Great offices are built on communities that prioritise change, growth and development. But a great office design can work wonders for helping cultivate that community, namely by providing the infrastructure and flexibility your employees need to feel positively and perform at their best every day.
Here are some of the other office design considerations that more organisations are integrating with the intention of promoting employee health and wellness.
1. Include and Cultivate Your Break-Out Area
This growing emphasis on employee wellness and work/life balance is influencing modern office design principles from the ground-up. Nowadays, office design planning includes considerations for small touches like cultivating a warm and inviting break-out area with art paintings hung on the walls of meeting rooms or coffee machines for your business to encourage interdepartmental relationship building in shared spaces and as an alternative to off-site cafe runs. Quality coffee machines are a great perk for your team as they can make barista-level coffee and have a chat with a coworker, all within the office space
These small touches can help support employee wellness, which in turn promotes productivity alongside improving staff retention rates, thanks in part to the boost in staff morale that accompanies having a comfortable and inviting office to go to every day.
2. Incorporate Colour Psychology
What would our world feel like if it were all black and white? Pretty dull, right?
Most of us aren’t fully aware of the power colours hold in influencing our emotions and moods, but they can have a monumental effect on evoking our feelings. For example, colours like red and orange are known to add a burst of energy into our lives to enhance our moods. Blues and greens are commonly used for their relaxing effects, which can add a sense of peace and tranquillity to our days.
So, if you are looking to promote employee health and wellness, you might want to do some digging on how each colour can add benefits to your staff. From there, you can incorporate feature walls with your selected colours, or choose rugs, desk mats and chairs that offer a quirky colour designed to lift the mood.
3. Implement Hot Desk Stations
No two days are the same in the office. The atmosphere can change day in day out, depending on how everyone is feeling, how many people are in the office and what day of the week it is. Some days might be long and productive, while others might fly by in a matter of seconds, and you didn’t quite get as much done as you hoped.
Hot desk work stations can be motivating for employees who want to knuckle down and tick off their to-do lists. It can also improve their health and well-being through routine and structured seating arrangements. These systems can allow your team the freedom to choose to complete their work in a less distracting and quieter environment, which is essential in creating productivity channels for your employees.
4. Prioritise air and water quality
Another way to take care of your employees is to ensure there are proper ventilation channels within the office space. It’s not all just about making your work space look nice and pretty, although that counts too, but a better focus is to prioritise your physical health, which improves overall wellbeing and productivity. Studies have shown that poor air quality can result in fatigue, headaches and in serious cases, even cardiovascular diseases.
In addition to air quality, you could consider investing in a water filter to improve your consumption of drinking water. Taking these mini steps like having water filters in place are essential in your consumption of healthy minerals, removing unwanted toxins and waste in your body, which can ultimately lead to increased productivity at work. Don’t we all want that?
5. Create wellness rooms
When things start to feel a little too busy at work and your team is struggling to catch a break, it’s really important to encourage them to take a step back and have a breather. Wellness and chill-out rooms in office spaces provide your team with a perfect opportunity to switch off, unwind and restore. Whether that’s for 5 minutes or an hour, it gives easy access to a way to recoup and avoid burnout. These wellness rooms could provide access to simple yoga and meditation sessions, comfortable chairs facing a window where they can watch the world go by or even journaling stations, which are extremely useful in regulating and balancing our emotions.
There shouldn't be saves for when burnout is near, though. Wellness rooms help create e balanced office culture, a place where they can regularly destress, which is helpful to their overall mental health by allowing them to focus and process their emotions in that moment. Even having the presence of a wellness room in the office space can make people more relaxed and less stressed, knowing their in close proximity to a place where this is encouraged
6. Invest in Ergonomic Furniture and Environmentally Responsible Products
Another way to ensure your workspace is a safe space for your employees is to invest in harmless foods and beverages and ergonomic furniture. For example, if you’re providing coffee for your team, choose well-sourced beans and make sure the machine is cleaned and serviced regularly to avoid hygiene issues, and avoid disposable cups. Participating in these small efforts can also reduce your eco-guilt, which can be beneficial to your overall health and wellness.
When it comes to furniture, your team will be spending many hours in their chairs and working on their computers. It’s well worth investing in ergonomic chairs, computer mouse, keyboards, etc., so that they can maintain healthy posture. You can also establish distraction-free desk setups to promote good mental well-being. By considering the most healthy and safe choices throughout your office, you are making a conscious decision to commit to the workplace well-being of your employees and helping your team feel valued and appreciated.
Create an Office Space that Caters to your Community
Now that we’ve laid down exactly how to better boost the health and wellness of your employees, it’s time for you to get stuck in. To start, you can perform an audit of things that are promoting wellbeing in your team, and things that should be altered or replaced. Adding these little changes to your current workspace can go a long way in making the atmosphere of your 9-5 a more lively one.
