We all know that first impressions count. When you invite a potential business partner to your office, or you host a group of clients for a lunch meeting, you want to be sure that the experience from the moment they walk in the door is one that will leave them with a positive image of your company. Before mapping out how you will create a positive visitor experience, it’s crucial to identify who your visitors are and why they are visiting you. Map out the ideal experience for each visitor type and scenario separately.   Identify Touchpoints   Once you have identified who will be visiting your office and why, determine which touchpoints visitors will interact with at your office. They may include the

Are you moving into a new office space or looking for ways to revamp your existing space? Providing well-designed meeting rooms is an important aspect of creating a successful, productive workspace.  There has been a trend toward more flexible meeting spaces that accommodate dynamic, hands-on meetings and breakout sessions. People are adapting to the evolution of the workplace into one that has become more flexible, fast-paced, and conducive to multi-tasking.   What Is a Flexible Meeting Space?  A flexible meeting space is one that accommodates traditional meetings, such as theatre, board, or classroom-style meetings, but also allows for more dynamic meeting formats and encourages employees to rearrange the room.    Today’s office furniture is light, movable, stackable, or on wheels, and this encourages

Many people dream of working from home. They can say goodbye to their dreadful commute, wear pajamas all day, sip on homemade coffee, and zip through tasks without the distractions of an office. Better yet, remote working could even mean working from exotic destinations, such as a tropical beach, with just your laptop. Despite its obvious advantages, working at home can bring a number of distractions and downsides.   Concentration Suffers Having difficulty concentrating on work issues is a common complaint for those who work from home. Everything from unexpected visits, to noise from children or pets can make it very distracting to work from home. Other people may also have a hard time accepting the notion that you are busy, even though you

Agile development was originally designed for teams that are co-located in the same office. The agile methodology recognizes face-to-face communication as being the most effective way to share ideas and collaborate with colleagues. The benefits of in-person communication include having the ability to sketch on a whiteboard or on post-it notes, so you can clarify your ideas and minimize the amount of time it takes to get a message across. But these days, many businesses have distributed teams that work on agile projects across time zones. If you strictly adhere to the agile methodology, it’s hard to follow a lot of its practices without being face-to-face with your colleagues. Some of the unique challenges facing agile teams include the following:  Building rapport with teams

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted in April of 2016, forever altering the global digital privacy landscape. Designed to unify the data protection laws across EU member states, GDPR has impacted every entity that holds or uses European personal data both inside and outside of Europe. This means that nearly every website and application in the world has been affected.   Almost every aspect of people’s lives now revolves around data. Services people use every day, like social media and bank applications, collect, store, and analyze personal data. Under GDPR, organizations must ensure that they gather data under strict conditions and protect it from misuse. Lack of compliance could lead to hefty fines of up to €20 million or 4% of annual turnover. Non-compliance