Category Archives: Business Advice

The Link Between Plants & Productivity

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According to the article by Caroline Webber, studies have shown that the environment we work in has a huge impact on how we think, act, and feel. Sure, painting the office green will boost moods, but we could take it a step further than that.  A study was done in which bees (whose brains have very similar molecular structures to humans) were exposed to the smell of recently cut grass. Within a few minutes, the behavior of the bees changed from agressive to calm.  So what does this mean for you? 

Plants not only improve air quality, they improve your well-being.  According to an article posted by Leading Company, when you increase the amount of greenery, the complaints about things such as being too cold or having headaches decrease.  Productivity is said to increase by at least 12% when people have plants in the room that they are working in.  Is this enough to make you want to buy more plants?

For more details, click on the following links:

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www.OFOVA.com

How To Stay Productive

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Here at Office Furniture Outlet, we not only want to sell you the best quality of furniture, but we want you to have complete satisfaction while in your office.  Your comfortability, productivity, and all-around wellness are of upmost importance.  Below, there’s an article we’ve found that gives tips on how you can stay productive and perform at your highest potential. Maybe you can start implementing them into your daily routine!

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1. Drink a glass of water when you wake up. Your body loses water while you sleep, so you’re naturally dehydrated in the morning. A glass of water when you wake helps start your day fresh. When do you drink your first glass of water each day?

2. Define your top 3. Every morning Mike asks himself, “What are the top three most important tasks that I will complete today?” He prioritizes his day accordingly and doesn’t sleep until the Top 3 are complete. What’s your “Top 3″ today?

3. The 50/10 Rule. Solo-task and do more faster by working in 50/10 increments. Use a timer to work for 50 minutes on only one important task with 10 minute breaks in between. Mike spends his 10 minutes getting away from his desk, going outside, calling friends, meditating, or grabbing a glass of water. What’s your most important task for the next 50 minutes?

4. Move and sweat daily. Regular movement keeps us healthy and alert. It boosts energy and mood, and relieves stress. Most mornings you’ll find Mike in a CrossFit or a yoga class. How will you sweat today?

5. Express gratitude. Gratitude fosters happiness, which is why Mike keeps a gratitude journal. Every morning, he writes out at least five things he’s thankful for. In times of stress, he’ll pause and reflect on 10 things he’s grateful for. What are you grateful for today?

6. Reflect daily. Bring closure to your day through 10 minutes of reflection. Mike asks himself, “What went well?” and “What needs improvement?” So… what went well today? How can you do more of it?

Check out the original article here

www.OFOVA.com

How to Promote Trust with your Office Design

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According to the article by Kath Walters, the way that an office is designed can enhance or undermine trust between everyone in the workplace.  Trust in the workplace is extremely important- Not having it leads to low morale, lots of micromanagement, and other factors that discourage people from doing their jobs.

When employees see that their boss has a huge office that he’s rarely in, while they slave away in tiny spaces, their trust diminishes.  Would you perform your best work for a company that you feel doesn’t value you? To fix the issue, you must promote fairness.  Employees deserve to have the latest technology, comfortable seating, and an adequate space to work in.  Communication is key, so go for designs that will promote clear communication.

These days, everyone in the office wants the same thing; The article states that trust level drops when someone has better quality furniture than others. If you want to have a nice chair for everyone, you can do that affordably by buying used office furniture.   If you’re looking for a great place to buy from, Office Furniture Outlet has the largest office furniture inventory in Hampton Roads.  We provide affordable new and used furniture and offer a range of services including space planning and design installation.  Let us assist you in building up that office trust!

Read the full article here

www.OFOVA.com

Warmer office could mean better health

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In the article below Matt Richmond wrote about Binghamton University professor Ken McLeod designing a floor lamp that will warm up one’s core temperature.  McLeod researched how a warmer core temperature increases the production of growth hormone, which regulates one’s metabolism,  and resulting in a healthier office environment.  McLeod’s floor lamp invention will take a while to become available, in the mean time focus on having a good ergonomic chair or a plant to freshen the air.

