Here’s a tip on the topic of office layouts with Microsoft Excel.
In my prior blog helped with organization charts, now I’m going to provide a recommendation on where those employees should sit. Working with office layouts can be difficult and the software can be onerous and difficult to learn. Architects and designers use AutoCad or Revit which practically takes a degree to understand and use.
The program Microsoft Visio is excellent for office layouts, since it can draw the office to scale to help with when deciding additional furniture or changes to accommodate more or less employees. However, we really don’t often need to manipulate the office layout as much as to manage where people are sitting. In a large office setting, it’s always nice to have a visual to understand where everyone is sitting. This office layout solution will enable you to search for team member locations.
The pandemic has made incredible changes to the workplace including turnover and working from home.
Many people have had to adjust their office seating, and I have been using Excel to solve the seating arrangement within an office layout.
The overall process is adding your office layout as a picture in Excel, then adding text boxes on top of that graphic. I change the look of the text boxes by making them darker so they stand out above the layout. Next I use a little know trick of add a formula inside a text box in Excel, sounds complicated. It’s only one character – the equal sign “ = “. The equal sign allows you to link to a list of names to the layout.
Adding text boxes to the layout is faster than you think since you can copy and paste the text boxes to quickly add up the layout. Then after linking each box to the list of names, you can update the list quickly for any adjustments. Keeping different floors or building in one Excel file will allow you to search (“Ctrl F”) for an employee name in any of your buildings or floors. I have used this example with great success to manage turnover of offices and cubicles. It helps you understand the total occupancy of your building and having a visual of the floor is just an awesome feature for new team members.
Plan the Plan 