Understanding the importance of office location on business success, customer convenience and employee quality of life is key when deciding where to establish yourself. Location plays an extremely important role in the way your business operates, as well as your company’s overall appeal. It’s crucial that you keep in mind your business’s unique goals, clientele, vendors, customers and employees when choosing where to settle.
The convenience of location is one business owners and operators may have not had to think much about recently. For a generation, the idea of convenience remained largely the same. It was the suburban home near the shopping plaza and the school. But as modern forces transform how people live, like working from home (WFH), the urbanizing of the economy and the growth of online shopping, business operators must again consider what makes an office location convenient.
More businesses are choosing to locate themselves in bustling downtown areas and walkable suburban neighborhoods for these reasons. As a result, there is a variety of valuable benefits to choosing a convenient location for your business.
4 BENEFITS OF A CONVENIENT OFFICE LOCATION
1. ATTRACT POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS IN YOUR AREA.
Walkable communities see plenty of pedestrian and vehicle traffic throughout the day. With higher visibility, you have the ability to gain new clients and potential customers that pass by your business’s front door. It also gives you the opportunity to make strong connections with neighboring businesses.
Restaurants and retail stores, as well as some entertainment-based businesses, are the most likely to benefit from a location surrounded by high foot traffic. This is compounded by recent developments in advertising technology that allow you to target potential customers based on their location and other pertinent data, allowing you to deliver ads directly to their smartphones or watches when they are most likely to enter your business.
2. IMPROVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
According to the EPA, “mobile sources” of pollution, like motor vehicles, collectively cause 50% of the nation’s air pollution. Walkable cities and communities encourage more people to walk, bike or use public transportation to get to work with designated paths for walkers and bikers, as well as accessible bus or metro routes. By offering a more environmentally-friendly commute for your employees, clients and customers, your business can contribute to a more sustainable economy.
Employees and customers put emphasis on a company’s social responsibility and are at times willing to go the extra mile to help them be more sustainable. As urban areas continue to attract the lion’s share of young professional talent, businesses competing for their dollars and services may want to consider convenient office locations that are walkable. Depending on the size of the company and the number of employees that participate, location could end up contributing immensely to their sustainability goals.
3. CULTIVATE A HEALTHY WORKPLACE CULTURE.
According to Harvard Health, walking just 30 minutes a day can have an immense effect on one’s health and well-being. Walk breaks are both convenient and effective for office employees who work on a computer all day. By situating your office in a convenient location with nearby sidewalks, gyms, nature trails, shopping centers and other conveniences, you can help to foster a healthy workplace culture among your employees. In addition to work-break walks, a convenient location gives many of your employees and clients the option to walk or bike to your office, rather than drive.
Walking is also great for productivity, meaning that having a convenient business location could directly impact not only the health and wellness of your employees but also your profitability. Both mental and physical performance can be enhanced by just 20 minutes of walking, with improvements to reported energy levels, memory and attention.
4. PROVIDE AN ACCESSIBLE COMMUTE FOR YOUR EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS.
Accessibility is an important factor to consider when choosing a good location for a business, as it affects each person that enters your doors. A convenient location offers an accessible commute for your employees, clients, customers, suppliers and distributors. In addition to transportation accessibility, neighborhood conveniences such as restaurants, banks, grocery stores and daycare centers offer employees and potential customers plenty of nearby amenities.
For employees, an accessible commute plays a major role in job satisfaction. For employers, it is a major factor in turnover. Studies show an overall negative relationship between commute distance and job satisfaction, with longer commute times leading to more employee attrition. As walking, biking and public transportation all tend to be available in urban environments, business owners and operators should consider these alternate modes of transportation when considering whether a prospective business location is convenient.