Every HR manager understands the importance of keeping a workforce comfortable at work, and an easy place to make that happen is in the break room.
Too often break rooms are designed solely for utility and not for aesthetics. For many of us, what we imagine when we think of a break room are drop ceiling tiles, countertops, a small refrigerator, a microwave that needs cleaning, a table with mismatched chairs. It’s not the sort of design that makes most people think of comfort.
For most companies, even in the break room, there is work going on. Colleagues on break are as likely to be talking business as they are their weekend plans, and fostering an environment where this sort of productivity takes place is beneficial to the company.
To get this added value from your break room, you want to make the break room comfortable and stylish so that employees can be comfortable.
Is your break room large enough to accommodate several employees? Is it furnished in such a way that employees will be comfortable sitting and chatting?
An attractive break room will be more inviting for your employees, so you want to make the furniture stylish. You should include comfortable chairs, and give some thought to the lighting. Fluorescent lighting from the drop ceiling could be replaced by a couple of lamps that will give your employees an opportunity to rest their eyes from the office lights.
Beyond the value of having your team engaged with each other in the break room is also the potential a beautiful break room has for recruiting better candidates.
Who wants to give a prospective employee a tour of the office and have to point to a closed door when showing them the break room? Wouldn’t it be more enticing to that quality candidate if you could leave the break room door open and say to them, “This is our break room, and you’d be surprised how much important collaboration happens for our team in this room.”
A beautiful break room can be an important tool in your company’s toolbelt. It can help to give you a cohesive team, it can generate outside-the-box solutions from your team, and it can even be the thing that drives your next important hire.
