Let’s explore how branding your office design to reflect your mission & culture can improve productivity. As clients and employees walk into your office space, will they immediately understand the mission and culture of your company?  Your organization’s mission and culture shape your brand and your brand should reflect your culture, so when you look at the space you are in, are using office design to leverage the power of your brand?

Reflecting your organization’s mission, culture and brand through design is critical for creating a strategic vision for your company to continue building for your future and reaching your corporate goals. So before even considering design elements, you must start at evaluating the core values of your company. The office design process is a great way to focus and re-evaluate your mission.  After that, it is important to make sure that those values are embodied in your space.

Your Office Design Creates an experience

The goal behind good branding and design is to create an experience for everyone that enters.  When people walk through your door, they will immediately receive your message.  What is the feeling that get from your workspace?  Is your brand, mission and culture creating connections and a positive experience?  Office design including your logo, paint colors and furniture is part of the experience, but effectively connecting your brand with your mission and culture is much more than that.

Design to reflect your brand and culture

Often, a mistake that companies make is failing to understand the potential power and benefits of leveraging your office environment as a source to reflect your values and brand.  By using design elements such as finishing materials, layouts, office furniture and paint colors, you can effectively integrate your message into your space.  When people walk through the doors, the brand should be evident all around them.  For example, if your company’s values and brand send a message of innovation and collaboration and your office is a sea of closed off cubicles, the design doesn’t adequately convey your company’s message.  To reflect innovation and collaboration, your office design would be better suited with an open plan with flexible seating areas, movable partitions and design elements that make it easy for collaboration.

Benefits of Branding Your Office Design

By using the process of office design to reflect your mission and brand, you will see a number of benefits.  A well-designed space will create critical connections between the staff and your brand, which leads to increased productivity, inventive and innovative thinking and a positive workplace experience for your employees with a deep belief in the mission and values of your company.  In terms of clients, by communicating your mission through branding, your company will stand out from its competitors and a positive impact on the way your company is perceived.

Together, a company’s mission, brand and culture, when communicated correctly, signify to employees and clients that an organization is grounded in core values.  By using elements of design to express your mission in your physical space, your company can shape the way you are perceived by employees, clients and investors.  When branding is done well it will lead to a positive office culture, attract top talent, maximize productivity and create a return on investment.