Be nice to your office The update should have the following rider: not if it's also the kitchen or café that forms the heartbeat of the organisation. GlaxoSmithKline grasped this with the "street" running through the centre of their corporate headquarters, complete with shops, well-being centres and, of course, a coffee bar. If you'd kept their stock as they moved in, you wouldn't need to bother with DIY. Just because big companies can afford to invest in their space doesn't mean you need a big wallet. Melbourne is an IT server hosting company in Manchester that, like many others, is located in a dreary business park. However, when you come out of the lift you're met by an indoor garden with a path winding through grass and a meeting room decked out like an old fashioned club complete with fireplace and leather chairs. Many of these touches came off eBay, adding just 30pc to the £100,000 they needed for the basic fit-out. When an Australian law and stockbroking firm moved from shabby to chic offices, sick leave fell by 39pc, typing speed and accuracy increased by 9pc and lawyers" billable hours increased by 7pc. Nearly half of people who are offered a job say that the office space affected their decision on whether to accept. If you're in the battle for talent, that's an advantage worth securing. The University of Exeter suggests a 32pc increase in productivity when employees are involved in shaping their work environment. Advertising agency Mother pays tribute to its team with a glorious wall of photos of every employee's mother. At Innocent, the smoothie company, there is a photo of each employee as a baby, there to remind us of our innocence. These ideas work because they chime with what the company is. Pictures of the house where you were born might work at Wates; your first car at Jaguar Land Rover; a childhood holiday at BA or Virgin Atlantic. But swap these around and all you have is a silly idea. At Mind Gym we have outgrown our beloved old home and are moving into a new one. The challenge is how to put all this beguiling theory into practice. Our first step was to ask the team what they wanted. Suggestions ranged from culinary (latte maker) through cleanliness (shower) to kooky (office pet). With a little metaphorical licence, we've adopted them all. Next we agreed a layout that put the team's desks in the space with the best outlook and the most natural light. But desks are only one place that work gets done. Just as important are what designers call "tertiary" spaces, which are like open meeting spaces. O2"s office in Slough is peppered with gatherings of tulip chairs. Our new tertiary spaces include a logo-shaped table at standing height, because meetings when you don't sit down achieve more in less time, and two circular beds - because who wants to think in a box? One of our core beliefs is that "science is sexy, in research we trust" and so we dedicated each meeting room to a legendary psychologist with a wall-sized image of Jung, Langer and their like and a quote - 'Becoming is better than being" in the Carol Dweck room, for example. The lavatory walls are papered with pages from our books and our reception space doubles as a library. Our employee wall has everyone's favourite thought written on it. "Not winning doesn't matter; not wanting to win does," writes Ian from design. With offices, like so much else, it's the thought that counts. Octavius Black is the CEO of Mind Gym (www.mindgym.com)