How Do You Determine The Space Needed To Set Up Your Office?

When you are all set to start a new business or when you are moving into a new building, the first question that strikes your mind is that, how much space you need for your office. As a business owner, you must be able to determine the amount of space you need for your office. But how would you do that? You just have to plan carefully, as too much or too little space can be the budget breakers.

Getting locked in a wrong space can interrupt your business significantly, making it difficult to operate. However, there are certain techniques employing which you can get into a right space. First of all, you need to evaluate your current situation and decide your expectations for the business growth over the next few years. Asking the following questions to yourself can help you come to a conclusion regarding the office space size.

• How many employees are there currently?
• Can employees share the space or they need an individual desk?
• Do I have to add employees in the next couple of years?
• When will I add new staff to the company?
• What kind of employees I might be adding in future? Administrative, executive or sales?

Knowing how many employees you currently have and how many you would add in future, helps you operate your business comfortably, and you can expand your business easily without any costly interruptions. Basically, the amount of space you require is determined by the type of your business and the head count. The conventional space for an office space is about 150-350 sq. ft. per person; it is the type of the space you require to accommodate your business that plays a significant role in narrowing the range.

At the lower end of the range, we have the open plan design which has no private space for the employees; this configuration is commonly designed in the call centres and sales offices where desktops and workstations are grouped together. At the other end of the range we have traditional private office layout with cubicles around. Most of the private offices and law offices follow this configuration which has large conference rooms, support rooms, file rooms and pantry.

At the initial stage, you can keep an estimate of about 250 sq. ft. per person; calculating it for the number of current employees and also by keeping in mind the number of employee you would add in future, will give you a rough estimate of the amount of space you need. The rough estimation can further be refined and narrowed down when you start searching for space.

As the business owner, you’ll have a better understanding about the business and can easily identify the positives and negatives of a space, and determine if it suits your business well; you can choose private office, open space or the combination of both based on the nature of your business. It helps you to estimate the amount of space you would need during your lease term.