Advantia Business Solutions Blog

Workplace kitchens are no longer places to just make a brew or store sandwiches. The growth in flexible working, bring your own device (BYOD) and collaborative working means company break rooms are becoming much more than ‘worktop, fridge and kettle’. For informal team meetings, a chat over lunch or a change of scenery, office kitchens nowadays are often designed as multi-purpose spaces. Open plan offices mean people need different rooms to retreat to for quiet working or informal meetings – and employers are responding with a variety of comfortable, easy to use spaces in the kitchen. For an office kitchen that ticks the right boxes, here are six elements for making this space a runaway success: 1. Lounge area Providing somewhere for people to relax, have one to one chats or give informal presentations can help drive collaboration, creativity and engagement. An alternative to the more formal setting of some meeting rooms, comfortable seating can help peopl...

Summer is over, the kids go back to school, and your out of office has been removed. Trying to get back into routine as we return to our day jobs after the holiday period is always going to be a struggle, so here are some survival tips. Be an early bird The first day back in the office is always going to be a struggle, especially since you’re still probably in holiday mode. If you’re not horrendously jet-lagged, try and get a decent night’s sleep, eat a proper breakfast and try to get to work half an hour early. This extra time can also ensure you have time to clean up your desk and make an action plan for the week. Tackle your inbox Now for the time-consuming part. Dreaded emails. You may have only gone away for a week, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get 100s of emails – (Let’s just hope you remembered to turn your ‘out-of-office’ on!) Try and delete as much of the junk emails as you can without opening them, because clicking on them only wastes time you could ...