But change can create uncertainty and discomfort in the eyes of some employees, and there is an art to redesigning an office in a way that keeps your whole office content! As for individual employees—there are plenty of things you can do on your own behalf to keep focused and content at work! Here are some pointers, some of them via Forbes:

-Add personal touches. Having family photos, favorite works of art, books, or a special decoration by your desk can bridge the gap between an office that feels like work and a desk that feels like home!

-Keep your workspace tidy and organized. Even if you don’t see yourself as an obsessive neat freak, it’s much easier for us to focus when our desk or other workspace is free of clutter! When items are easier to find, and files are organized in a neat and aesthetically pleasing fashion, you’ll find it much easier to focus on your work.

-Learn to ignore or otherwise cope with interruptions. We all work best when uninterrupted, but interruptions happen, and we all need to deal with them! Self-control goes a long way, but keeping some form of noise protection between offices and avoiding placing cubicles near elevators and other loud machinery can go a long way!

-Add plants to your work area. This may sound abstract, but studies have suggested that the presence of plants can make many workers feel more comfortable at their desks. Some researchers have even suggested that plants in work spaces can lower the blood pressure and increase the positive feelings of workers. But you’ve surely heard enough to put one at your desk, right? Right.

-Keep some form of structured relaxation in your work routine. Maybe play calming music at intervals of your workday, or go for a walk on your lunch break. Whatever it takes to make work feel more like a regular life activity and not a grueling day in a stuffy office, it’s worth the effort!

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The Transparency Kick has gotten so strong that some companies have even set aside periods of time when members of the public can enter the work space for practically any reason at all.

According to one marketing company profiled by Entrepreneur magazine, the idea is to give people the chance to ask questions, seek out advice or just chit-chat for a spell. There doesn’t have to be a so-called right reason to drop by the offices of Maryland-based Sisarina.

In fact, says the company’s Chief Inspiration Officer, a lot of people first ask why Sisarina would open its offices for an hour every Wednesday to a group that almost certainly will contain a perfect stranger. However, in the more than two years of the open-office meetings, the CIO maintains that the practice is worth it.

“I’m really keen on making sure people go offline to build relationships,” she says, adding that the face-to-face approach is far more preferred to interactions on social media. Plus, she notes, “I don’t feel like I have to go to every networking event in the world because people are coming to us.”

For dPop, an interior design studio, opening up the office for an entire day each month is the way to go. Visitors can bring along their laptops and access the studio’s WiFi. And the purpose of the monthly invitation goes beyond any hope of securing new clients, says the studio’s CEO. Instead, it’s all about tapping into whatever creative energies decide to wander through the door and stay for a while.

“If you’re in your own space, in your own head, and someone who isn’t so involved asks you a question,” she says, “It gets you thinking: Why haven’t we done this? Or tried that?”

So far, neither company has reported any security concerns, though occasionally a talker or two will show up and hold forth for a while.

Sisarina’s CIO sums up the open-door policy this way: “You generate word-of-mouth and you can control your brand a little better because people are coming to you and getting to know you in your home environment.”

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While office space leases might be experiencing decline in some areas of the country, a recent report indicates that in one area of America’s most massive metropolis – New York City – office leases are being signed right and left as tenants seek to capitalize on some of Manhattan’s lowest commercial rents in quite a while.

In fact, says the Cushman & Wakefield brokerage, lease agreements covering some 3.7 million square feet of office space in lower Manhattan (sometimes referred to as the city’s financial district) were signed in the first half of 2014 – more than a 30% increase over the same period in 2013. The vacancy rate for offices dropped from over 12% to just 10% by the end of December 2013, partly because a couple of corporate giants – Time Inc. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. – each leased out over a million square feet of workspace in Brookfield Place.

Some of the migration to lower Manhattan appears to have been at least partially motivated by rising prices in the midtown south market, regarded as between 30th and Canal Streets, as technology and media organizations looked to find less expensive alternatives to classic buildings in the area. Landlords were asking about $63 per square foot for office spaces in vintage midtown south structures, while similar properties downtown were asking just $40 per square foot. When considering whether to lease a million square feet, those numbers add up pretty quickly.

Another reason for the move south, says Cushman & Wakefield’s chairman of global brokerage, is that corporations were eager “to lock up deals before we see another rent spike.”

The initial part of that spike may have already shot upward to a degree that would make it impossible for some companies to take advantage of lower rents, as rents across Manhattan have risen 5% over the last dozen months, with rents in lower downtown now nearing $50 per square foot.

As a result, says another Cushman & Wakefield exec, “The $30 deal downtown is dead.”

So much for the premature prediction that offices aren’t necessary anymore. On the contrary, it’s more important than ever to make the best use of every available square foot of work space.

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Your hard-copy filing system, still needed for keeping irreplaceable items like original signatures, becomes overloaded to the point that filing anything – much less finding anything – becomes nearly impossible. Here are a few tips for making your hard-copy filing system work for you, instead of the other way around:

Stay Intuitive: Before arbitrarily setting up locations for various files, take a good look around your work area and think about where you tend to intuitively look for various items. If you can get away with it while looking natural, actually reach for various items and take note of which drawers you automatically tend to go to for each item. Then, do the same with various file items. When it’s time to find that critical document – quickly – your instincts will tend to take over in the rush to locate the all-important item.

Decide on Nomenclature: Should you use an alpha organizing system, or one with numbers? Are purchase orders, for example, filed by client name, area of business or by number? Decide which system you will use before setting up anything.

