Changing your office desk layout isn’t as crazy as it sounds. It gives colleagues a chance to build stronger working relationships and it provides an opportunity to address or improve broken workflows and change communication dynamics within the team.

It also doesn’t have to be costly – simply, considered.

Embrace back-to-back desks

Back-to-back desks involve workstations facing each other and a further workstation space at the end of a bank of desks. This has the huge advantage that workstations are close together to support team collaboration, but desk dividers and desk screens can provide privacy or sound dampening where needed. With this configuration, the space that would otherwise be used for walkways between standalone desks can provide a further couple of workstation spaces.

Key numbers to remember

• In a small office keep aisle widths at 750mm.
• In a medium office keep aisle widths to 900mm and
• In a large office maintain widths of 1,500mm for walkways.

Four-person Island layouts

For more workspace for each workstation, consider a four-person workspace – this allows all the benefits of easy communication, and requires fewer walkways but, with each employee facing away from each other, reduces the sound carry. However, you will need a wider walkway, because with this style of desk, the desk space projects deeper into the room space.

For square rooms, consider a four-person workspace layout where corner desks are arranged in a plus-shaped layout, with one person in each internal 90-degree angle. This makes for a shorter work bench overall, but a deeper one.

Tips for planning your office desk layout

• Create a scale plan to establish the most efficient way to position your desks without losing too much space to access aisles.
• Consider an aisle down one wall, and one down the opposite wall with a face-to-face bank of desks down the middle. This configuration allows you to optimise the use of your two compulsory aisles and is particularly efficient with space in small or long, thin offices.
• Consider access to power points, critical for PCs and laptops. If your employees and workstations don’t have easy access to power, consider retro-fitting desk grommets or pop-up power sockets to ensure each employee has the power they need to work effectively.
• Think about cable management. If you’re running cables along a bank of desks, plan your cable management using cable trays and cable snakes to keep both your your employees and your cables safe. For more tips on how to manage your cables effectively, visit our blog on our Kuba cable management system.

You can find the full specifications for our desks and cable management systems on the product pages of our website, but if you do have any remaining questions, you can chat with our friendly and trained advisors online through our website.