More on the McLeod’s invention below.

by Matt Richmond

Rochester, NY, Dec 18, 2012 — It’s not unusual for people to wonder if their offices are making them less healthy: people complain of a lack of fresh air, sick coworkers, and uncomfortable chairs, to name a few. In Binghamton University’s bioengineering labs, researchers are looking for ways to make workplaces healthier.

Binghamton University professor Ken McLeod says he has proof that a warmer office will make people healthier. In the university’s bioengineering labs, he’s building a personal heating device that uses a low-frequency laser to warm people up.

According to McLeod, fighting obesity by controlling calorie intake and burning the calories you can through exercise isn’t the best way to do it.

McLeod says the main benefit of exercising 30 minutes a day, five days a week, is that it increases a person’s core body temperature. And when your body temperature goes up, you produce more growth hormones.

“But you can see below 37 degrees, we make no growth hormone. You push up even half a degree and you can see this curve coming up fast and by 38 degrees, you’re pushing up a maximum amount of growth hormone, it’s gone up more than 100-fold.”

Growth hormones increase a person’s metabolism which keeps their weight in check. So that’s why you exercise, to warm yourself up.

McLeod wonders, why should we settle for exercising 30 minutes a day to get our body temperature up, when we spend 40 hours a week in the office, letting our bodies do what they have to to keep warm

“If we’re not exercising enough to maintain our core temperature, we’re going to do something else and what that something else is is insulating ourselves from the cold. We lay down white body fat under our skin.”

McLeod’s personal heater works by directing warmth right at a person, instead of heating up the air around them. McLeod estimates that his heater, which looks like a typical floor lamp, would only need about 15 watts of power, compared to more than a thousand watts for a space heater. Continue reading →

Professor Grant Schofield: Standing Up For Office…

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Standing Up For Office Health

by ROB STOCK

Professor Grant Schofield is making a stand for a better, healthier office.

Schofield, from Auckland University of Technology’s Human Potential Centre (HPC) based at the Millennium high performance sports complex in Albany, is on a mission to dramatically cut the amount of time office workers spend seated, which a paper published in the British Medical Journal last month suggests could be very bad for workers’ life expectancy.

He and colleagues at the AUT’s School of Design have created office furniture for the HPC to ensure that people remain on their feet for much of the day.

The desks are standing height, and the seats are designed, quite literally, to be a pain in the arse, the idea being that uncomfortable seats are needed to break our predeliction for sitting.

The British Medical Journal paper indicates that limiting sitting to less than three hours a day and limiting television viewing to less that two hours may increase life expectancy at birth in the US by between 1.4 and two years.

While the study, based on US data, does not mean that someone reducing sitting time to less than three hours will automatically end up living that much longer, it does indicate that a more healthful, and, Schofield argues, alert and productive, workforce could be produced if we reduced sitting time.

The HPC office design is a work in progress, but Schofield reports positive results already. He and colleagues report feeling greater energy levels and alertness, especially during that drowsy spell after lunch and during long phone calls and conferences.

They are currently engaged in building data on productivity they hope will provide proof that those feelings are justified.

Currently, desks of standing height are rare except when prescribed for those with bad backs, but the research suggests they should be at the centre of an office revolution.

Schofield said there is something ridiculous about the drive by the ergonomics industry to create more and more comfortable chairs, which just encourages sitting. A change of tack is needed, he argues.

“The emperor has no clothes,” Schofield says.

“It seems to me that the office is broken and nobody has noticed.”

Schofield would not banish sitting from the office. For certain, solo, focused, high-concentration work tasks, sitting works, but resetting the default from sitting to standing yields benefits.

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In an office with standing room only, workers won’t end the day exhausted, Schofield says. Standing burns more energy, but not as much as people may think.

If food intake and exercise remain otherwise unchanged, a worker switching to standing as the default setting in the office would end up around two kilograms lighter after a year.

The evidence is mounting for the benefits of standing at work, Schofield said, but he acknowledges that evidence does not necessarily bring about social change, as the obesity epidemic shows. Some good commercialisation will play a big part.

“Proof is good, but proof in itself does nothing because academic papers just sit there, but developing and selling this stuff would be a better way.”