Assess Space Needs: if you file 100 documents per day and hold on to all docs for at least a year, doing some simple calculations will indicate how much file space you need, which will in turn dictate where you place the cabinets and how they are configured.

Don’t Skimp on Labels: Sure, the smaller, less colorful variety may be cheaper. Again, though, over the long haul, you want a labeling system that’s easy to use and also durable. In addition, consider the fact that color-coding various parts of your system can save everyone time: Why look for a blue-filed item (like a water bill) in the green-colored cabinets (which are for food expenses)?

Ditto for File Folders: Invest in quality and also consider using a color-coded approach. The items that hold and designate your precious documents should be able to hold up to prolonged everyday use, and be easily identifiable by category so as to avoid misfiling.

One last bit of advice: Keep categories broad to start with, which will allow for adding more specific categories later.

Now, where did I put…?

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So, how can you turn that battleship-gray square into something that’s both personal and productive?

These days, unlike those when cubes were first becoming popular, every desk comes with a computing device of some sort, many still with desktop machines and spacious monitors. Consider starting your cubicle renovation by choosing an appropriate and telling desktop image. You could go with the tried-and-true family vacation photo, or that drop-dead-gorgeous landscape image you took at just the right moment…once. Or you can browse the Internet for some decent monitor wallpaper – an especially useful option for dual-monitor users.

The wallpapering doesn’t necessarily need to stop at the edges of your computer monitor. There’s always the option of printing out various images, cartoons and even pithy sayings and then securing them to the walls of the cube or even to a backing or adjacent surface. Of course, always ensure that whatever you decide to tack to the walls is something that could stand the scrutiny of, say, any ordinary reader seeing the exact same thing on the front page of a famous newspaper…with your name prominently displayed.

Plants provide a sense of life as well as some needed oxygen, both of which can come in handy on those late afternoons when seemingly nothing has gone right in your department. Research low-maintenance plants to save yourself and any helpful colleagues from excess labor.

Sample some offbeat shops or local flea markets for unusual items that others likely won’t have in their workspaces. This can include just about anything, as the idea is once again to add a personal, unique touch, done within the bounds of your company’s sense of propriety.

Don’t forget to include items that will help you power through your day in the cube – like snacks and beverages. Bringing your own will feel more comfortable and personal, and will also likely spare you a trip or four to the break room vending machines.

And whenever and however possible, adjust your cube’s lighting to make it a comfortable, inviting space.

The post Customizing Your Cubicle appeared first on Office Space Planners.

The exec wants to find a decent, though not exorbitantly priced, space to hold the meeting. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and even though many people would be understanding of the fact that you’re located in a strange metropolis and likely selected the best space available in which to meet, it wouldn’t take long before a client started noticing things. Like whether the giant board room you’re meeting in was chosen for its unspoken intimidation factor. Or whether that veritable closet of an office was all that your company could afford.

In other words, you need to be able to rent the right space for the right client for the right meeting at the right price.

As with much else, yes, there’s an app for that.

LiquidSpace lets people find the right meeting room, private office or co-working situation for that all-important client conversation. Users can rent by the hour or day, either booking ahead or on the fly, selecting from thousands of workspaces.

And the company behind the app doesn’t stop there. It’s on a greater mission to help everyone find the work space that’s best for them.

This includes assisting enterprise companies in using their existing workspaces more effectively, as well as helping those companies create more productive workspaces.

Customers pay only for what they use. There are no phone calls to make or contracts to sign. The app offers complete transparency in pricing; there are even some free meeting spaces available.

The app provides photos of the meeting spaces as well as real-time availability. You can also access directions and parking information to facilitate your trip to the office. And, if needed, a Member Services team can help you find you way to the perfect booking.

The whole process can be completed in three steps: Find a location where you want to meet or work, using pin drop locations on the on-screen map. Take a look at the spaces that are of interest, noting fees and amenities. And then book the space, using another screen on the app to check in and out of the actual space.

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According to real estate experts, more and more Brooklyn business owners and employees want to work near home in order to create better work-life balance. In response to this demand, developers are eyeing the densely populated borough’s booming neighborhoods for chances to build hip new office spaces for up-and-coming companies. Younger parents who want to stay close to home form a large part of that demographic, according to Chris Havens, commercial director of aptsandlofts.com.

Office jobs in Brooklyn are indeed on the rise. According to Heidi Lerner, chief economist with Savills Studley, Brooklyn office jobs grew by nearly 6 percent in 2013. That’s 4500 new jobs for the borough—a sharp rise that figures to inspire demand for more office spaces.

According to Capital Transactions Group’s Will Silverman, the rise in office space in Brooklyn is “the last piece of the puzzle.” Silverman noted, “We love living here and dining here and raising our kids here. So why aren’t we building our offices here?”

A fitting symbol of the change of the guard may be art and design work space 3rd Ward’s giant Brooklyn warehouse. This 3rd Ward warehouse closed last fall due to financial troubles, and the artistic community it housed scattered while the warehouse remained vacant. But now, online live video provider Livestream is in the process of having the warehouse refurbished, in preparations to resurrect the 3rd ward with a bit of Livestream’s touch.

Fittingly, 3rd Ward is a Manhattan-bred start-up. And they’re doing more than just moving to the 3rd Ward warehouse—they plan to employ many former 3rd Ward teachers in instructional roles at the new incarnation of the facility, and hold conferences and other events there as well. And, naturally, everything taking place there will be Livestreamed!

Our demand for creative office space solutions may change in nature and location—but it always will demand ingenuity, good service, and good prices. Office Space Planners offers all these things and more—take a look at our office planning solutions today!

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