Does your office feature a graveyard section? More and more offices, hit with the recession, have become home to empty stretches of commercial square footage – barren corridors abandoned as employees clump together in different parts of the floor.

There’s a silver lining to the phenomenon of the cubicle graveyard,however; as need to maximize floor space has repeatedly shrunk office space for employees, the recession has brought with it the ability to reverse this trend and give workers more room to stretch out.The average square foot per office occupant actually went up in recent years, compared to steady shrinking for nearly a decade before that.

“There is simply more space per person in the workplace, meaning there are fewer people occupying a greater amount of space, and this is just over the course of a year,” said George Deutsch, a spokesperson for International Facility Management Association, or IFMA, in 2009.

The level of empty space can vary greatly depending on whether a company is able to break an existing lease and move to a smaller location, or if they own their own property and can’t easily downsize. The leftover square footage can be revamped with an eye to keeping the employees that are left more comfortable, increasing their productivity and enhancing workplace conditions!

In addition, the ability to focus on the fact that they still have a job instead of looking at the “graveyard” and wondering if the axe will fall on them next is a huge psychological plus. “Emotionally, workers look around the empty office, and it brings the depth of the economic crisis home for them in a personal way,” says Leslie Seppinni, a clinical psychologist. “They wonder: ‘Am I next?’ and a tremendous amount of anxiety and depression builds as they try to figure out what steps to take next.”

Investing in a new, improved and more spacious cubicle floor plan can breathe new life into your office operation, Each employee will feel more valued, anxiety will lift, work will get don more quickly and morale will rise. When employees feel their manager cares and respects them enough to make changes for their comfort, it shows in a million ways that benefit the company’s bottom line.