Commercialisation of the intellectual property AUT is creating is at an early stage, but Schofield already has a brand name in mind: “Goya” which stands for Get Off Your Arse.

via Professor Grant Schofield: Standing Up For Office… | Stuff.co.nz.

What is Small Business Saturday?

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Below is a great description of Shop Small. Office Furniture Outlet is a locally owned small business.  We will be open for 2012′s Small Business Saturday from 10:00am to 4:00pm. Come by our 10,000 sq ft showroom and check out our quality used office furniture.  We are located at 1124-B Kingwood Ave, Norfolk, VA 23502.

You’ve heard of Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving, which for years was known as the busiest shopping day of the year. Then along came Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, which quickly became the busiest online shopping day of the year.

Since 2010, there’s also been a special shopping day, Small Business Saturday, to help small retailers get their share of the consumer holiday spending spree. American Express established the Saturday after Thanksgiving (during one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year) as the day to help small retail businesses get extensive exposure, and hopefully attract customers. Small Business Saturday, which falls on November 24 this year, is a day that rewards everyone—from the small retailers who create jobs, to the customers who buy locally and support these small retailers. It’s all about invigorating local economies and helping communities thrive.

Last year, over 100 million people came out to shop at independently-owned small retailers on Small Business Saturday. Now, in the event’s third year, American Express is planning for Small Business Saturday to be even bigger. That is why at insureon we wanted small retailers to get the most out of the day by utilizing the free tools provided by American Express.

Visit the “Promote My Business” section of the Small Business Saturday site, where you can download personalized in-store signage, social media and email templates to promote your business and the day. Create your own campaign to get your community involved; then get inspired by reading about how other small business owners made the most of their Small Business Saturday last year.

In addition, qualifying small businesses can create free personalized ads that link to their websites or Facebook pages. American Express will run these ads in a geo-targeted ad buy at no cost to the businesses. Ads are available while supplies of inventory last. Terms, conditions and eligibility restrictions apply.

By Rieva Lesonsky

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Follow Rieva at Twitter.com/Rieva and visit her website, SmallBizDaily.com, to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.

via insureon | What is Small Business Saturday?.

Buying Office Furniture? Read The Startup Tips from Millionaire Entrepreneurs

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Starting a new business can be costly. One way to save money is to buy used office furniture. In fact,  Entrepreneur.com’s recent article 7 Frugal Startup Tips from Millionaire Entrepreneurs stated Brett D. Reizen, CEO of Entertainment Benefits Group, didn’t purchase new office furniture for the first six years.

Office Furniture Outlet is Hampton Roads largest used office furniture retailer. Retailing regionally liquidated office furniture back into work environments. With warehouses full of quality-used office furniture, including case goods, file cabinets, desks, workstations, chairs, credenzas and much more.

Office Furniture Outlet is a full service office furniture retailer and offers the following commercial furniture services:

• Space Planning, Design & Installation
• Sales, Leasing & Rentals of Discounted Office Furniture
• Moving & Prompt Delivery Services
• Refinishing, Refurbishing & on site Repair and Maintenance
• The Purchase of Gently Used Office Furniture

With 20 years of experience Office Furniture Outlet takes pride in helping businesses select the right furniture within a given budget. We offer new and used products, purchase or leasing and consult with our clients to provide turn-key office furniture solutions.

Give us a call so we can help you with your next office furniture purchase. (757) 855-2800

7 Frugal Startup Tips from Millionaire Entrepreneurs | Entrepreneur.com

You don’t win in business by wasting money. Even the most successful entrepreneurs pinched pennies in the early days–and many still do. Here, several multimillionaires share their best cost-cutting tips when you’re trying to get your startup off the ground.

1. Cash in credit card rewards. Before the success of the George Forman grill super-charged sales at his direct-response television marketing firm, Rick Cesari became resourceful in using his credit card points to buy event tickets or thank high-performing employees by sending them on weekend getaways. Today, the founder of Seattle, Wash.-based Cesari Direct, charges between $125,000 to $200,000 on an Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card, and still uses the rewards to save several thousand dollars each year on employee perks at his $5 million company.

