What makes your office a good or bad place to work?

[myhandsareverycold]

My partner runs a medium sized business with 18 people in the office. It's telephone based selling. The business has been established for over 20 years.

Workplace morale is becoming an increasing problem. Many are saying they are unhappy in the role despite having been there a number of years and keeping new staff has become a problem in recent years.

They have good facilities, get an above average salary with good commission, decent holidays and duvet days.

What makes your office a good or bad place to work and what would you change if you could?

Why are they unhappy and do you offer an exit interview to establish why people are leaving.

I would concentrate on that first tbh.

Exit interview is a great idea. I'll pass that on. Thank you.

My office is a good place to work because I've got lovely colleagues... but the physical space is horrible. The windows don't close properly, it's not been decorated for years and some staff are at risk of redundancy

Previous reasons for leaving a job are
Office had no natural daylight no windows .
Freezing cold in winter , boiling in summer.
Filthy not cleaned properly.
Job boring and no flexibility if quiet could not leave even a couple of minutes early .
Petty rules .
Toxic colleagues
Lazy colleagues
Micro manager.
Currently I work in a lovely office with lovely ( mostly ) colleagues the only negative is a supervisor who feels the need to micro manage .
I think what makes a good place to work is the staff are happy , enjoy the job . to do this they should be clear what the job is don't delegate jobs not related to job like will you go and collect a parcel say . If staff get along that makes a good environment and keeps morale up . Also if there are niggles they should be discussed not ignored .

Oh also speaking to people with respect . I hate when a manager thinks they get speak to a member of staff like shit purely because they are less senior.

I'd do an anonymous (independent)survey and ask
What age are they? It could be demographics snowflakes are terribly hard to please
Is there a bad apple?

Just some thoughts good luck

There might an “old people, new people” issue at play. New people leave because the old people are making it unpleasant by being disgruntled, but the old people won’t leave because they need job security. My friend works in an office like that and it does create a churn of new people whilst the oldies stay put. I worked there for 4 years and I was still considered “new” - which wasn’t very welcoming.

I left my last two jobs because of crap management. The last one was crap senior management, the previous one was crap line management and crap senior management.

There is a theory that people leave managers and not jobs. I’ve found that management is never quick to examine themselves in terms of accountability for problems within a business, preferring to push it downwards or fudge things so it looks fine. I would advise your DH to start by examining what is happening at the top first.

I like a friendly team, no manager sitting or standing over me and some background music.

Previous job the MD did the micromanaging sitting in the corner of a large open plan office, he discouraged talking, which meant asking advice and sharing of knowledge or general team working was out. The place was a tip and there was a blame culture.

Current office, nice clear desks, background radio or you can wear headphones and listen to your own, nice people, talking allowed (not endless gossip though), free tea and coffee. Snacks table which we all contribute to. Only thing we struggle with is temperature.

flexible working

Perhaps the actual work sucks instead of the environment iyswim

I'd have a mobile phone ban and get rid of the noisy printer come photocopier.

I generally like my office but it can be overly noisy and it's an old building. Very noisy as it's in a building where events for older people happen in a grand hall opposite our office. We frequently have keep fit classes going on with music blaring out. There is no where to have a private meeting or a quiet lunch, very basic facilities.