Making the Case for Workplace Wellbeing
We all want our homes to be a space for peace, calm, happiness and self-care. So why shouldn’t that desire for wellbeing and zen extend to what is considered, for many, our “home-away-from-home”?
While the importance of workplace wellbeing has been a hot topic in office design over the past few years, COVID-19 has highlighted how crucial wellbeing can be on workplace effectiveness.
To take care of a workspace is to take care of the people on whom you rely… to meet with your clients, to balance the books, to run your business.
So how can you take care of your employees’ overall wellbeing? Employee wellness can be placed into four categories:
Physical
- Ensure that your people have the right ergonomic furniture for comfort.
- Offer ways in which they can stay active and get exercise during the day while at the office, even if that means simply encouraging staff to get up from their seats and take a walk around the block.
- Make available fresh fruit and nutritious snacks to help fuel their day in a positive way.
Environmental
- Provide the right lighting, space, temperature and air quality so that employees feel safe and calm in their work space.
- Create various sound zones so that staff know what are acceptable noise levels in which areas of the office.
- Bring the outside in. many studies show that exposure to plant life, living walls, greenery in general can reduce stress, boost your mood and increase creativity.
Psychological
- Help ensure workloads are fair and balanced to ensure stress levels are managed appropriately between and within teams.
- Mitigate fears around issues of safety and security – COVID- and non-COVID-related.
- Offer support to employees who may need a little extra comfort or an outlet for how they are feeling – COVID-19 related or not. Consider Employee Assistance programs.
Social
- Foster collaboration and teamwork in meaningful ways to build back relationships that may have not had time to develop due to time and space over the past year.
- Create a culture of openness and community by hosting events and building bridges between diverse groups of people, inter- and intra-firm.
Given that a significant amount of our annual budget is spent on our most valuable commodity – our people – it is a sound investment to promote actions and activities that reduce absenteeism, boost morale, improves culture resilience, leading to the retention of top talent.
Wellbeing in office design is flexible and can take shape in a lot of different ways. Some examples are:
- Integrating plant life within your office design to improve air quality while beautifying the space and providing calm elements for everyone to enjoy.
- Providing meditation / relaxation rooms to help promote a healthy and balanced day.
- Incorporating soft and plush furnishings in natural colours and materials to offer a comfortable space to sit and gather.
- Ensuring natural light, minimal noise levels and comfortable temperatures to control the ambience of the office.
There is a direct and positive correlation between the wellbeing and productivity of your employees and driving business results. Every day that we remain remote and WFH, is an additional day that is potentially taking its toll on our collective mental health as we struggle with inadequate home office setups in environments that are less than ideal for productive work.
From a designer’s point of view, the only one positive result to come from this pandemic – the only one – is that this pandemic hiatus has afforded us the time, while the office is vacant, to make design changes that would entice your team back to the office when it is safe to do so. To this effect, we are currently working with a number of our clients to redesign and reimagine their workspaces to bring the comforts of home into the office. Once done, these clients will see their offices act as buzzy, productive hubs for creative collaboration, community and culture once again.
Take care of your people by incorporating their wellness into your workspace today. Give us a call to speak with our team of registered interior designers and product specification experts to find out how. Mayhew creates and maintains workplaces that work. We are here to help.
We are here to help!