Related: Three Things to Know About Business Credit Cards

2. Skip the fancy furniture. “I didn’t buy new furniture for the first six years I was in business,” says Brett D. Reizen, CEO of Entertainment Benefits Group, LLC, Aventura, Florida, a $100 million provider of travel and entertainment services. Of course, you can start by checking out local used furniture shops or search on Craigslist. There are also furniture rental services like CORT, which can reduce the upfront cash you need to outfit your office. It also sells that rental furniture at deep discounts when clients are done with it. Find more online at CubeClerk, an office furniture marketplace.

3. Recycle and reuse shipping supplies. Even though his online garden supply retail business, Growers House, skyrocketed to $2 million in revenue in its first nine months, founder Nate Lipton only spent $300 on shipping supplies. Whenever the Tucson, Ariz.-based business receives its shipments it turns around and reuses all the boxes. If you’re shipping via Priority Mail, the U.S. Postal Service also offers free boxes and envelopes. Of course, there are discount cardboard box sellers, such as UsedCardboardBoxes.com, you can turn to as well.

Related: Five Tips for Saving Money on Shipping

4. Be creative about space. Instead of springing for a posh office to sell RetroFitness health club franchises, founder Eric Casaburi used an extra room in one of his health clubs. It wasn’t pretty, he says, but it saved him more than $10,000 in office rent and also fit with the company’s bare-bones brand image. Co-working spaces are another option to cut costs. Cambridge, Mass.-based HubSpot was headquartered in a Boston co-working space until it hit 100 employees, sharing conference rooms, coffee machines, and even a receptionist and phone system. LooseCubes and CityFeet are good directories of shared and co-working office spaces.

Related: How Small Shops Economize by Sharing Space

5. Check out deal sites. Liz Gaspari, co-founder of Gaspari Nutrition, an $8 million nutritional supplements company based in Lakewood, N.J., uses daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial to offer employee perks. Whether it’s through discounted meals and shows or gym memberships, the coupons have saved the company hundreds of dollars, she says. When it comes to business purchases, sites like RapidBuyr and Bizydeal can help you save on computers, office furniture and supplies, and even training courses.

6. Cross-train employees. Startups are no place for a “that’s not my job” attitude. After Jeff Platt began to train employees to fill multiple roles at his Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Parks, he saved more than 5 percent on payroll for the $15.7 million Los Angeles-based recreation company. Casaburi did the same thing at RetroFitness, attending his first International Franchise Association trade show with the manager of one of his gyms acting as a franchise sales representative. “Having employees move from hat to hat to hat saves you money and keeps your operations lean,” he says.

Related: 10 Free Online Resources for Business Tech

7. Do your own research. In his boot-strapping startup days, Casaburi also used to conduct his own market reach by sitting in parking lots of prospective locations and counting the car and foot traffic to see if there was enough activity to support a new gym. He analyzed every metric, such as population, vehicle and foot traffic, and other aspects of his most successful locations and tried to find locations that had similar activity and characteristics. Now that he’s staffed up, he no longer does this himself, but he estimates he’s saved more than $100,000 per year in salary or consulting fees before he hired help. Instead of hanging out in parking lots, you can take advantage of technology like ZoomProspector, a free service that lets you find communities by parameters like community size, education levels, and recent job growth.

via 7 Frugal Startup Tips from Millionaire Entrepreneurs | Entrepreneur.com.

Workspace Woes Are a Thing of the Past

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Tips below from Avery on having a great office space and creating the right impressions.

Workspace Woes Are a Thing of the Past

Like it or not, we’re often judged on the state of our desk or office. Establishing and keeping your workspace organised and tidy helps you look good, find things more easily and work with less stress. Adding a personal touch with colour or something from home makes your work environment a better place to be.

Tips to Picking a Sought-after Office Location:

A window seat is a great seat! You’ll get the benefit of natural light and a view.

A workstation that is away from high traffic or noisy areas of the office minimises disruptions from the general office noise

Consider the air conditioning in your office. If you feel the cold, you don’t want to be stuck under a vent that blows cold air!

Create the Right Space

Organise your space functionally and effectively with adequate shelving, a sizable desk, and a comfortable and adjustable chair. You’ll work better with furniture and space that suits your requirements.

