Business establishments carry all the necessary areas for employees and their productivity. Rooms filled with computers, workstations, and office supplies will be aplenty. The hallways will be full of conference rooms to provide a collaborative space for employees. However, an office should be more than just work. Businesses need to provide employees with necessities for their survival.
Pantries and break rooms must be available to ensure they can eat and recollect themselves after long work hours. Those areas will be necessary. However, there is one room assignment that holds the most significant values among all. Bathrooms might not receive that much attention, but their importance will show when an employee needs a toilet and runs to another building to use the facility. Prepare to lose plenty of workers if that happens.
Office bathrooms, however, are different from your residential area. They need to be available for multiple people simultaneously, complicating its design. Fortunately, you can rely on these elements to help you identify the ideal office bathroom plan.
Space
Most residential bathrooms value functionality and convenience. As long as the room contains the fixtures necessary, homeowners won’t complain. However, there is a huge possibility that ten people will be using the office bathroom at once, making functionality and convenience secondary to space. The average residential bathroom will be claustrophobic for employees, making it necessary to multiply the installed toilets inside the facility.
The sinks and mirrors must also be more than one. While adding a shower room is achievable, employees might not want to take a bath inside the office. However, leaving them the option of one fixture could be helpful. Space will be necessary to ensure that your employees will get the chance to utilize the facility whenever they require it. If there is a need to line up because people use every toilet, they wouldn’t have a problem waiting inside a spacious bathroom.
Privacy
People use bathrooms every day for personal use. The area is for some of the most intimate activities they will perform during their lives, making it necessary to provide them with privacy. Every toilet requires a cubicle, ensuring that nobody can peek at them while expelling waste from their bodies. Your options differ according to your preferences. You can provide slits underneath and above the doors, as well as the sides. The design ensures that a foul smell will not cover the entire cubicle, which provides a more pleasant environment for the next user.
Fortunately, your efforts only have to cover the toilets. Extra privacy might be necessary when you have a shower area. The sink and mirrors might not require barriers. However, the pandemic forced many businesses with on-site work arrangements to set up temporary walls for social distancing. Privacy is a necessity for bathrooms. Any issues with coworkers inside the bathroom could lead to internal HR violations and lawsuits. The threat makes privacy a must-have element for the office facility.
Supply Replenishment
Employees put lots of things in their residential bathrooms. Beauty products, facial cleansers, dental accessories, and medicine are only a few of those things. However, there will not be any storage space for office bathrooms. Employees have to bring their personal items themselves, but there are a few supplies that the company must provide. Toilet paper, soap, handwashing liquid, and water containers are materials that should be present at the office bathroom at all times. Unfortunately, it might be easy to run out of them within the day.
Replenishing supplies will not be the same as visiting the grocery store to get more. Chances are offices might require replenishment by the bulk due to the number of bathrooms inside the establishment. Fortunately, you can find business partners that provide bulk or wholesale bathroom supplies whenever needed. The contract will ensure that your business facilities will have inventory for the agreed-upon period, providing convenience for your employees.
Maintenance
Bathroom fixtures are often durable, but the sheer number of employees using them might cause wear-and-tear damage to accelerate. Pipe bursts and leaks might also become an issue. A poorly maintained bathroom will not be ideal for your establishment’s utility bills. The worst-case scenario is water starts to flood hallways and offices, which contain lots of electrical equipment. A maintenance team will be necessary for your company to ensure that that bathroom functions well at all times.
Office bathrooms should always be a given when designing a business establishment. They will be vital to employee performance and health. Most companies even go out of their way to ensure that bathrooms fit high standards in terms of functionality and aesthetics. Should you have enough funds to spare, improving the facility will always be a beneficial project.
