas of how to incorporate your brand values in your workplace:

– Collaborative spaces where informal interactions between employees can take place to make everyone feel more comfortable contributing, sharing opinions and developing new ideas.

– Breakout areas with various types of seating to encourage people to step away from their desks and give them mobility throughout the office.
– Private spaces where team members can get away, work silently, meditate, and maybe even take a quick break through the day.
– If one of your brand values is sustainability, ensure that you’ve done everything you can to have a green office and show to your employees that you genuinely care about the environment.

Add flair with murals

If you’re not able to change the layout of your office, a new and upcoming way to bring your brand into your space is using murals. This involves choosing a feature wall in your office, or even a smaller meeting room, and commissioning a painting with visuals that reflect your core values. We recently executed this for a client, and incorporated on-brand and varying murals throughout their office to create a unique space with a “wow” factor. And don’t fear—this can also work for more conservative or corporate offices. Take a look at this meeting room mural we created for this EBCM on the Gold Coast.

Personalise your meeting rooms

Similarly, you can add some personality to your office by naming your meeting rooms with fun or eclectic names and use glass decals to represent the meaning behind them. In our experience, it’s healthy to theme them using things like movies names, popular songs, rivers, mountains, planets, or something relevant to your products and services.

Highlight your customers

By updating your office’s technology, you can install televisions around the office (or simply near the reception if you have clients coming in-and-out) to share the success stories of your team. If you don’t have the room or budget for this installation, you can kick-start the process by framing photographs and testimonials and putting them around the office or creating one centralised wall of stories.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can bring your company brand to life in your next fitout, get in touch with one of our fitout specialists today!