Prioritise the items that you use frequently, storing them within easy reach. The items that you use less often can be stored in a cupboard or filing cabinet (where more effort is required to access them). It means you can access your information easily, and then also return them to their home easily. You’re more likely to retain the organisation and keep your desk tidy when it is less effort to do so.

Style Your Way

Select your desk accessories to tone down what you want to hide and contrast what you want to accentuate. This will help your workspace sit ‘comfortably’ within the existing interior and colour scheme while still having some colour that makes you feel good about your work environment. Then personalise your space with photographs or something that helps make the day to day desk time more fun. This way you can give your workspace a personality that you want to be around!

Label It!

Use a labelling system to mark folders and files to ensure they are always easy to grab when you’re rushing to a meeting, or need someone else to grab the file. Your colleagues will be super impressed with your desk if they can find what they need (and return it afterwards) when you’re not there.

Clutter-free From the Start

Ensure your paperwork doesn’t get lost in a pile by using letter trays, magazine file, binders and expanding files. Contain clutter with the help of desk drawers and pen holders. ‘Hide away’ the mess by managing frequently used working documents in manila files and document wallets.

If our desk is a good place to be, we feel better about our work. If our workspace is tidy and organised, it’s a better work environment for us, and for our colleagues. It’s time to make your workspace woes a thing of the past!

via Workspace Woes Are a Thing of the Past.

Steelcase CEO on How Office Layout Impacts Corporate Culture – Forbes

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Steelcase CEO on How Office Layout Impacts Corporate Culture

If culture is an organization’s only truly sustainable competitive advantage (which it is), and a winning BRAVE culture is comprised of behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values and the environment (which it is), then you need to think about how your work environment is communicating and informing your corporate culture (which it is whether you’re thinking about it or not).

From “I” Space to “I” and “We” Space

layout of a social/learning space (Photo credit: University of Michigan MSIS)

Steelcase is in the business of creating work environments, offering workplace products, furnishings and services. As CEO Jim Hackett explained to me in a recent interview, workspace design historically mirrored the organizational chart, with people jockeying to be as close as possible to the seat of all power – the CEO. But now that information revolution has made information the new seat of power, there is much more flexibility in workspace design. Thus, as Hackett explained, the workspace of the future needs to:

Celebrate the shift of what we call the ‘I’ space to the ‘we’ space… Space has to enable and empower information in ways we only imagine… (across) a continuum of I and we work… people need a range of settings to accommodate focused, collaborative and social work in both open and enclosed environments – in other words, a palette of place.

This manifests itself in Google’s corridors set up for impromptu information sharing, in Microsoft’s celebrating the power of programming in its team settings as people “conquer the code,” and in conference rooms where information has a seat at the table.

Workspace as Leading Indicator of Cultural Evolution

Darwin made it clear that survival of the fittest is not survival of the smartest, strongest or fastest, but survival of those best able to adapt. As organizations adapt to the changing macro environment, their internal environment must change as well. Hackett has seen some examples of this done well in offices including Deloitte University’s in Plano, Texas. As Hackett put it:

Learning represents the strategy of the company.

Deloitte celebrates its expertise across the university facility from the “story wall” in the lobby to the “associate finder” that enables anyone to find anyone else in the massive facility. In many ways, the whole university is one large “we” space.

Allocate Workspace to Issues Instead of to People

Steelcase’s own offices have evolved as the company has changed, and serves as another example of how to use workspaces to communicate and enable corporate culture. When Hackett became CEO in 1994, one of the first things he did was to move all the executives off of the same floor and into a leadership “we” space.

Now, instead of designing traditional offices, Steelcase creates “we” spaces around the three-four most important meta issues. According to Hackett, executives don’t need homes, “command-level projects” do. So there might be a project room for a team working on a merger, product launch or a recall. Instead of people bringing information into meetings with executives, the information stays in the project rooms and executives travel to it. As Hackett explains, they made this shift because:

Innovation requires collective ‘we’ work. To this end, it’s critical to design spaces that not only support collaboration, but augment it (with) spaces that promote eye-to-eye contact, provide everyone with equal access to information, and allow people to move around and participate freely.

