One of the most important things regarding office design and workplace refurbishment is employee wellbeing. After all, just like nation's are often measured on their GDP, it's often much more valuable to look at the health and happiness of your employees, just like the happiness of a citizen gives a much more down-to-earth understanding of life in that nation.
1. Many Factors Effect Wellbeing
Wellbeing isn't a single statistic on its own; many different things contribute to the wellbeing of a particular person. This includes things such as their physical health, their relationships with those around them, support for their mental health, the hygiene of their environment, their finances, and much more. When you break down employee wellbeing into the many factors which affect it, it's very clear to see how prioritising the wellbeing of your staff can have a superb affect on the productivity of your business.
After all, just consider one of the factors, the relationships with those around them. Every business knows the importance of a team that works well together and helps each other to achieve their goals. The UK Government has taken steps towards a wellbeing based measurement, for example each year “the UK government produces a National Wellbeing Dashboard that eschews a traditional view of domestic output in favour of data on health, relationships, education".
2. Wellbeing Is A Benefit To Your Business' Income
Simply put, prioritising the health and wellbeing of your employees is advantageous to the profitability and sustainability of your business. After all, if you run a business with a cold and uninspiring working environment, then people are unlikely to feel inspired, and they could start to search for work elsewhere, causing a high turnover rate of staff, which is the antithesis to stability which is very harmful to the long-term profitability and viability of your business.
There are lots of different ways that you can boost your business' productivity through improving the wellbeing of your staff. Quite simply, the examples and potential benefits are too vast and too numerous to list them all however some examples include the following. According to the International Stress Management Association (ISMA), flexible working conditions can significantly reduce employee stress and make for a much healthier and happier workforce. Additionally, research by Lees man suggests that 81% of workers believe temperature control to be an important factor of an effective workplace and 77% believe natural light has a part to play. Another example can be found in the very air that your employees breathe whilst completing their daily tasks; did you know that 75% of the emotions we generate daily are affected by smell? Creating an inspiring working environment instead just ability the physical elements of office design, as whilst visuals are an important aspect of office design, it is but one of the senses. As such, it's important to remember not to neglect the other senses, including smell and touch. If you would like to learn more about scent in your office environment, you can read our blog titled, “ Scent in the Workplace: Creating a five-star experience".
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3. It's Essential To Attract New Talent
One of the most brutal areas of business is “the war for talent". There's only a finite amount of new potential employees in the next generation so how can you make sure that your business managed to recruit and retain skilled, workers who quickly bond with your existing staff and 'join the team'? As the Digital Natives of generation Z start to join the working world, and those of older generations start to retire, it's essential that good working relations are established across generational gaps in your workplace. After all, they need to work together in order to succeed. So how can you attract younger generations without alienating older generations? Wellbeing focused design is the key.
One such example is the flexible workspace. Generally speaking, different generations have different habits, personalities, and ethos. So by designing your working environment to be able to adapt to these differences and provide a healthy and supportive environment that considers those differences, you'll be able to great a working environment that is attractive to people of all ages. However, what's the secret to attracting both the 'Boomers and the Zoomers'? One office design technique is that you can utilise to your advantage is the flexible workspace. In general, flexible working environments allow people to work in the manner that best suits them, this helps people to adjust their space to best fit their needs, allowing them when appropriate to juggle the demands of both their work responsibilities and their outside of work responsibilities, such as a family and children. Simply put, these flexible or agile working environments allow businesses and organisations to flex and move as they grow and shrink, adapting to the both the evolving demands of the market, and the demands and needs of their employees.
Comfort plays a large role in creating a productive working environment. Comfortable office chairs, high quality computer peripherals and comfortable furniture in the break room are just three examples of how you can increase comfort in the workplace. With office furnishing, design, and other key office interiors solutions we can help you to create a working environment that seeks to reduce the impact that sedentary behaviour has on the health and productise of your employees. After all, sedentary behaviour not only diminishes levels of productivity but can also increase the risk of serious health issues such as depression, obesity, heart disease and diabetes, as well as the potential for musculoskeletal disorders.
With over 15 years of industry experience, our expert office design team have all the knowledge and skills requires to make your office design project a success.
If you're interested in any of our office interior solutions, please give us a call on 0845 130 9066. However, if you would instead prefer to get in touch with a member of our team using the internet, please make your enquiry using one of the four methods below.
You can contact our team online by:
Active Workplace Solutions, a trading name of Active Facilities Management Ltd
Unit 4 Headley Park 10 Headley Road East Woodley, Reading Berkshire RG5 4SW
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