Google’s office has an indoor slide for their employees and it’s exciting.

But there’s one thing that this tech giant wishes to tell us—there’s nothing wrong with injecting a little fun in the collaborative office environment. It’s good for your employees, therefore good for the entire business.

If we follow Google’s logic, office design is not just a gimmick. It’s a game plan to spike employee productivity to the roof! A recent UK workplace research proves that a well-designed office can boost a person’s happiness by 33%. This means that investing in good office design pays you back with more satisfied customers, bringing profit to the business.

You don’t have to be a giant in the business to give your workers an inspiring working environment. There’s more to the indoor slide, fake grass, and funky colour schemes. As workplace designers, here are the best design strategies to achieve a workplace that boosts productivity:

Working with your office culture

Your corporate culture is your personality—and nothing is more beautiful than a brand who isn’t afraid to tell people who they are. A well-designed office reflects the ethos of the company as a whole. To do this, use your company mission, value, ethics, expectations, and goals as a parti or inspiration in building your ideal work environment. Your office must fit your people and your culture, not the other way around.

When you design based on office culture, you’re employing purpose-driven design. You use the physical office as a medium to communicate to your brand’s personality to employees. This way, you’re not forcing people to believe in your company ethos, but you’re letting the company’s principles encourage and support people every day. When your employees and company’s values strongly align, your organization will function exceptionally well.

Involving people in the design process

Your employees who feel a sense of belonging in the office are the same people who have high morale and engagement at work. When they feel growth and improvement at work, you’re going to retain your best people in the company.

To do this, you have to understand how the business runs at every level and engineer it based on the needs of your employees. Speak to them and discuss the things or ways which can help them do better in their jobs. Delve into the little things—desk and chair ergonomics, the number and size of meetings, technological advancements needed, and office organization. Do your best to solve these overlapping issues.

Meeting the needs of your employees

Your desk developed into our space. We’re celebrating one work community in a shared office space. With the rise of open plan spaces comes the demand for ways of controlling chaos. You should balance employee engagement with respect for personal space.

What you can do is assign zones your office—where to eat, nap, store items, and discuss things with the team. In an open collaborative office, you are free to use partitions to give your employees some privacy and some space to concentrate.

It is also important to establish community rules. In a collaborative office, you have to treat others the way you want to be treated. Always remind your employees about common courtesy. Use signs to get their attention. This is important because people tend to forget simple things when work becomes too stressful.

Finally, give your workers a flexible working option. Let them work from home or from a coffee shop. If you do, make sure that you distribute these opportunities to your workers. If possible, give this liberty to those who really deserve it. This enables you to support all your employees even if they have different styles of working.

A true, exceptional workspace encompasses architecture, interior design, and employee engagement. The right office design lets your employees grow so your business will grow.

As the demand of their job increases, people are going to spend more than 40 hours a week in the office. Don’t make them hate the place. Build an office with a culture which inspires, involves, and empowers them as a person and employee. Like what our Sydney architects always say, good design has a purpose. Most importantly, let them know that you care for them. Because when they feel that you do, they will start to love their jobs even more.