Manage Your Environment in Context

Your office environment is not just the context for what you do, it’s an important choice itself. There is no one best environment for all organizations. Instead, plan and put together your office environment as a core component of the BRAVE culture you choose to create. Create an environment that:

Supports behaviors which lead to business productivity.

Enables people to relate to each other and to information the way you want them to relate.

Reinforces your attitude, more severe and hierarchical or more relaxed and fluid as appropriate.

via Steelcase CEO on How Office Layout Impacts Corporate Culture – Forbes.

Quality Counts When Buying Your Office Chair

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Used Multi-Function Task Chairs For Sale in Hampton Roads

If you can’t afford to buy the best quality new office chair consider buying the best quality used office chair.  Quality counts when it comes to purchasing furniture for commercial use.  There is more ware and tear on commercial furnishings.  Buying used commercial grade office furniture is a budget friendly solution to ensure the furniture you purchase will last.  Buying an office chair is like any purchase; you should do your research to find brands and styles that suit you and your business.  Once you have targeted them go out and try them out.  Once you have settled on what you like go to your local used office furniture dealer to find the same name brand and style you were looking for at a much lower price.

Below is a great article on the reasons for buying a quality office chair.

Office Furniture Outlet offers a large inventory of used office chairs in current styles. We carry top office furniture brands such as Herman Miller, Steelcase, National, Maxon, Sit-On-It and many more.  Stop by our showroom at 1124-B Kingwood Ave, Norfolk, VA 23502 to find your next office Chair.  Need directions?  Click Here

Why Buy A Quality Office Chair?

So the question on the table…Why buy a quality office chair?

Office chairs can be one of the most crucial office furniture purchases you can make. Lets be real, most office furniture dealers are going to quote you the cheapest office chair you can find. Office furniture dealers don’t make much money in the way of seating. If you were going to second guess a selection you made on your office furniture quote, let it be the office chairs. Office chairs can single handedly make or break your office space. Why? You can buy high quality cubicles that look very cool to attract new talent, buy conference tables that fuel creativity, select colors, carpet, computers and what have you to aid your work force but if you select crummy seating your employees will be uncomfortable ALLL day. Office seating is the backbone of your working environment. It is crucial that your employees are comfortable throughout the day and that that have enough adjustablity options so that the chair can fit their individual needs. Here are a few tips on buying quality office seating.

1. Don’t buy cheap.

Chairs are like anything else, you get what you pay for. If you go down to your local office supply store and pay $100 for a brand new chair….you could have done better. Those chairs may be comfortable for the first year but, soon after the seat pan will start to wear out and you will have to replace the chair or a host of others parts. Quality office chairs can last a very long time, their parts are warranted and they are not cheap. Here is a good rule of thumb to find out if a chair si worth buying: go up to the chair with one arm and pick it up by the arm rest, if its heavy / difficult to pick up you most likely have a quality office chair. It should be heavy. If its heavy it means the mechanisms within the chair are heavy duty, the materials used are high quality and the chair will last longer.

2. Buying used or new chairs?

Buying used office seating is done all the time but some businesses prefer to buy new office seating because they have been through the ringer on office seating before. Here are some good rules for buying used office seating.

Used office seating is a great way to save money on quality office chairs but, DO NOT ever buy low quality used office chairs. What do we mean? We mean a used chair that was originally purchased from a chain office furniture store. Chairs that are low quality to begin with are sure to be even worse when purchased preowned. If you do decide to save money buying pre-owned seating buy a name brand only. Herman Miller, Haworth, Steelcase, Knoll just to name a few are good brands to stick with. Their chairs last a very long time and can be purchased used without any problems. Herman Miller Aerons for instance are highly sought after in the pre-owned office furniture market as are Steelcase Leap chairs.

A chair that fits the office

Another good tip would be to find a chair that can fit any person in your office. People come in many different shapes and sizes, some big, some small, some heavy, some skinny. It important that you select and office chair to accommodate the bulk of your workforce. This means finding a chair that has many adjustments available. The most common are height, seat pan, arm rest and lumbar but their are chairs with over 25 adjustable options available. The more options the chair has, the easier it will be for your employees to fit right in.

via Why Buy A Quality Office Chair? | Used Office Furniture | Used Cubicles.